Very misguided. You are being psychologically abused by marketing men and you dont even realise it.
They play on our need to feel that we are getting value by "suggesting" that they are giving you value.
Most people can't actually verify the value they are getting or the improvement because modern systems are so complex that you really have no clue. It's a placebo effect mostly.
Where are you getting the idea I'm being abused by marketing men? Exactly WHO? And the idea about " suggesting " value is not exactly it. It's much more than just giving value but manipulating the masses to get a sense of belonging as in " If you don't have x, then you're not cool ". Apple uses emotion to market their products. Oh, and by the way, the need for RAM is certainly NOT a placebo effect.
For example, everyone wants more ram. On windows machines you could put 8gb/16gb etc... Great I have more ram. But how much of that is accessible? Even with a 64bit OS lots of programs are still really 32bit and can only access 4gb theoretically (3.5gb in windows I think). There are plugins for things like photoshop, logic or cubase which only work in 32bit mode so even if you wanted to use the 64bit versions of these apps you couldn't use the plugins so it would be useless.
So at the end of the day, someone may have sold you on having more ram and you think you have added value but you dont really. Depending on what your using. Now if you have 3d studio max and your rendering stuff then yeah, the ram comes in handy. But for ableton live, maybe not.
I'm a professional digital artist and use Photoshop along with other application on my desktop. Of course, it hasn't completely reached 64 bit on my system. I'm running on 6 GB of RAM and plan on bumping it to 8 or 12 GB so it'll run smoothly. There's a reason we need RAM on our desktops and it's because OS X takes up a lot of memory ( not just storage ) to operate daily, ON TOP of other applications to multi-task. Now if you're talking about video editing or doing work on actual film production, then the desktop RAM needs to be maxed out along with a RAID storage or bigger to handle the clips and other effects. Even 3-D modeling, as well.
So when I want to buy a computer, believe me, RAM is the #1 priority along with graphics card, storage and expandability. Gleaning this information allows me to know that the system is 'future proof' for several years. It's Apple's responsibility to provide the information on their machines.
But marketing guys know you get juiced on the suggestion that the extra ram, or the 64 bit thing gets you to buy things so they push that to you. That's the whole problem with spec wars and letting users know the numbers. Often users cant really verify the value of these numbers. They just think they can.
You could bring the same issue to the mega pixel battle with cameras (do more pixels mean better pictures ?), Bhp with car engines (what about the body design etc...). The list goes on and on.
Again, which marketing guys? I can verify the value of the RAM because I know EXACTLY where to look up. Speaking of mega pixels, they increase the resolution size and add more color/detail to the images but that also means a bigger file size. So, the more MPs, the sharper and detailed the photograph will be. The image quality will be very good when you shoot the photo, but it won't come close to the level of an SLR camera. Even if you tried shooting RAW, or TIFF, that one image size in that format would eat up a lot of storage. JPEGs, on the other hand, are not that bad to deal with.
Yes, the average may not give a crap about MPs because they want a 'basic' looking photograph. But a true prosumer/professional, they'll demand better performance. I think it lies in a proper camera lens to capture detail from the vantage point of view and further out. For example, if I tried to shoot an image of a giant full moon, it'll look small on the camera, even if I tried to zoom in, it still would not show the actual details of it.
It's all because of the lens in the phone which is why it cannot go toe to toe with a professional SLR ( or D-SLR ) camera for this reason. Pro cameras have depth and reach, the camera-phones don't have. I should know because I tried it on the last three iPhone models. Same result. No zoomed up details which comes out blurry, despite the IS ( image stabilization built in ).
It's great when you shoot the camera in normal or close up range. It works fine. But depth and range? That's not the experience I had.
And as for cars, people look for one that consumes less gas with stable or better performance. Body design is important since when industrial design is concerned, it allows the car to travel without much torque or wind resistance, to my understanding. I never studied Industrial Design, but I know a few friends who have back in art school years ago. The stuff I've seen there was light years ahead of that time as they studied under different disciplines from car and product design and it's a very specialized field. And from what I've heard, it's better to be a specialist in one thing than try to be a " jack of all trades ".
