8GB of RAM is perfectly usable for basic things, but on a new computer, with that price, non-upgradable… ech…
What kind of stupid world is it where 8GB of RAM is actually not enough? I’m not doing anything that fundamentally different to what I was doing 10 years ago, and back then 2GB was fine on the low end of things.
It’s like adding lanes to a highway, it doesn’t reduce traffic, it increases demand. Developers will create software that needs more ram just cause they can. So unless you want to be running office 2010 then it’s necessary.
640k should be enough for anything right?
fuck progress, eh?
goddamn this is dumb.
I too come to the internet to feel and be generally mad at random things
Not gonna lie, writing code in various ways can be more efficient processing time wise, but often at the cost of complexity, or readability or time to code it.
As phones have gotten faster, and depending on what I’m working on, I’ll often take the easier to code and read route than the absolutely best optimized route.
Although there are definitely times you still need to optimize
It’s less about individual developers writing bad code and more about whole inefficient frameworks gaining popularity because of ease of use or deployment
Are those frameworks so poorly written they can’t be optimized then? That’d have a pretty substantial impact if widely adopted.
I’d argue that’s true in some cases, for example web apps might work well enough on modern device hardware but they’ll never meet the performance of even mid-tier native apps
Ah gotcha. They’re just inherently less performant in some/many cases but that provides a benefit in some other way.
Because ram is incredibly cheap and developer hours are incredibly expensive. I think it’s a bit silly too but there’s just no financial incentive for companies to care about memory usage when they know most consumer devices have tons of extra headroom.
I like Apple. Got Apple Watch, AirPods Pro and iPhone. I love the design of MacBooks however I refuse to ever buy MacBooks.
Overpriced like crazy. For half of the price you can get a really great laptop.
I’m honestly even thinking to buy a €200 android device to get used to the system.
I’m honestly even thinking to buy a €200 android device to get used to the system.
Don’t. Unless it’s a slightly older Pixel A-series 2nd hand phone. Manufacturers of cheap Android phones skimp on everything and add bullshit crapware. Shit like that is the cause of many “Android sucks” comments.
Ohh that’s sad to hear. I was thinking to get the Samsung Galaxy A14.
They’re acceptable for basic productivity but very sluggish if you’re coming from a flagship device. Get an S10 series if you’re looking for something cheap and Samsung
The A series is great to be honest.
It’s the same as the S series, but for people who don’t play high end games or live stream or render videos or don’t need to record videos in a high quality that I can’t even replay on my other devices.
Honestly imo 200€ phones are allright, but you do get what you pay. And the A14 at least here in Germany starts at like 120€, which is substantially below 200€. So if you get it and end up comparing it to an iphone, then it most certainly will look lackluster.
I would say that the sweet spot is probably in the 300-350€ range. There you have a decent amount of selection and get some really solid phones that are good for daily drivers. Like the already mentioned pixel A series that gets you clean software and shoots some of the best pictures. Or the samsung a54/55 that gets you a nice allrounder, which still includes a headphone jack and sd-card slot.
Samsungs come with excellent Windows support right out of the box, so if Windows is you jam it’s a good choice. Not familiar with the A14, though. Would advise against cheap Chinese brands.
Windows support? What does that even mean in the context of a smartphone?
The A30 and A50 series are fine to be honest, plenty fast for most people. Not sure about the A10 line though
Don’t the new ones have shit processors?
They’re okay, nothing to write home about and also not really any better than their predecessors, but they handle day to day tasks just fine
would be a very ecological phone if it had a waste treatment facility built in
Apply phone directly to anus.
It’s weird how you draw the line at MacBooks for being overpriced, considering every other apple device you name dropped is equally overpriced.
I dunno, I’ve got a base model M1 and it feels like one of the best laptops I’ve owned. Overpriced is exactly what I feel it isn’t. $1000 for a decent laptop is not bad. Nothing below that price has a good trackpad.
