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I’m not counting my C64 with tape station, because it was technically my brother’s (used by me 99% of the time)
It was only slightly slower than the 1541 drive. 😉 I was blown away when we finally upgraded to the 64.
 
I do feel quite sorry for those who bought M1 chip Macs when they first launched. They were more of an experiment than the M1 chip itself.
Weirdly enough, My Mini M1 still edits 4K video very smoothly and renders quickly, and gets well over 50 tracks in Logic. Fun experiment! I've had it nearly 4 years, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
 
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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.
Well, OS choice is subjective. MacOS has not been objectively better than its Windows counterpart for over a decade now. Apple's SOC is impressive and may be about the only compelling reason to get a Mac nowadays. As for "build quality", only Apple fans think making something out of aluminum and sacrificing performance and cooling for something that is a half-millimeter thinner than its predecessor is a good measure of "build quality". Apple has had its share of incredibly poor build quality over the years, and there are plenty of PC manufacturers that have excellent build quality. All this put together, and I'd say you're not getting your money's worth.

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 It kept more macs usable for longer, and increased their resale value as they weren’t super outdated after ~4 years.
Okay, there's spin doctoring, and then there's whatever that was you just typed. Yikes.
 
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.
What can one say now, given that Apple has decided not to release any Macs with 8GB of RAM anymore? All those 8GB RAM Macs would feel like older, unwanted, poor relations.
 
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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
That might have been true in the past. LLMs/AI are different though in my opinion. Larger model perform very poorly when there is not enough RAM to run them.
 
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Weirdly enough, My Mini M1 still edits 4K video very smoothly and renders quickly, and gets well over 50 tracks in Logic. Fun experiment! I've had it nearly 4 years, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
Sure, it does, but Apple won't be producing any M1 Macs anymore. M1 products were meant to be obsoleted from the beginning. That's why M2, M3, and now M4 came so quickly, obsoleting the one before. Now that M4 has come with 16GB of RAM, it becomes a standard usable machine.
 
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Sure, it does, but Apple won't be producing any M1 Macs anymore. M1 products were meant to be obsoleted from the beginning. That's why M2, M3, and now M4 came so quickly, obsoleting the one before. Now that M4 has come with 16GB of RAM, it becomes a standard usable machine.
I mean, that's a valid point, I suppose. But all chips are meant to be obsoleted. Soon, they won't be making M2's either. They doesn't mean they aren't great machines. I guess we'll both have the answer as to how obsolete the M1's are, when Apple stops supporting OS updates on them. Mine's a 16GB machine anyway, so I'm not too worried in that regard.
 
I mean, that's a valid point, I suppose. But all chips are meant to be obsoleted. Soon, they won't be making M2's either. They doesn't mean they aren't great machines. I guess we'll both have the answer as to how obsolete the M1's are, when Apple stops supporting OS updates on them. Mine's a 16GB machine anyway, so I'm not too worried in that regard.
But you paid too much for it, while we can now buy a Mac with a 'standard' 16GB RAM. I once said I’d wait for M4, which is at least the 4th generation. With all the AI hype, Apple couldn't release an 8GB Mac. It will be hard to sell your Mac in a few months.
 
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But you paid too much for it, while we can now buy a Mac with a 'standard' 16GB RAM. I once said I’d wait for M4, which is at least the 4th generation. With all the AI hype, Apple couldn't release an 8GB Mac. It will be hard to sell your Mac in a few months.
Eh, did I though? I paid $180 extra nearly four years ago, while you continued using a slower machine, so you could get standard 16GB on the M4. Time is worth something. 13 cents a day of being happier with my machine than when I had an Intel that was FAR slower.
Also, I'm not selling this Mac. My son will get it because A. he needs a stronger machine than his Intel Mini for music, and B. he (along with a lot of other people) don't give a rat's ass about AI.
 
