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Apple has a memory problem and we’re all paying for it::Apple still sells expensive “Pro” computers with just 8GB of RAM and charges a fortune for more.
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Alternate title: Apple charges fortune for underspecced machines, morons still buy them
Please tell me, as someone who has not given Apple money in over a decade, how I am paying for this.
Apple fans will say with a straight face they can’t use anything other than a Mac.
Apple fan here, and I love what they’ve done with hardware the last few years. That said…. I have to agree. Base RAM config is silly low, and higher RAM and SSD configs are stupid expensive. It’s a money maker for sure, I wish it wasn’t so obviously a cash grab. I’d be ok with a bit more padding in the base hardware price if the ram wasn’t so expensive to upgrade.
In the old days this was a moot point because you buy base config and immediately swap for after market big sticks- I did that for decades, but these days with soldered RAM and storage…. Eh, it’s a bit of a kick in the balls.
I am stoked for my new M3 next week though, good thing work pays for it!
Imagine if you had to buy it yourself. Really. Screw apple. I’m done with their blatant manipulation and control.
Apple fan here
asking for contempt? ;-)
Jealousy is more like it. MacOS is amazing.
MacOS is the worst part about Apple. Their hardware is amazing, but the software (third and first party) sucks.
How so? It’s a polished Unix desktop that runs most open-source and a bunch of proprietary apps, including Final Cut and Logic. It’s natively POSIX and has a proper shell.
It’s alright. Personal preference has me sticking with Linux, and I’ll never touch Windows with a ten foot pole if I can avoid it, but MacOS is certainly commendable.
Before I went Linux, I daily drove hackintoshes for a decade or so - back when the hardware was bad and the software was first class. Now it’s the other way around!
If Asahi ever get their kernel perfect, I’m definitely buying a modern MacBook Pro. No doubt about it.
I was watching a Twitch stream from a programmer and he said the same thing, about Apple switching from bad hardware/good software to good hardware/bad software. I do think modern macOS is so much better than modern Windows, but it’s far from where it was. Though that might just be me being nostalgic; 10.5-10.9 (Leopard to Mavericks) was my personal “golden age”.
I would argue modern MacOS is not “bad software” per se, it’s just nothing to write home about. Back in the heyday you describe, it was innovative and quite spectacular compared to the competition. Nowadays it’s rivals are better featured in many respects, but it still does everything it needs to.
I haven’t had any problems 🤷♂️
Many Linux distros support Mac devices.
For what? Or at what?
If you were asking that genuinely I’d answer. But I’m trolling you all just as much as you think you’re trolling me.
I’ve barely used MacOS, so it’s a genuine question
MacOS is extremely barebones. Almost two years ago I got a MacBook to work on a customer project. Until then I’ve only been on Linux and Windows 10. And boy was I in for a surprise. I kind of got used to it, but let me give you a few examples.
You want to tab between windows and not apps? Better pay for an app. You want to snap your windows left or right? An app. You want to control which app outputs to which audio device? You guessed it - an app. Clipboard? App. Configure mouse acceleration? An app (linear mouse).
I mean, the OS is polished and looks great. And if all you do is swoosh windows left and right in Starbucks, that’s all you need. But for anyone else it’s just sad how little it supports out of the box.
Jesus Christ it has most of those things. What are you even talking about?
PEBCAK
Can you point me at the right settings? I googled around and that’s what I found. Maybe I came up with old results which aren’t up to date?
I will answer any specific questions you want to know about macOS. You mentioned a number of things above, so what would you like assistance with?
Alight, thanks. Let’s see if I can explain this.
I couldn’t find native support for the following:
- snap windows left and right with keyboard shortcuts (Win Key + Arrows on Windows)
- set a default output device (eg speakers), but select apps (Spotify for example) should output through my USB DAC.
- I can tab between applications, but the only way to tab between all active Windows was with a third party app. It mostly works fine, but has a few quirks.
Yyyeeeeaaaaa…… those all exist within MacOS natively.
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So maybe I missed it or we are talking about the same things. Can you point me at the right thing to look for? Since you seem to be aware how these work natively.