Lol $1000 for “decent”
Beats the $800-1200 PC laptops that I would consider trash based on the trackpad and display. I’ve had it for years now and haven’t found myself wanting for anything but dual booting.
The best way to have a MacBook is your employer giving you one, but trust me you kinda wont want to work on regular notebooks after experiencing macbook.
I don’t have one of the ARM ones, and after using Macs for like 20+ years, I barely use the ones I have. But that 16 hour battery life and performance is really nice.
Mac OS X used to wow me in the 2000s and even 2010s; it was definitely why I used Macs. But nothing about it is all that interesting to me anymore, and in some ways it’s gotten worse.
I’m honestly even thinking to buy a €200 android device to get used to the system.
Don’t do that, I can tell you from experience: Most of them suck, especially cheap Chinese ones.
The Google Pixel 7a is currently $350 and it will get cheaper when the 8a comes out. The 7a will get security updates until May 2028. If you want to get into mobile device privacy/security, a Pixel is an excellent choice. You can install an alternative operating system called GrapheneOS, it’s a much more private and secure, improved version of Android. It doesn’t include Google spyware and thus also improves battery life. It also extends your feature updates, by default the 7a would only get feature updates until 2026, but GrapheneOS provides Android feature updates as long as the device gets security updates. That would mean 2 additional years of Android feature updates. I highly recommend it!
I agree with this. Pixel A series are pretty much the smoothest android experience for cheap. Plus they have a pretty good camera as a bonus. The low end Chinese phones and even the Samsung A series just don’t quite do it for me. I think OneUI was made for faster hardware.
Are there any other good ARM laptops?
my 3 year old phone has more RAM than that
This is nothing to brag about, when Android needs this to run smoothly, compared to the same performance of a 6 GB RAM iPhone.
Edit: Just look at benchmarks and every day use cases. How exactly has any Android smartphone ever achieved any significant speed gains by using huge amounts of RAM compared to the then-current iPhone model? I agree with the Apple criticism when it comes to computers. When it comes to efficiency of smartphones, Android just seems to have tons of overhead and has always needed significantly more RAM than iPhones while not being faster at all. Maybe we can put the „look at how edgy I am for not using Apple devices“ aside for a moment.
Android has a garbage collector, meaning it requires an additional 2GB of RAM of overhead to keep things smooth. iPhones run significantly hotter than Androids, and consume more energy to achieve their performance gains.
It’s not true to simply state “one is better than the other”. There’s various metrics in which either one may be better.
That‘s exactly what I was criticizing. So how is “more RAM = better“ as an absolute statement right, then?
Well, more RAM will always help. An iPhone with more RAM will allow it to perform better than one with less RAM. Similarly, too little RAM will hamper performance regardless of the device.
Okay. But why is it that Android phones don‘t all just have 128 GB of RAM built in, then? I‘m still talking about smartphones only. And there, RAM is completely irrelevant for users unless it‘s a necessity for the OS and for apps to run well. This is the case for Android smartphones. This is not the case for iPhones. Because everything you want to do just works, without thinking about RAM. This has been the case since the iPhone X.
But here it seems to be really hard to accept that getting an iPhone is the far superior choice for many people, also for tech savvy people. While others choose an Android smartphone and are happy with that.
And for computers: just accept that it‘s plain economy calculus to offer 8 GB RAM as standard because this will lead more buyers to choose an upgrade and pay more than the standard price, instead of accusing Apple to offer this without this plan in mind. Just don‘t buy these machines and continue your life as a superior tech being, where companies like Samsung or Dell have the sole purpose to make as little profit as possible.
jfc this is inane.
there’s this thing called multitasking, you might have heard of it. when you want to open more than one app and use them all at the same time, GUESS WHAT BRIGHT LIGHTS? Takes more memory.
This is the dumbest shit take I’ve ever seen.
I‘m talking about smartphones. Funny that you‘d call me bright lights when you even lack the basic skill of reading.
Never had any problems with „multitasking“ there since the iPhone 5.