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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.
I always love the implication in comments like these that all laptop purchasers know or at least aught to know the specifications that they will need for their use case, today and in the near future. There is just a very subtle kind of victim-blaming aimed at those who perhaps relied upon the recommendation of an "expert" (or "Genius") that the base model will be fine (even if that recommendation is based on nothing more than some salesman's bad assumption of their use-case), or maybe because the purchaser simply assumed (perhaps a bit naïvely) that whatever Apple says is fine will be fine. Those that didn't buy the 16GB version, they should have known what they needed. And so they deserve to now get fleeced by Apple because they are too stupid and/or cheap to get off their wallets and buy what they need.

It's actually a pretty "Genius" (pun only sort of intended) way to defend the slimy consumer-adverse actions of your favorite trillion-dollar corporation without actually having to sound like a complete corporatist ghoul. Bravo.
 
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I always love the implication in comments like these that all laptop purchasers know or at least aught to know the specifications that they will need for their use case, today and in the near future. There is just a very subtle kind of victim-blaming aimed at those who perhaps relied upon the recommendation of an "expert" (or "Genius") that the base model will be fine (even if that recommendation is based on nothing more than some salesman's bad assumption of their use-case), or maybe because the purchaser simply assumed (perhaps a bit naïvely) that whatever Apple says is fine will be fine. Those that didn't buy the 16GB version, they should have known what they needed. And so they deserve to now get fleeced by Apple because they are too stupid and/or cheap to get off their wallets and buy what they need.

It's actually a pretty "Genius" (pun only sort of intended) way to defend the slimy consumer-adverse actions of your favorite trillion-dollar corporation without actually having to sound like a complete corporatist ghoul. Bravo.
You could not be farther from what my thoughts on this are. I have been an advocate for 16 GB as a minimum for years.

I was simply stating that people who bought 8 GB RAM machines are not likely to drop them now because 16 is the default. At best they would have been fine with 8 GB (my case), or at worst they won't know there is an issue (your case).

Also, anyone who depends on whatever corporate term Apple uses for their sales people or a "Genius" to purchase their next computer has my sympathies.
 
What can one say now, given that Apple has decided not to release any Macs with 8GB of RAM anymore? All those 8GB RAM Macs would feel like older, unwanted, poor relations.
Just that they're a bit older. I think the machine will be fine either way and its feelings won't be hurt :)
 
Well, OS choice is subjective. MacOS has not been objectively better than its Windows counterpart for over a decade now. Apple's SOC is impressive and may be about the only compelling reason to get a Mac nowadays. As for "build quality", only Apple fans think making something out of aluminum and sacrificing performance and cooling for something that is a half-millimeter thinner than its predecessor is a good measure of "build quality". Apple has had its share of incredibly poor build quality over the years, and there are plenty of PC manufacturers that have excellent build quality. All this put together, and I'd say you're not getting your money's worth.


Okay, there's spin doctoring, and then there's whatever that was you just typed. Yikes.
lolol idk dude Windows 11 seems to get a lot of hate, i use 10 and 11 daily for work and gaming and i hate them both. i have so many more problems with them vs macOS

i’m not trying to spin anything just playing devil’s advocate, & i do want my 16gb machines to stay relevant a bit longer :p we were a little overdue for a RAM bump, i just don’t want a return to the days of computers being obsolete in 4-5 years because base RAM has quadrupled. these machines are so capable now, the average consumer has WAY more capability than they need, many people like my parents are using them for email, Office, and surfing the web. you don’t really need 16gb of RAM for those things

what do you consider incredibly poor build quality? i cant remember ever getting something from apple with poor build quality. maybe a few flaws here and there but thats the case with every manufacturer at that scale.

i realize there are a handful of Windows machines among the pile of trash that are built pretty well, Razer makes some good hardware (although the Blade i had had issues with ghosting on the display), but you’re paying just as much as a Macbook at that point, and stuck with Windows/Linux…

show me an all in one built as well as the iMac though, or a monitor built as well as the studio display. some people are willing to pay more for a device milled from a block of aluminum, and an OS that is beautifully designed and well-integrated with the hardware
 
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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 meant all inclusive M3. So apple intelligence 2 from M4 and up. Would be ****** for me but we will see :)
 
I meant all inclusive M3. So apple intelligence 2 from M4 and up. Would be ****** for me but we will see :)
There could be some features exclusive to M4 Macs yes but I don’t think there would be a bunch on them for now… maybe in few year.
 