- snapping windows by keyboard shortcuts (Win Key + Arrows on Windows)
- I want to have one output device by default (eg speakers), but select apps (Spotify for example) should output through my USB DAC.
- I can tab between applications no problem, but when I looked up how to change between windows of the same app (eg text editors), I came up with nothing. How is the shortcut called?
Cheers
Tab between windows: Alt+~
All the other stuff is available for free so why does it matter that it doesn’t come with it if 99.9% of people don’t need it?
The closing sentence of the article…
“as Apple customers, we shouldn’t stand for it”
Apple customers…
“Here’s my $200”
You missed a 0
“we’re all paying for it”
Journalism these days is fucking awful
It’s from a news organisation called “MacWorld”. What were you expecting exactly?
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Yep. I am reminded of 3.5mm audio jack being removed from phones because Tim Cook was ‘brave’.
Well I do think the high cost of expansion RAM in Apple products is tied to school shootings, gerrymandering, and the prison industrial complex.
That is in the context of “Apple customers”.
Just a thought.
If I’m being generous, it’s macworld.com speaking to an audience of Apple users.
But no, I am not paying for it. I’m over here drooling at M1 chips, but then stopping when I see the baggage that comes with it.
Ms are only worth drooling over as far as power consumption. Relatively cheap 7840u outperforms M2 in every benchmark. I9s are just in a completely different league.
I’ll wait for Snapdragon X Elite from a more reasonable company or a RISC-V chip in a Linux laptop if stars really align.
[…] we’re all paying for it
How? How am I paying for Apple’s shortcomings?
Well, every competitor to Apple used to have expandable storage on their flagship phones. Removable batteries too that were a breeze to replace if they went bad. They all copied apple, and terrible storage and glued in batteries that are hard to replace is standard now. U have to pay 100 x what a micro SD for the same amount of storage would be, and replacing a battery, while possible to do on your own now requires special knowledge and tools. If you’re building your own PC, it probably doesn’t affect your PC, but laptops have also followed suit. Glued in batteries/ hard drives are the norm, and it’s way harder to modify a shelf model laptop than it was 10 years ago. Apple is the King of enshittification. I’m so tired of companies copying them and all their greedy, customer fucking moves.
i’m still mad about the headphone jack.
Often the cheaper models from a company will have a headphone jack. Sadly the moment you go for a higher model they expect you to use wireless headphones ( cause you got money anyway right…right).
that also means that they can add the headphone jack to the more expensive ones, but they won’t because you pay more money for the device… how does that make sense?
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Yes, with the exception of Sony. All their phones have headphone jacks.
They did remove them but the outcry from customers we so bad they put them back on immediately.
I have the Xperia 10iii and love it. I use the headphone jack all the time. And the SD card of course. I couldn’t imagine using a phone with headphone jack and SD card slot.
I almost included that in the rant lol, but it was long enough
Modularity/expand-ability comes at a cost. Both monetary cost and performance cost. We used to have gpus with expandable memory but we dont anymore.
Thats because by having the memory integrated into the board, we can put it much closer to the chip, greatly increasing the bandwidth and lowering the latency. This is exactly what Apple has done with its memory and why it isnt expandable anymore. Apple’s memory is 5x+ faster than ddr5 in terms of bandwidth. Also you fully take advantage of the entirety of the available memory bus, instead of having empty lanes chilling for potential upgrades.
By having an integrated battery, you can have the battery have all kinds of wacky shapes that fill your design better.
Having a microsd slot takes a lot of space and can result into a significant degraded user experience if the user uses a slow microsd. And even a fast microsd is slower than integrated storage.
All these things are possible but they come with some sacrifices. Part of the change is because of enshittification but some changes is because they make sense.
Not sure why this user is getting down voted. They made valid points. I have been using Linux as a personal computer since the I was old enough to type, however, my job uses M1 macs. I can definitely say MacOS in terms of UX is a pain (especially without making some third party updates), but I cannot talk shit about the hardware performance.
I initially grimaced when I received a 16GB RAM M1 computer from IT, however, the battery life along with the compute power has not failed me. I run 3D CAD, write software, and design simulation models and have been honestly amazed compared to my 64GB RAM + Nvidia GPU Linux computer.