LOL, you think people don’t multitask on smart phones and tablets?
oof… and yes, on android you can have both open on the same screen at the same time. I don’t know about fischer price unix, er, aye-aye-aye-os…
nah, didn’t misread, you’re def the sharpest tool in the spoon drawer.
Sure. I have just never encountered any problems. I used to, to be honest, as mentioned back with the iPhone 4 where Safari tabs were reloading because of the lack of RAM. But Android had its own problems back then, for example with the update policy of most manufacturers leaving my wife‘s Android phone obsolete after only one year.
What exactly do you do? Hook up your smartphone as a desktop replacement with a bulky USB dongle, firing up some CAD software on two 6K displays while rendering an 8K HDR video in the background? People never disappoint creating completely made-up scenarios just to discredit.
Never talked about tablets, so it’s reading – again!
Who let the apple marketing people in here?
I can say that it wasn‘t any of the Android edgelords or Linux neckbeards.
Some of us want to buy tools instead of toys. 4GB was great for the xbox 360 slim. Will it run anything a sane person would get a mac for? Probably not, most mac DAW I’ve used personally are hungry and 4gb is less than the machine I had my last crash filled experience on.
What most people use a Mac for could be just as well handled by a Chromebook and an Apple decal.
At least in the consumer market. Not knocking graphic artists or any other industry that prefers Apple (though I’m still really not sure why, at this point it seems to go back to things that don’t apply anymore)
I work with my Mac every day. It‘s not a toy. I chose the platform in the early 2000s because I liked the OS, the far superior app experience across many 3rd party apps and because I like to work with things I like aesthetically. I chose a 32 GB MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and paid for the upgrade. Because I could and because I wanted to (100% tax deduction helped as well). No need for pity or anything.
Zero reason why any modern computer should be less then 16gb
Honestly we’re kinda edging up to the point where I think 32gb of ram should be the minimum, especially for heavy use cases like games and production jobs.
Most heavy games do need 32GB ram. 16GB RAM will overflow to page file and we all run QLC SSDs, it’s gonna get corrupt over time being in constant writes.
i havent seen a game (without mods) that required 32gb yet, personally, but its getting close enough to go to 32gb anyway.
Now with mods? Oh boy…I’ve seem games that require 64gb or more of ram with mods.
Diablo 4 beta was totally 32GB i literally bought a ram kit from 16gb to 32gb after that experience. Cyberpunk 2077 needs over 16gb, and just that if you like to multitask, watch some YouTube or twitch with discord sharing screen and gaming with your friends during these games will need 32gb to avoid over using page file on 16gb. Maybe 24gb is enough with ddr5 kits if your lighter on multitask or don’t play the newer unoptimized games.
I play modded cyberpunk and I’ve never had an issue on 16gb. and I am also a multitasker with multiple windows and other things open and tabbing between them while gaming.
Yeah i didn’t have an issue but i noticed all my ram used and my total commit was like 31gb everyday which is a bit concerning for my write limited qlc SSD
Even then, 32GB might be cutting it a bit fine for production or professional work.
Yeah, in my work I don’t even do a lot of 3D rendering, but 64 GB main RAM and at least 8 GB GPU RAM barely manage to cut it performance wise for the GIS and CAD systems we use.
Less is more, removing features is a innovation - apple
and selling it with an extra apple logo is the newest thing.
removing features is
innovationcourage.
8 is fine for a tablet.
8 is not fine for a brand-fucking new state of the art laptop.
“With an apple silicon architecture, 8gb is like 16gb” -some stupid apple flunkey
That was just after face planting in a Scarface size pile of cocaine as is standard procedure with all apple marketing teams
The irony is that it’s arguably the opposite, since the GPU and CPU just have a shared memory pool, rather than having dedicated memory and the shared memory pool.
So if you’re watching a 4k video, you might have lost a gigabyte or two just for VRAM.
It’s because they think that people only do one thing at a time.
New feature turns off the screen to flush graphics memory so the cpu can process data.
The “touch grass” mode.
