Why do all these new 2020 Macs only have 8gb ram?

[Queen6]

The Mac was release January 24, 1984 (128k Mac). Almost 39 years ago. The best time for games was mid 1997 thru 2013 IMHO. You can blame Apple for becoming less Mac game friendly because everything starting turning to being so iPhone focused. It's only recently that this last platform transition to ARM has started to make us rethink what a Mac is capable of. Example a M1 MBA.

You just have to be realistic if Apple today wants to get into gaming outside of mobile it will launch a new device with a new revenue stream. ARM certainly opens some doors, but not many, if anything it closes more in 2022. At least now the cooling is in check, the Intel based notebooks were hapless instantly throttling...

If you're into older games have a look a Mac Source Ports as they all run natively on Apple Silicon

Game has never looked better I tend to drop the brightness to match as close as possible to the original Doom 3 as I like the horror aspect. RBDOOM-3-BFG (source port) vastly improves immersion due to a complete overhaul of the games lighting systems.

Has to be said, your best to utilise likes of Macs Fan Control to alter the fan curve to be more aggressive to better manage the temp. This source port can push hard and the 13" M1 delivers with just short of 60 FPS on max settings at full resolution.

Dev is serious and well on the way and he's 10 years in;
"RBDOOM-3-BFG is based on DOOM-3-BFG and the goal of this port is to bring DOOM-3-BFG up to latest technology in 2021 making it closer to Doom 2016 while still remaining a DOOM 3 port regarding the gameplay."

This source port really illustrates the insane amount of detail ID Software put into the game is so much better and so much more immersive...

n.b. This is not a crack or pirate site you need to own the games and be able to move the game data to the new source port ARM or Intel 64-bit game engine. My D3 BFG was from GOG on Windows, my original D3 was the old Mac release from Apple which equally runs well on Apple Silicon with a differing source port game engine (dhewm3).

Q-6

 

[Botts85]

oh come on. We have like 3 new games. Where is Persona 5 Royale? Hogwats Legacy? Forza?

If Apple was actually interested in gaming we would have a M2 handheld...

Platform exclusivity is always going to be an issue. Like is Forza even available on anything not Microsoft owned?

macOS has a market share issue for game developers. If Apple really wanted to embrace gaming, the easiest way would probably to be getting Proton running on macOS.

Same here I've owned seemingly higher spec Mac's and the base 13" M1 destroys them all. Why did I opt for the base model? in stock, on hand and I wasn't sold on Apple Silicon at the time and I want active cooling. Was I in for a surprise and the cream saved a bunch of $$$.

Yes the 2016 chassis has its issues, port solution & Touchbar, but man this notebook is absolutely the Energiser Bunny it runs & runs like nothing else I've ever experienced and that is the key factor with a notebook. I used to be impressed with my Acer i3 Switch 5 as it could hit a genuine 10 hour workload, the M1 MBP near doubles that with the performance of a much faster processor.

Q-6

I'm going to sell my iMac and 13" M1 MBP to buy a refurbished 14" Pro, and I'm going to really miss the Touch Bar. I didn't like it at first, but after adding Expose and the keys I use most, I fell in love with it.

Add in the quick color-changing buttons to mute/unmute Zoom/Teams and it's perfect. I'll also really miss the ability to press the touchbar to switch between displays on a Mac connected through Screen Sharing.

 

[Queen6]

I'm going to sell my iMac and 13" M1 MBP to buy a refurbished 14" Pro, and I'm going to really miss the Touch Bar. I didn't like it at first, but after adding Expose and the keys I use most, I fell in love with it.

Add in the quick color-changing buttons to mute/unmute Zoom/Teams and it's perfect. I'll also really miss the ability to press the touchbar to switch between displays on a Mac connected through Screen Sharing.

Touchbar is a needless complication it's breaking some peoples Mac's as they need to update two OS far more chance to go wrong. My own 13" I update annually at best as Apple don't see it as an issue until a Court of Law tells them it is which is the norm...

I think Apple did more with the concept than others, but goodbye to bad rubbish. My own M1 GUI is set up so I can manage the computer effectively. If Apple released user data I'd be surprised if I used the Touchbar more than 10 times a year, I basically ignore it. People don't want it, don't need it hence why its depreciated. A bad idea by smart people acting stupidly with no balls to apologise...

Apple generally produces a good product, but they need to knock off the greed and have some humility with their failures. 2016 to 2019 portable Mac's were just a joke. Literally forced me to W10. The Mac's had great specs on paper but very lacklustre performance in the real world.