Everyone talks about Mac fanboys, but I think the anti-Mac fanboys are just as bad. Seem to automatically hate Apple stuff without even using it. If you take a look at what is going on (outside of Apple) with supercomputing and high speed serial links, you would understand why Apple is doing what it is.
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I don’t work for Apple, so I don’t really know, but I have worked at many electronics companies. A few points:
- Companies lock down or will open source IP (software/firmware/hardware) to meet a particular business strategy. In the mass product market, litigation is common for patent infringement so careful control is taken on each technology. I’m not sure I believe in opensourcing everything. Companies need to stay competitive. Behind a company is ten of thousands of employees that are being paid a livelihood (not just all developers making $250k+/yr, plenty other people in operations, quality, distribution, marketing etc)
- Apple’s strategy is to build a vertically integrated tech stack internally that is aligned with their vision. This is their brand and the people who like the company vision will buy it. You don’t have to like all their choices, but they have done the math and have figured out the proper moving average between pissing off consumers and providing value to know where they stand. They like doing things the Apple way, ensure the company can continue to make money and innovate
- You don’t have to buy the product. Just because you think the price is absurd doesn’t mean others can’t afford it. Personally, in the work I’m doing, my cheaper MacBook Air is having more value to me than my Linux computer I spent 3x more. The OP is designed for a specific type of user, it’s not meant for everyone. For work, I don’t need my computer to be opensource, I need it to work, so I can get my job done. For personal geekiness, I love the opensource nature of linux and have contributed to many projects, however, a company like Apple is definitely needed to make landmark improvements in technology. There is a reason why you go out to an Italian restaurant and get a $26 pasta dish when you can make it at home for $4.
- In your thought process, hardware is hardware. But there is also a mission that is attached with it. Apple leads in terms of mitigation of environmental impact which I think is pretty cool. It offers buybacks for most (all ?) products. I don’t know how much they actually recycle per part or if things are just getting shipped off to Zambia and being sold as refurbished. If I’m paying a little more to benefit a company that aligns with my values than so be it. They aren’t going to sell a product for a loss (unless strategically). There are too many retirement funds in Apple for it to be losing money
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My friend, my goal is not to make you upset, just giving my thoughts. Your metaphors don’t exactly make sense in this context, and some of your responses are telescopic focusing on one thing when other companies do equal, nothing or worse. If you could name a company that is exceeding your expectations, I’d love to hear it as I would support them as well.
Regardless, I hope that you have a great day.
“We” is referring to Apple customers.
Yea this is a Macworld article.
Memory is memory. Apple’s attempt at branding these machines as “different” as if they were more efficient at using that memory, is absolutely fucking stupid. These Pro machines are used for large file operations like videos, and their response is simply “guess you need to pay more”.
I feel like they’re trying to get back to the PPC days where generally available parts are not cheap. I hope plenty of cheap alternatives show up on Newegg or wherever. Fuck this bullshit.
Memory is memory
Definitely not true hardware-wise. L2 cache is different from DDR3 RAM is different from DDR4 RAM… in price and performance
Software-wise, yes, the operating system abstracts away the differences and memory is memory
Apple’s memory upgrade costs are probably 90% usual Apple bullshit pricing, 10% grounded in reality. I’m thinking that the 10% may be something like the motherboards are designed without memory upgrades in mind, so if you want more RAM, they have to use a special mobo which they prefab less of
Apple’s “memory upgrade” is making the claim that you can do with half for the same amount of work on x86. It is 100% untrue.
You tried to delve into speed. But speed won’t outpace a 1TB video file you’re trying to edit. If you’re working with smaller chunks of smaller files that have fast operations ONLY, then make claim as such. This is a ploy for upgrade cash, plain and simple. Nothing about these chips moves the needle on memory usage BY HALF. What a dumbass thing to assert as a company.
Apple’s claim isnt 100% untrue tbh. It depends on the operations actually. Arm processors have at least 12 registers to contain data or references to memory. A program does need more ram space on a x86 processor, as it only has like 4 registers afaik ( correct me if im wrong! ) so it needs to push data more often to the stack.
