Giving up on Apple for professional applications

[Kbaegis]

I had been waiting for apple silicon with more than 32G of memory. It looks like that’s never going to happen. I no longer care what apple does with their silicon. I think I’ll just wait for Zen4.

Locking down MacOS as it merges “usability” features with ipadOS isn’t helping my decision either. Each release seems like a larger PITA for customizing simple things, removing apple bloatware, configurator 2 profile deprecations, now kext, etc.

Anyone else in the same boat? I’m curious- particularly if you manage infrastructure, cloud or devops workloads.

 

[Fred Zed]

I had been waiting for apple silicon with more than 32G of memory. It looks like that’s never going to happen. I no longer care what apple does with their silicon. I think I’ll just wait for Zen4.

Locking down MacOS as it merges “usability” features with ipadOS isn’t helping my decision either. Each release seems like a larger PITA for customizing simple things, removing apple bloatware, configurator 2 profile deprecations, now kext, etc.

Anyone else in the same boat? I’m curious- particularly if you manage infrastructure, cloud or devops workloads.

Why do you think the current M1 MacBooks are only available upto 16GB?

 

[Duckyduckbumps]

Why do you think the current M1 MacBooks are only available upto 16GB?

Apple’s new M1 computers top out at 16GB of RAM

New Arm-based Macs with the M1 chip have a 16GB RAM limit, for now

www.theverge.com

 

[Stephen.R]

I had been waiting for apple silicon with more than 32G of memory. It looks like that’s never going to happen.

This is very astute. As we all know, when the first Intel Macs were released (iMac and MacBook Pro), they supported a maximum of 2GB, and that's still the the maximum they support today. It's completely unheard of in the history of computing that a product is released and then subsequent iterations of said product feature increased capacities or functionality.

I mean, really. The idea that a successor to the SoC in the initial Arm Macs would include more memory, is simply absurd.

 

[theluggage]

I had been waiting for apple silicon with more than 32G of memory. It looks like that’s never going to happen.

You're jumping the gun a bit there. The only Apple Silicon MacsBooks released to date are the Air and the low-end (2 TB port) MacBook "Pro". The Intel models they replaced have never supported more than 16GB of RAM - a restriction which is also common of competing ultra-portable, low power laptops, and is partly a consequence of using LPDDR4 RAM, which has to be soldered in close to the CPU (no plug-in modules) and currently (I think) tops out at 8GB per chip.

When Apple replaces the higher-end MacBooks, particularly the 16", they're going to need an improved processor with more cores, a better GPU, more i/o bandwidth and support for more RAM. Currently, there's no reason to suppose that they won't deliver that: nobody is expecting those machines before this spring at the earliest and Apple said the transition would take a couple of years. In the meantime, the higher-end Intel Macs are still available, and mostly got an update last year and... if you are a "professional user" they're probably what you should be buying now.

I'm not saying that Apple are perfect, and there are plenty of good reasons why professional users might want to dump Apple, but "I can't wait any longer for Apple Silicon" only 3 months into the transition is not one of them.

Where I do agree with you is that the idea of having a major, compatibility-breaking OS release every. freaking. year. is a stupid, marketing-driven strategy. There is a reason for not having the OS cast in stone - getting rid of legacy stuff is a big part of what makes MacOS different from Windows, and things like dropping kexts will be good for security - but it doesn't have to be bundled up with a lot of cosmetic change-for-change's sake in a massive, monolithic upgrade every third quarter, and while you can choose to stick with an OS for at least 3 years, the change gets forced on you as soon as you (or a colleague) has to buy a new Mac. However, Apple Silicon is a strange peg to hang that complaint on: it is one case where a major OS overhaul is essential.

That said, go ask some Windows users about Windows updates sometime - the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence, just a different shade of brown, and you really have to jump through the hoops to avoid having Windows updates forced on you at inopportune moments.

 

[Kbaegis]

Why do you think the current M1 MacBooks are only available upto 16GB?

My understanding is that they were running out of real estate on the 5nm reticle. There’s not a ton of space for them to do more without doing additional layers on the chip. Once they start stacking vertically I think there are some quality control issues to contend with, and tons of competitors needing those same fabs.

This is very astute. As we all know, when the first Intel Macs were released (iMac and MacBook Pro), they supported a maximum of 2GB, and that's still the the maximum they support today. It's completely unheard of in the history of computing that a product is released and then subsequent iterations of said product feature increased capacities or functionality.

