People get so mad about this. Who cares if they offer an 8GB model? If that’s not enough for you, don’t buy it. They claim on their site in the section “How much memory is right for you?”<p>>>> 8GB: Great for browsing online, streaming movies, messaging with friends and family, editing photos and personal video, casual gaming, and running everyday productivity apps.<p>That’s not wrong. Someone only doing that stuff can get by just fine with 8GB of RAM. The only thing wrong about that is that the people who fall into that category aren’t pro, so shouldn’t they be getting some other Macbook that isn’t pro?<p>The thing we <i>should</i> be mad about are the prices. They’re charging $200 or more for each step-up in RAM. I understand that their RAM is integrated and special, but an 8GB stick of SD RAM for a PC is like $30. $100 might be understandable, but $200 is obscene.<p>The storage is even worse. Even the M3 MAX defaults to 1TB of storage. To upgrade to 4TB is $1000. A Samsung 990 Pro M2 SSD with 4TB of storage is under $300. I understand the apple storage is different, and that justifies some markup, but over a 300% markup is absurd.
I agree with the prevailing sentiment that 8 != 16 and saying it is, is kind of stupid.<p>However. An 8gb mac with Apple silicon <i>does</i> have higher subjective performance for lightweight office use than a standard 16gb windows machine. I personally would rather have an 8gb Macbook Air than a 16gb Lenovo.
Didn't someone say something about this putting more burden on SSD and possibly causing it to age more quickly as a result of additional writes required to coordinate between the two?
I know Docker isn't something Apple makes, but still, this makes me laugh. I run a fair number of containers as part of my daily workflow and the memory overhead, compared to a generic linux amd64 box running the same thing, is on the order of 10x. So for me it's actually more like, 8GB on an M machine == 1GB "regular" RAM.
I went from a 2013 MBP with 16GB of RAM to a M1 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM. The Mini does perform better, but it seems to start to slow down at about the same point in terms of my workflows. The slowdown isn't as bad (faster SSD for swap?), but there's no way is it equivalent to 32GB.
The last time I remember Apple saying "don't look at the specs" is about powerpc cpu frequency vs intel. And Apple ended up ditching powerpc for intel.
8gb does seem a little light, but the headline is misquoting what Apple said it seems, "Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems,"<p>“Analogous to” is not them saying it is equivalent. Now why are they shipping computers with such little ram in the first place? Is that still such an expensive component that they can’t stick in a more reasonable amount? It definitely seems like this is done as a way to put a lower more competitive price on something that anyone who actually needs to do “real” work on these computers will recognize they need a lot more ram than that. Easy way for them to squeeze more profit from their consumers.<p>That said, their iPhones are 6gb of ram and the pro models are 8gb, and this is not configurable. So is it enough for basic day to day tasks, running the software that comes with the Mac out of the box? The answer is clearly yes.
So what the hell is this actually supposed to mean? Is it just that macOS is better optimized than Windows? Even if we're being generous, last I checked Windows itself doesn't use anywhere close to 8GB of RAM on a 16GB system. And that's not to mention Linux.
> "<i>Borchers' claim is fair for regular use, like surfing, light image editing and the like. However, there are several professional workflows that we highlighted in our Apple Silicon Mac Pro review from just after WWDC, and will again in our M3 Max MacBook Pro review, that demand the RAM. His comments likely won't hold much water with those users.</i>"<p>... then why can't they buy more RAM?<p>"I wish Apple charged me more for more RAM by default, instead of my having to choose to pay more for more RAM" ?
This sort of thing won't convince HNers or iOS Devs or other software devs who heavily use Mac hardware but it will convince tech journalists who aren't as tech savvy as they like to think they are who will spread the 'good news' to enthusiastic Apple buyers.<p>I recall a few years ago calling out a journalist on Twitter who openly stated he was getting a 8GB machine because Apple's new innovations means it was as good as 16GB.
I think the 8GB model probably exists as much to hit a price point as anything else, but I <i>absolutely</i> noticed that memory usage on the Apple Silicon Mac I'm typing this one has been drastically better than it was on the Intel Mac it replaced.<p>Enough to claim 2:1? That seems fishy. But! I bought this machine with half the RAM of its Intel predecessor, and I haven't noticed a problem despite my ongoing tab-and-app packrat tendencies.
Yeah they integrated a chipset zipping/unzipping content when accessing RAM.<p>As in the 90's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive</a>
The capacity for shameless bullshit and reality distortion from Apple has long been documented, but I feel under Tim's it has reached new levels.<p>The absurdity of saying 8GB is the new 16GB, I mean.. What's can we say other than: no ?
Looks like you could do with less space for file buffers, but that's it. I suppose that would even come with a performance penalty. Sounds like marketing BS, aka low-effort-lies-that-you-think-you-can-get-away-with.
Maybe Apple competitors should start a campaign: "Only RAM can".<p>(paraphrasing the famous car industry’s slogan "There is no replacement for displacement")
Discussion here <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38202871">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38202871</a>