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Entire Mac Lineup Now Starts With at Least 16GB RAM, Ending 8GB Era
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Excellent!
My 15" MacBook Pro has certainly paid for itself many times over through the billable work it has generated. The wait for the M4 chip was worthwhile, as it allowed for a more refined and thoroughly tested M series processor compared to the initial version. After all, considering the first generation M1, the fourth generation chip has much more advanced features and capabilities packed into it—or at least I hope so.
Its not really obsolete. Obsolete means its no longer usable. Its just End of life. We always knew this was going to be a short term product, so this change is a bit annoying, but I figure this will increase the cost of the machines moving forward, just like when my M1 MBP was replaced by an M2, the cost of the machine went up.
By "base model" if you mean the M1 (not Pro) then yes.
The iMac has 16 GB, but I got a LOT of work done on my previous M1 Air which had 8 GB of RAM. Ran that with Illustrator, InDesign plus plenty of other things running. The only time I managed to get it to really slow down was when I'd log into two user accounts at once and switch between the two. Even then, once things settled down after user switching it would catch up and get responsive again.
People on tech forums throw around the word "obsolete" far too freely. A VCR is obsolete. A floppy disk drive is obsolete. A computer with 8GB of RAM is not obsolete, and won't be for years.
The end of an error.🥲😁
It's quite interesting how people would now try to part with their beloved 'base' models with 8GB, especially since it's Apple who is making those models obsolete. They seem to be considered at the end of their life, or whatever the term may be.
Am I the only grandpa here who started with ZX81 with 2kB RAM (BUT I had a 16kB expansion box that you had to tape to it) and the keyboard that was printed on foil, so a bit like the retina Macbook?
I prefer to quote you than the ‘8GB is only good for one app’ crowd that clearly haven’t used an 8GB machine. Right this moment on my 8GB M1 Air I have *counts* 20 tabs open on Brave (Chromium) including X and Bluesky and Discord and Slack, 11 tabs in Safari because I am logged in to a different account there, Spark (email), Messenger, Signal, Scrivener, Vellum, Bear Notes, MediaHuman Audio Converter, Apple Music, Notes, Calendar, Calibre, TextEdit, Sonos, Photos, and just now added Activity Monitor to find out I am using 7.09 GB RAM + 3.69 GB swap. Nothing is hot, slow, or problematic in any way. The only reason why I regret I haven’t gone with 16GB is that I went back to making music, and running both a DAW and iZotope RX 11 audio editor = ‘so this thing DOES get warm!’
If I was running Activity Monitor all day in addition to all those I would probably be very nervous right now that M4 Air will probably only go up to 24GB. But I didn’t buy this computer to run Activity Monitor.
That's true. I checked out listings this morning on Facebook marketplace to see what prices were at. It's still the same. It will be interesting to see what people sell their 8GB base models for in the coming weeks because there's no question that some people are going to sell it to upgrade.
I think we will see stores sell the 8GB M2 and M3 airs for dirt cheap in the coming weeks just to get rid of stock. Black Friday and Christmas time will be interesting. This may be the best time for anyone who's been wanting a MacBook to buy one because no doubt we will see some very good deals on the 8GB models In the coming months.
I decided that I'm just going to hold on to my 8GB base model M3 Air for the time being. It does the job for me and it's not my main machine so it fits my use case perfectly. I will revisit the idea in February 2025 when new model laptops roll out.
I'm going to lose too much money if I sell it and I'm not going to throw that money down the toilet. If I can get 3 solid years out of it from when I bought it 2 months ago I'll be happy. Anything longer maybe pushing it.
If apple made a M3 MacBook Pro with 8gb of ram last year, I think Macs with 8gb of ram are still going to be supported for a long time.
Supported, for sure. But it looks increasingly likely, that some features will be restricted to 16GB models as early as next year.
The premium we’re paying is for the build quality and for macOS. Nothing else in the industry matches those. Macs have always been expensive relative to PC for the specs and always will be that way.
If you look at it through another lens though, having the majority of the macOS install base have low RAM (most MR readers are not this demographic) has kept the machines we upgraded with more RAM running better as the OS and apps had to be more optimized for those 8gb machines they were still selling. It kept more macs usable for longer, and increased their resale value as they weren’t super outdated after ~4 years.
If we doubled the RAM as often as we did in the 00s we’d be at 32-64gb as baseline right now, the software would bloat up to use it since it’s there, and all those 8gb and 16gb machines would be a lot less useful.
Personally I’m glad Apple has pumped the brakes on things a bit.
4 years is a pretty long time, and I was coming from a 2012 MBA that itself had 4gb ram (and which I had all but stopped using a couple of years ago).