Thankfully J-Ive is gone and now we have portable Mac's with adequate port solutions & thermal headroom for several generations of the SOC.

Q-6

 

[exoticSpice]

Platform exclusivity is always going to be an issue. Like is Forza even available on anything not Microsoft owned?

macOS has a market share issue for game developers. If Apple really wanted to embrace gaming, the easiest way would probably to be getting Proton running on macOS.


I'm going to sell my iMac and 13" M1 MBP to buy a refurbished 14" Pro, and I'm going to really miss the Touch Bar. I didn't like it at first, but after adding Expose and the keys I use most, I fell in love with it.

Add in the quick color-changing buttons to mute/unmute Zoom/Teams and it's perfect. I'll also really miss the ability to press the touchbar to switch between displays on a Mac connected through Screen Sharing.

Yes Forza is on Steam, Microsoft Store and Xbox.

But you can play it on Steam Deck via Steam.

 

[Ethosik]

oh come on. We have like 3 new games. Where is Persona 5 Royale? Hogwats Legacy? Forza?

If Apple was actually interested in gaming we would have a M2 handheld...

How long did it take Windows to get Persona 5 Royal (hint og Persona 5 was on PS3 and I played it)? And how popular is Windows for gaming again?

 

[Ethosik]

macOS has a market share issue for game developers. If Apple really wanted to embrace gaming, the easiest way would probably to be getting Proton running on macOS.

As a developer, this is the main issue - marketshare. As a gamer, even if macOS suddenly got the marketshare it needed, it would still take a decade. I am still playing ~2006 games on my Windows gaming PC. Until my 500 game library on Steam is on mac, no amount of work Apple could do would get me to transition over.

 

[exoticSpice]

How long did it take Windows to get Persona 5 Royal (hint og Persona 5 was on PS3 and I played it)? And how popular is Windows for gaming again?

Sony had exclusive rights

 

[StoneJack]

They have 8GB because it is sufficient for most computing tasks on M2

 

[mrk123]

Agreed, but it's just as likely, if not more so, that the updated 64 bit version will be a subscription. Since Op's doing photography on a 2011 MacBook pro laptop it wouldn't surprise me that he's using Adobe CS4. CS4 will only work on an Intel Mac running Mojave or earlier. Catalina or newer and he'll need to run a VM of a Mac OS that runs 32 bit apps to avoid moving to Adobe's subscription service.

With newer Macs you can’t used cracked software as easily? What’s the scope here??

 

[StoneJack]

As a developer, this is the main issue - marketshare. As a gamer, even if macOS suddenly got the marketshare it needed, it would still take a decade. I am still playing ~2006 games on my Windows gaming PC. Until my 500 game library on Steam is on mac, no amount of work Apple could do would get me to transition over.

there is no need to move all those 500 games to Mac. iOS, iPad OS and M architecture are already one of leading game markets in terms of number of users. Granted, it is not enough for AAA titles, but the main thing is that iOS game companies make money and that's what matters.

 

[Arctic Moose]

With newer Macs you can’t used cracked software as easily? What’s the scope here??

Newer Macs still let you run whatever you want if you set them up to do so.

However, you will not be able to run binaries that the system has no support for, or that rely on removed APIs, at least not without some sort of emulation or virtualization.

 

[salamanderjuice]

Yes AS = Apple Silicon such as M1, M1 Pro/Max/Ultra, M2.
The memory bandwidth is so much faster then what you got. It's like night and day difference speed wise. I think a 2011 was using a 479Mb/s SATA SSD thats a lot slower. Usually you be lucky to see half that speed running a speed test. My M1 24" iMac is close to 3000 Mb/s read/write via BlackMountain Disk speed test(remember tests are 1/2 speed typically). So thats 12 times faster on the slowest AS Mac SoC (M1). This is why you can launch 20 application at once on a AS Mac, and not see it totally bring an intel Mac from 2011/2012 to its knees trying to do the same things from the dock.

The last Intel Macs had 3000 Mb/s drives too. Any modern PC with a decent PCIE3+ drive will too. I'm hard pressed to notice the difference between a SATA SSD and an NVME one even on the same hardware. Spinning rust is a different story.

OP if you care about upgrading down the line or at all just get a PC that can be. Unfortunately not all PC laptops can be these days so you do have to do some research before you buy.

The last MacBook Pro you can upgrade the RAM/SSD is the non-retina 2012s. The last MacBook Pro you can upgrade the SSD (with an adapter to the standard M.2) are the 2015s. After that it's all soldered. The crappy "2017" (really a refreshed 2015) non-retina MBA can also take an SSD upgrade.