I mean, really. The idea that a successor to the SoC in the initial Arm Macs would include more memory, is simply absurd.

🤣 Fair. Mostly. I think apple will release, possibly, a 32G Mac and everyone will be amazed compared with what they currently offer. Specifically I’m thinking of all the marketing BS about how 16G is BETTER than 32G. I’ll obviously be wrong if and when Apple releases a mbp w/ 64G of RAM- won’t I?

You're jumping the gun a bit there. The only Apple Silicon MacsBooks released to date are the Air and the low-end (2 TB port) MacBook "Pro". The Intel models they replaced have never supported more than 16GB of RAM - a restriction which is also common of competing ultra-portable, low power laptops, and is partly a consequence of using LPDDR4 RAM, which has to be soldered in close to the CPU (no plug-in modules) and currently (I think) tops out at 8GB per chip.

When Apple replaces the higher-end MacBooks, particularly the 16", they're going to need an improved processor with more cores, a better GPU, more i/o bandwidth and support for more RAM. Currently, there's no reason to suppose that they won't deliver that: nobody is expecting those machines before this spring at the earliest and Apple said the transition would take a couple of years. In the meantime, the higher-end Intel Macs are still available, and mostly got an update last year and... if you are a "professional user" they're probably what you should be buying now.

I'm not saying that Apple are perfect, and there are plenty of good reasons why professional users might want to dump Apple, but "I can't wait any longer for Apple Silicon" only 3 months into the transition is not one of them.

Where I do agree with you is that the idea of having a major, compatibility-breaking OS release every. freaking. year. is a stupid, marketing-driven strategy. There is a reason for not having the OS cast in stone - getting rid of legacy stuff is a big part of what makes MacOS different from Windows, and things like dropping kexts will be good for security - but it doesn't have to be bundled up with a lot of cosmetic change-for-change's sake in a massive, monolithic upgrade every third quarter, and while you can choose to stick with an OS for at least 3 years, the change gets forced on you as soon as you (or a colleague) has to buy a new Mac. However, Apple Silicon is a strange peg to hang that complaint on: it is one case where a major OS overhaul is essential.

That said, go ask some Windows users about Windows updates sometime - the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence, just a different shade of brown, and you really have to jump through the hoops to avoid having Windows updates forced on you at inopportune moments.

I was really excited waiting for a mbp that would have a reasonable amount of memory for virtualization. I don’t think it’s coming anytime soon, if ever, so I’m simply not going to budget for one. I’d be happy to be wrong- I just don’t think I’m going to be. I’m tired of being perpetually disappointed and so I’m making other plans. I was mainly curious what others were doing.

Does anyone really see virtualization or containers getting better over the next year or two on this line of hardware? I don’t.

Also, there’s more than just Windows and MacOS. 😁

 

[dinobear]

The latest MacBook Pro on the apple store has up to 64GB memory and it's awesome.

You're complaining because you want to buy a 2022 MacBook Pro today and its still 2021. Next year I'm sure you'll be complaining that the 2023 lineup isnt released yet.

 

[Stephen.R]

I think apple will release, possibly, a 32G Mac and everyone will be amazed compared with what they currently offer. Specifically I’m thinking of all the marketing BS about how 16G is BETTER than 32G.

You must be new here.

Never mind Apple releasing a replacement for the current 16" with less memory support than the current model, Apple could release a hypothetical M2XPlusMax based 16" MBP tomorrow, which is both lighter, thiner, has more next-gen and legacy ports, double the battery life, brighter screen, but also Tardis-like capabilities to fit into your pocket, with a base level of 256GB of memory for $1000 and easily 30% of the people commenting will find something to complain about.

 

[dmccloud]

Where I do agree with you is that the idea of having a major, compatibility-breaking OS release every. freaking. year. is a stupid, marketing-driven strategy. There is a reason for not having the OS cast in stone - getting rid of legacy stuff is a big part of what makes MacOS different from Windows, and things like dropping kexts will be good for security - but it doesn't have to be bundled up with a lot of cosmetic change-for-change's sake in a massive, monolithic upgrade every third quarter, and while you can choose to stick with an OS for at least 3 years, the change gets forced on you as soon as you (or a colleague) has to buy a new Mac. However, Apple Silicon is a strange peg to hang that complaint on: it is one case where a major OS overhaul is essential.

Technically, Microsoft has two such updates each year (20xxH1 and 20xxH2), although they keep calling it Windows 10. Maybe they'll finally call it Windows 11 now that Apple has moved to Mac OS 11...