8 GB is fine for a medium-priced laptop, where you can add more or at least swap out the existing stick for a bigger one if you ever need it.
My iPad has 3GB RAM and honestly that’s enough. I don’t know what you do on your tablet, but for my everyday activities I have never felt limited
iPads don’t really multitask so it is super easy to hide the low ram with swap.
We’re talking about laptops though. I was just using tablets as a comparison point.
It’s not even enough for a tablet and apple know it, which is why the iPad Pro has 16GB of RAM
Do not take anyone that buys a mac seriously. In any way.
32GB has been my minimum laptop memory for YEARS now. My current laptop was 64GB from the factory and 2 years later I made it 128GB. Nice socketed ECC RAM. If the RAM or SSD is soldered on a laptop, I’m not buying it.
Admitted, I haven’t read all the comments. I bought a refurbished M2 Mini to use as a cheap media server last week, and so I can use AirMessage with apple users in my life. The M2 Mini is a step down in every way from my ancient mid 2012 MacBook Pro except heat and efficiency. RAM, gotta pay extra for it. Disk space, gotta pay out the ass for it too, and you can’t even get a Mini with the amount of apace I put in my mid 2012 MBP. (4TB)I want to like it, but it’s SO LIMITING without paying out the ass and getting nickel and dimed for everything. I love macOS, especially compared to the disaster that is windows 10 and 11, but it’s ridiculous and so anti consumer nowadays! Which to be fair, Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal with all their products was to make it this way. Want to backup an iPad and iPhone? Good luck. You run out of space almost immediately with the 256GB of storage. Want to use an external disk for those backups? Use symbolic links and terminal, but you’ll have to manually move them to the Mac if you ever need to restore. I have a 6tb external disk attached to it now, but I’m afraid I’m still gonna be hamstrung somehow. All my photos, time machine backups, and media are on the external for obvious reasons. I was also going to pick up a MacBook Air 15" m3 (with upgrades) from Apple, but I’m really rethinking it right now, macOS or not.
laughs in 64GB ram
this is a trap to upsell you 16 GB or sell you upgrade
for grossly inflated pricing, in proud apple tradition.
You can’t upgrade a Macbook’s ram, you need to replace the whole machine
It’s also a nice way to tax their poorest customers more. A lot of people are keeping their machines way past what apple provides updates for, if the ssd that can’t be changed dies (because of constant swapping) faster than what they intended or could keep the machine for, I guess it’s too bad for them.
It’s totally so they can list a really low “starting at” price and then upsell marked up parts in the configurator.
Disclaimer: I didn’t read the article and just came in to shit on scummy business practices that I made assumptions about.
Your assumption is based and factual
Such a weird hill to die on for Apple. How much does it really cost to just add 8GB more RAM? $5?
My guess is they’re going to sell like hotcakes to clueless parents whose kids insist their first laptop needs to be apple
This is just like the iPhone (lack of) storage and the (lack of) SD cards. Apple is trying to maximize profits by using less RAM and by forcing people into buying more hardware in a few years. Apple does a lot of stuff very well but then they also pull this crap.
Acknowledging that 8GB only delivers mediocre performance at best would upset anyone who already bought a device with only 8GB. And as later upgrades are not supported by Apple it would abandon these users like buyers of a 1st gen Apple device…
The fun think is that I don’t think apple would mind abandoning these people. Most of them would just buy a new device.
Its all on-die not on the board, so Apple gets to charge you more.
And I’m here contemplating upgrading to 32 GB…
Yup. My MacBook Pro for work has 16GB and I keep running out of RAM. I can’t fathom being limited to 8GB…
I guess it works for basic browsing and whatnot, but for any kind of professional work, you’re going to have a bad time.
I built a gaming PC for the first time since ~20 years ago. Decided to dump 64gb into it for no good reason other than ram is cheap and I figured I might as well.
8gb…jeebus.
I did the same thing. It’s one of the cheapest upgrades you can get for a PC, but Apple will charge triple the actual cost to maximize profits.
The reality distortion field is collapsing.