On the desktop side it's slightly better. You can upgrade the current Mac Pro but that costs way too much IMO.

 

[stradify]

With newer Macs you can’t used cracked software as easily? What’s the scope here??

Not sure what you're referring to with 'cracked software'. 32 bit software won't run on Mac OS's starting with Catalina. Mac OS's capable of running 32 bit apps will only run in a virtual machine with Intel inside.

 

[Alex Cai]

Eh?

I’ve upgraded my current 2011 to 16gb and trying to add in an ssd now.

I just wanted to know can these newer models be easily upgraded.
Can I add in a 1tb drive and 16gb or 32gb of ram easily?

It looks like the ram is a part of the M1 soc , and the ssd is not changeable.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

RAM and SSD are soldered in and cannot be upgraded.

You may have a hard time accepting this but most people never upgrade their computers. Apple has noticed this and for reasons of security, performance, manufacturing ease, durability, and profit have decided that RAM and storage are no longer upgradeable. This has been the case for several years, even back into the Intel Mac era but will probably be a surprise to someone coming from a 2011. Sorry.

It ain't for manufacturing ease it's for control, plain and simple. Upgradability means less people buying new machines. Same reason they try to sabotage repairing efforts.

 

[kastorff]

iCloud Drive is a great equalizer in terms of storage if you live in the Apple ecosystem. Admittedly my laptop requirements are nothing like my pre retirement days, but I’m perfectly fine with the M2 Air.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

iCloud Drive is a great equalizer in terms of storage if you live in the Apple ecosystem. Admittedly my laptop requirements are nothing like my pre retirement days, but I’m perfectly fine with the M2 Air.

You didn't just suggest iCloud Drive after all the privacy issues and data breaches happening with it did you? 💀🗿

 

[kastorff]

You didn't just suggest iCloud Drive after all the privacy issues and data breaches happening with it did you? 💀🗿

Feel free to make your own choices. Nothing accessed via the internet is safe.

 

[maxoakland]

No they can't be upgraded easily. There is an entire group of people who don't even know, let alone care to know, what these numbers mean. There is also a subset of people who just use a computer for documents, web browsing and email. Their photo collections aren't that big.

Why are people who have less money expected to also be people who don’t know enough about computers to upgrade them? It’s pretty classist if you think about it

 

[Ethosik]

Why are people who have less money expected to also be people who don’t know enough about computers to upgrade them? It’s pretty classist if you think about it

I don’t upgrade my systems. By the time I do, a new CPU, Motherboard, different type of RAM, etc are more worth it than bumping up the RAM. I fell into that trap with my 2010 Mac Pro. Still a great system and I still have it in my workflow, but it’s missing a lot of tech. 8GB of RAM in 2010 is far different than 8 GB of RAM today.

Also, I never work on internal drives. Thank a Windows crash and the Snow Leopard bug that deleted all my files. Only temporary data in on my internal drive (apps too of course). I do all my work on external drives so I never upgrade my storage either.

I built my 2019 Windows computer. I only just finished due to the 30 series GPU issues the last couple years. I will not upgrade this system. Like I said, by the time I do I need newer components anyway.

So while I have the skills and knowledge, even I don’t upgrade after the fact.

 

[Botts85]

As a developer, this is the main issue - marketshare. As a gamer, even if macOS suddenly got the marketshare it needed, it would still take a decade. I am still playing ~2006 games on my Windows gaming PC. Until my 500 game library on Steam is on mac, no amount of work Apple could do would get me to transition over.

Market share is key. But with regards to vintage games, getting Proton working on macOS would be huge. With that we could probably play much of our old libraries. The oldest game I regularly play is 2000's Red Alert 2.

However, getting Proton running on macOS is non-trivial since it's built around common linux distort APIs and features like modern OpenGL, eventfd, Vulkan, etc.

Newer Macs still let you run whatever you want if you set them up to do so.

However, you will not be able to run binaries that the system has no support for, or that rely on removed APIs, at least not without some sort of emulation or virtualization.

Yup, for most things holding control when opening will allow them to run. You can also disable SIP if desired.

It ain't for manufacturing ease it's for control, plain and simple. Upgradability means less people buying new machines. Same reason they try to sabotage repairing efforts.

It isn't even just for manufacturing ease. We're running into physics limits with off-package memory especially with DDR5 which is why we're seeing solutions like Dell's CAMM. Then there's the whole form factor debate. Could you even squeeze a SODIMM height wise into a M2 MacBook Air?

iCloud Drive is a great equalizer in terms of storage if you live in the Apple ecosystem. Admittedly my laptop requirements are nothing like my pre retirement days, but I’m perfectly fine with the M2 Air.