If being able to run zoom for 9 hours on a single full charge while staying cool to the touch is an experiment, then call me a willing test subject. If booting up more quickly than my 2017 5k iMac with 40gb ram is an experiment, then I am happy to have jumped in when I did.
There was plenty going for the M1 MBA way back in 2020, I personally vouch for its effectiveness, 8gb ram and all, and even with perfect hindsight, I would still have gone with the entry level base model. If you tell me that my user experience is being impacted by a lack of ram and aggressive memory swap, all I can say is - I have not felt it. I probably will eventually, and I will cross that bridge when I get there.
I just want it to be able to handle upcoming updates for the next 3 years. So if that means I miss out of some features then no big deal. And allow us to choose if we want to update or not. If we have a choice I would prefer to be one or two versions back. And I don't care about AI at all so let us be able to turn it off or disable it.
Otherwise I would expect a lot of air users to still be using 8 GB base models at least for the next few years.
I think many people underestimate what 8 GB can do on OSX. Of all the programs that I run I find that safari is a huge RAM hog. It has to be shut down and restarted at least once a week or else it just consumes more and more memory.
Apple CAN'T drop 8gb support in 3 years because of the fact they released a MacBook Pro with 8gb of ram last year. It makes no sense to drop the support for this Mac and also for the 8gb MacBook Air m3... Ok they might not have a few features but you don't need everything. Also you can get a very good deal if you buy m3 MacBook Air with 8gb of ram refurbished at apple. You safe like 300$ !! (With taxes of course) and you can safe like 250$ + taxes on M2 MacBook Air ! Also they might be deals somewhere like maybe amazon at some point for 8gb of ram.
Nope. Apple almost never differentiates supported features based on RAM. It is almost always Model and Year that determines what OS and features are supported, regardless of what RAM configuration the customer selects. Odds are the person that maxed out RAM on their M2 MBA will be supported for the same software and features updates as the person that bought the base model
Apple almost restricted predictive code in Xcode 16 to 16gb of ram but they decided to don't do it (it was only 16gb in some betas) And you are right, for example the MacBook Air 2015 of 4gb of ram hasn't been restricted by a feature that requires 8gb of ram... MacBook Air m3 with 16gb is like MacBook Air 2017 with 8gb of ram (only ram change) but finally both ended with macOS Monterey.
There are a lot of leftover new products in warehouses, and some people make a living by buying these in large parcels and selling them individually. A few days ago, one could purchase a new M2 Mac mini (and MacBooks) at very attractive prices from these sellers, 20-30% cheaper than retail prices. Now, with the 'base' M4 Mac mini with 16GB being sold at a much lower price, those sellers have to reduce their prices to sell off the 'new' M2 (M3) Macs. Those who have kept an eye on the Mac world know that the M4 Mac minis are much cheaper directly from Apple (and distributors).
Consequently, the prices of the new M2 and M3 Macs will drop, which will disadvantage existing users who want to sell them at a reasonable price. By releasing Macs with newer M chips so quickly, practically one every year, the manufacturer has undermined the aftermarket value of older M chip Macs. Of course, there will be some who want Macs with older M chips, but they will demand a higher buying price, at least in some countries. And, it will be pretty hard to sell M1 Macs in the aftermarket.
An interesting fact is that purchasing the 'base' Mac mini with 256GB is more advantageous than buying one with additional storage at higher Apple prices, as the Mac mini is designed to remain on the desk. With its extra USB-C ports, one can add any amount of much faster, yet cheaper, external storage to it. For example, one could buy at least three 512GB external drives for the difference in price.
Consequently, the prices of the new M2 and M3 Macs will drop, which will disadvantage existing users who want to sell them at a reasonable price. By releasing Macs with newer M chips so quickly, practically one every year, the manufacturer has undermined the aftermarket value of older M chip Macs. Of course, there will be some who want Macs with older M chips, but they will demand a higher buying price, at least in some countries. And, it will be pretty hard to sell M1 Macs in the aftermarket.
An interesting fact is that purchasing the 'base' Mac mini with 256GB is more advantageous than buying one with additional storage at higher Apple prices, as the Mac mini is designed to remain on the desk. With its extra USB-C ports, one can add any amount of much faster, yet cheaper, external storage to it. For example, one could buy at least three 512GB external drives for the difference in price.
I’m not counting my C64 with tape station, because it was technically my brother’s (used by me 99% of the time)
Impossible that the MacBook Air m3 16gb get this and not the MacBook Pro m3 with 8gb… this makes no sens. MacBook Pro users paid more…
I don't think many are going to, and again, its not obsolete. If they were, they would have just gotten a 16 GB device. Apple suddenly deciding that it isn't enough isn't going to suddenly make them not work at all or not get security updates/software updates, which is what EOL is.