To give historical context, when the mac was struggling against the pc part of the problem was intel was always bumping up power and power pc's were not keeping up. But many of us who used mac's knew that there was more to it the just the clock speed of the processor. Even now people dont get that the OS and it's design is the key reason to use a Mac and it's not just another pc. But Apple has a hard time selling that to the public because the marketing men had convinced the world that those numbers matter. (Until clock speed stopped going up and they had to figure out another way to market to people...).
The reality is that all a user should really be concerned with is that something works the way they want it to. It's your vendors responsibility to provide that to you. The detail shouldn't matter. The best thing for the industry will be to move away from using numbers to sell things. Quality is not just about raw numbers. Spec's in 2015 are really just marketing for people who think they know what's going on, but really dont.
The problem with that is when computers in the 80s were becoming graphically intensive with a new GUI, RAM was starting to play an important role. Before that, it was all in parse command or code, in the days of the Apple II, Commodore 64/128 ( I'm old enough to remember playing with these ), Atari ST, Amiga ( awesome machines ), etc. When operating systems in both platforms ( Mac and PC ) started to get more advanced, they became more RAM hungry.
Remember Zork? I was there when it came out. One of the greatest games of all time. It didn't need any graphics but just plainly a text adventure game that even an iPhone could handle quite easily. But make Zork a fully featured 3D adventure and that's a different story. All that graphics rendering and processing requires RAM and a good graphics card.
Or how about Skyfox from Electronic Arts? A classic for the Commodore 64. A user had to load the game via a floppy drive ( the 1571 drive ) for about 5 minutes or so until it came on. Actually, you had to insert disk and then type LOAD "$",8,1 and then type RUN, or some programs loaded automatically.
Even Archon. I still have the package art from the 80s in my hands. This game was genius and a masterpiece. Didn't take up a lot of memory but it had to be loaded first into the RAM for it to be operated. Once you turned off the computer, the game is gone and wiped out until you loaded it again. That was the limit of memory computers had at the time. Today, it's all stored locally or off the grid/externally.
The point is that with iPad Pro, as an example and despite the claims of it having 4 GB of RAM, it needs to be hybridized in order for a professional user to not only take a native file with them on the go, but also the native application to continue working on AWAY from the desktop platform. It's one reason why Surface 3 ( or Pro ) has a huge advantage in allowing the person to take the full featured Photoshop with them. I know Apple is definitely holding back on purpose.
Apple should NOT be hiding certain specifications. What you're doing is defending what Apple is propagating.
Yes, the Pages/Keynote programs on iOS are clean and easy to work with but lacks the depth that MS Word has. Even the older Keynote was excellent and easy to work with but it's gotten crippled via simplistic design. They don't take up too much RAM, but when you start putting in a complex or image intensive layout in Pages/Keynote, then that's where you need to be careful. The file size starts to get bigger and the RAM has to operate the OS, the application and the file all in the same time, among other things.
Because if the file size and application gets to the edge of the RAM's ceiling limit, the system is going to go to a slow crawl either to crash or close out. It's one reason why the iPhone RAM has been gimped from the start. iOS is graphically intensive and that zooming feature, for instance, definitely takes up battery and memory to do it. That's why I have that turned off.
Specs are for those who KNOW exactly what they're looking for. The same way when I buy software, I need to know the system requirements and app features for it to work properly. Or when I buy food, I need to know what's in the ingredients. Would you buy a car without knowing what's under the hood? Would it be right for a car manufacturer to hide certain flaws or defects from you?
You should ask yourself: WHY did Apple GAG Adobe on the 4 GB RAM information?
They bring Adobe on stage and then gag them afterwards. What's wrong with the picture? Apple should've been transparent about that in the first place. But they continue to harp on " Experience this, experience that. Oh look how beautiful it is. bla bla bla ". They're selling the 'emotional experience' but not the logistics of it.
They depend on ' eye candy ' to sell by ignoring or not mentioning a few things.
So if the user experience has to be smooth and flawless, then RAM has to play an important role to ensure nothing crashes or slows down in the process. Saying it's about the " user experience " is subjective. It's the specs that determine how the user interface operates. People get confused between the difference on UX ( user experience ) and UI ( user interface ). They're both similar but not the same thing.
It's NOT about how beautiful or buttery smooth the OS looks, but how it runs under the hood.