100%. I've got 380GB in iCloud Drive and that's allowed me to drop to 512GB storage in my Macs.

I don’t upgrade my systems. By the time I do, a new CPU, Motherboard, different type of RAM, etc are more worth it than bumping up the RAM. I fell into that trap with my 2010 Mac Pro. Still a great system and I still have it in my workflow, but it’s missing a lot of tech. 8GB of RAM in 2010 is far different than 8 GB of RAM today.

This is exactly it. I benefitted from upgrading my 5,1 to two X5675s (bought used long after the Mac was vintage) and an RX580, but even then, me keeping the 5,1 that long was a passion project and made no sense from a speed or cost perspective. The second the i9 iMac got released I upgraded to it. The iMac smoked the Mac Pro on single core speed, multicore speed, and demolished it on memory speed.

I'm selling my 13" M1 MBP and i9 iMac to move to a 14" MBP. I had debated going with an M1 MAX with 32 GPU cores, but that would be $750 more than a 16GB M1 Pro with 16 GPU cores. True, it'll be slower, but that $750 allows me to upgrade a year or two earlier to a much faster Mac.

For most home users, buying the base or mid-level model then selling it every 2-3 years and upgrading will be cheaper than buying the CTO top-end unit and keeping it for 4-6 years. The base model purchased in year 3 will also outperform the original CTO in years 4-6.

 

[HiVolt]

For those who need lots of storage, well there's a gentle upsell available just for you. If you know what RAM and storage is, then you already know what you have to buy.

Haha, by gentle you mean like a prostate exam without anesthesia?

Apple has obscene prices on storage & memory upgrades, and their actual costs for those parts are pennies on the dollar, because they don't even buy ram or SSD modules on PCB's like they used to, now its just bare chips soldered on the motherboard, so the production process is cheap.

8GB ram was made standard a long time ago, its time for a bump.

The OP has a good point. the base model machines are a joke in terms of specs in 2022. It should be minimum 512gb SSD and 16GB ram for these things to be usable into the future without being tossed into a landfill because they can't be upgraded.

 

[mrk123]

Haha, by gentle you mean like a prostate exam without anesthesia?

Apple has obscene prices on storage & memory upgrades, and their actual costs for those parts are pennies on the dollar, because they don't even buy ram or SSD modules on PCB's like they used to, now its just bare chips soldered on the motherboard, so the production process is cheap.

8GB ram was made standard a long time ago, its time for a bump.

The OP has a good point. the base model machines are a joke in terms of specs in 2022. It should be minimum 512gb SSD and 16GB ram for these things to be usable into the future without being tossed into a landfill because they can't be upgraded.

Are there no side alley indi repair stores who can just unsolder and solder back in or is it not that simple?

To my knowledge and limited experience I’d I made a mistake soldering wires I only had to apply the solder gun to unstick 😂🫣

 

[KurtMann]

I'm just rehashing points already made: nobody has any idea about your computing needs but you. I find it extremely unlikely that you will be disappointed with the performance of a M2Air if you are rocking a 2011 machine today, but whatever floats your boat. If you like modularity, you are not going to get it on a new Macbook ever.

When my father's 7 year old Mac was going to be replaced I saw that he had used about 50 of his 512gb (bought on my advice), so now I forced him to "downgrade" to 256gb. He will never hit that ceiling. I have 1tb on my main machine. Different folks, different strokes.

 

[ZebedeeG]

Simple answer would seem to be that they only have 8gb memory as standard as they manage it so well that for many (perhaps most) people it's plenty...

My my 2015 iMac was stuttering and beach balling like crazy until I upgraded it from 8gb to 24gb.

Last year I bought myself a new M1 iMac with 16gb memory & 2tb storage, which works like a dream and very very rarely needs to use swap. (I was concerned coming down from 24gb)

A couple of months ago I bought a base M1 Air for when I'm out and about (8gb memory, 256 SSD, 7 core graphics), and honestly I can't tell the difference in performance between it and my desktop. Sure it swaps like crazy (frequently up to 2gb), but runs smooth as butter and never beachballs. iCloud handles what won't fit on the disk, most of which I frankly don't need that often.

My lower spec M1 is so good that I sometimes wonder if I need have bothered paying extra for my higher spec desktop.

(I usually run with apps open on 6 - 8 desktops and roughly 70 tabs in Safari and a few in Firefox & Chrome.)