It couldn’t be because the M4 on TSMC’s higher yielding N3E process is cheaper than an M3 on the N3B essentially development process that has very low yields.
No that's not it. An 8GB DRAM module costs Apple $17 before volume discount. They sell that same 8GB DRAM module to us for $200. It costs Apple nothing to increase the base RAM from 8GB to 16GB. Eats into their already insane markup sure.
 
I use my Mac with yellow and red memory pressure all the time. To me, it's responsiveness that counts, and I only care about RAM when things start to slow down or get choppy. Memory pressure seems to induce so much anxiety when it goes yellow or red, but if the machine is doing its job, why worry?

For those with 8GB machines, just keep using your machine. When you find that it's getting too slow for you, then it's time to upgrade. Don't just do it because you see yellow memory pressure or sometimes red.

I'm not making the argument that 16GB isn't better. It is. And I'm pleased that Apple has finally seen fit to install it as standard because the cost of bumping 8GB to 16GB has been offensive. Apple charged way too much for that and STILL charges way too much for SSD storage.

SSD IOPS and lifespan are severely affected when constantly using SWAP
 
SSD IOPS and lifespan are severely affected when constantly using SWAP

And you just can't swap those SSDs...😊

I know the theory, but are there any documented SSD failures due to this? If there are, there aren't many and we've had Apple silicon since 2020. If what you say held true, then by now we would have seen loads of SSD failures due to all these 8GB machines being sold. I just haven't heard about an epidemic of SSDs lifespan being shortened due to excessive swap.

IMO, this was FUD generated for clicks during the early days of Apple silicon.
 
I always love the implication in comments like these that all laptop purchasers know or at least aught to know the specifications that they will need for their use case, today and in the near future. There is just a very subtle kind of victim-blaming aimed at those who perhaps relied upon the recommendation of an "expert" (or "Genius") that the base model will be fine (even if that recommendation is based on nothing more than some salesman's bad assumption of their use-case), or maybe because the purchaser simply assumed (perhaps a bit naïvely) that whatever Apple says is fine will be fine. Those that didn't buy the 16GB version, they should have known what they needed. And so they deserve to now get fleeced by Apple because they are too stupid and/or cheap to get off their wallets and buy what they need.

It's actually a pretty "Genius" (pun only sort of intended) way to defend the slimy consumer-adverse actions of your favorite trillion-dollar corporation without actually having to sound like a complete corporatist ghoul. Bravo.

Who do you blame if you buy a shirt that is either too big or too small? Or a car that ends up not being big enough to transport your weekend camping gear? You do your research and plan for what you need.

Also, PC users are not a homogeneous bunch and you can’t expect Apple to release a single model that meets the needs of both myself, a teacher, and MKBHD, who’s editing 8k video on a daily basis.

There are tons of people like myself whose needs were (and probably still are) well met with 8 gb ram. And you need more ram or a faster processor, you probably should be looking towards the pro Mac models.

I know my computing needs. They are not going to change radically in the next decade unless I change careers. 8gb ram sufficed for me and 16 gb ram will be plenty.

I don’t see the need to drag Apple into this or share anyone either. You made the wrong call. We all have at one point or another of our lives. We learn from it, and we are wiser for it.

And life goes on.
 
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As a simpleton who comes from the age of upgrading your computer to a SUPREME 768MB RAM!! "8GB is too low" is mind shattering to me
 
I know my computing needs. They are not going to change radically in the next decade unless I change careers. 8gb ram sufficed for me and 16 gb ram will be plenty.
But it's rather nice to have 16GB at the same price on a new device, especially with a significantly better Silicon chip, wouldn’t you agree?
 
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