Apple is allowed to do what they want. But I don't think 8GBx256GB is acceptable in 2023 (I thought they should have bumped the flash at least to 512 last year) and it gets less acceptable every year that passes. As I said above, 8GBx256GB limits the future growth of the use of the machine. It can be used for basic tasks and can never grow beyond that. If that's the kind of machine Apple wants to sell why bother? They should aspire to more. They should aspire to offering products that set the standard that the PC industry should struggle to match. They shouldn't be content to sell a product that requires so many qualifications.
Not everybody uses their laptops for Lightroom and Final Cut Pro. We have to stop obsessing over specs and start looking at what people are actually doing on their computers and then work backwards from there. The reality is that the majority of users do use their devices for "basic" tasks. In my case, mostly google docs, web browsing, apps, office docs. I have also played Diablo 3 on it. 8gb of ram is more than enough for me, and I still have 140gb of available space on my 256gb M1 MBA.
I use office to set exam papers. I plan relief for absent teachers in google docs. I extract YouTube videos using some app called 4Kvideodownloader, plan my schedule with the calendar app, manage my mail, review my teaching material through PDF expert and notability, while debating with people on Macrumours in Safari, just to name a few tasks.
8 gb of ram was enough for me in 2020, it's enough for me now in 2023, and it will likely still be enough for me 2-3 years later when I finally decide to upgrade it.
I also have a windows laptop with 16gb ram issued to me by my school. The performance between it and my M1 MBA is like day and night. For example, I can zoom for hours away from a power point and my MBA stays cool to the touch. That's a standard right there that the PC industry struggles to match, even 3 years later, because Intel is not able to provide the same marriage of performance and power efficiency that Apple chose to focus on.
This is not something that may be readily apparent if you are just comparing spec for spec, and maybe that's the whole problem here. In a sense, it's highly reminiscent of back when android users laughed at iPhone processors for having less ram and cores, until they realised that more cores was actually a liability because it consumed more power and throttled more often, resulting in slower performance compared to Apple's A-series chips.
The problem here is that there is too much focus on specs and not enough on the user experience. If all people see is "Hmm, every other windows laptop has 16gb ram while the entry level Macbook has only 8, so I don't think whatever Apple is doing is going to work", then I think they go down the wrong path.