This means that the m* processors has to generally save less info in memory. However, data is still data and you still need memory to contain the data youre processing so you still need the ram. So like, when doing video work that apple claim is utter bullshit. Raw calculations however might not be so much bullshit
For many memory intensive operation, this is incorrect since by that logic, Apple’s chip should use far more memory due to having quarter as many registers for those purpose. (32x64 vs. 32x256)
Most processors have cache memories for reasons you stated.
Correct, cache exists for that reason. But youre still loosing time and space by saving it to memory ( cache is just faster acccess for the cpu. Its still in ram or in the pipeline to be pushed to ram on next flush ).
Also true, per thread you would need more memory to save the cpu’s state when switching threads. Now i kinda want to do some calculations and tests to see at what point it gets better.
I always figured that per thread more memory is needed, but that the thread itself needed less memory ( or time to access it ) because it can contain more temp values in the cpu’s registers.Again though, there claim is bullshit or not totally depends on the kind of work youre doing and for video work i consider it bullshit as well :')
A semi isn’t a Ford F150. That’s the end of that argument.
Memory speed doesn’t really matter if your apps start thrashing
Edit: thrashing is very likely to occur on something marketed as “pro”. I have a work PC with 8gb of RAM, and my job requires me to edit video. I need to be careful on how big my video files are, because it WILL start thrashing. This is the reality. Professional apps require a lot of memory pages, and they are never open on their own.
Edit 2: I guess the thoughts from a computer scientist are less important than corporate marketing.
Apple uses a unified memory where the memory chips are embedded on the SoC in the first place. The memory modules are on the same silicon wafer the chip is cut from, not separately on the Mobo, and shared directly with the chip in a single pool of memory that the CPU and GPU can access, rather than dedicated memory for each.
Changing the memory means cutting a different piece of silicon for it.
The SoC and memory are separate dies with different manufacturing processes. In the case of M2 it was TSMC for the SoC and SK Hynix for the memory.
When it comes time to package them together, the SoC and memory are soldered to a interposer layer. So the only difference is which size memory chips they solder together for the different memory configurations available.
That’s like building a fast car that can only go straight. It’s impressive but short-sighted and therefore stupid.
There are specific performance benefits to soldering your memory to the board or making them part of the main die itself. It’s why GPUs have been doing it for a long time, and why laptops with soldered ram can often achieve higher clocks and lower latency than their socketed counterparts. It’s a tradeoff, but a calculated one. I’m sure Apple also adds the extra revenue from absurd upgrade costs into their calculations.
Somebody has never been to a top fuel drag race. Impressive does not even begin to describe what those “fast cars that can only go straight” are capable of.
Ha ha. Most people don’t use their laptops exclusively for one single thing. I sometimes need a laptop that can go fast but more often it needs to be able to many different things. And some years later, let me swap in some more RAM and an SSD to give it another few good years.
Apple uses a unified memory where the memory chips are embedded on the SoC in the first place. The memory modules are on the same silicon wafer the chip is cut from, not separately on the Mobo
This is 100% false. All Apple Silicon Macs use standard LPDDR4X or LPDDR5 memory chips, the same as are used in other computers, which are soldered on a PCB next to the SoC. They are not on the same die. The high memory bandwidth on M1/M2/M3 comes from having a lot of memory controllers built into the SoC – it’s akin to a PC with an 8+ channel memory setup. As far as I’m aware, there’s nothing technically preventing Apple from making an Apple Silicon mac with socketed memory again, other than those sweet sweet profits for shareholders.
I mean why let them bullshit even 10% ?
“There might be some hard to find small benefit here, maybe.”
That just sounds like you want it to be true, but deep down you know it isn’t.
Shit like this is apple play book from the nineties, especially “we need less ram” and “our clock cycles are better”.
It wasn’t.
I absolutely love Apple Silicon—the performance to power ratio is wonderful, and the high-speed memory makes things like LLMs work great—but the RAM upcharge is insane, and shipping anything “Pro” with 8GB of RAM should be criminal in 2023.
I really hope that Qualcomm can make some noise with their new laptop/desktop processors. Anything to light a fire under Apple’s ass and make them stop skimping on RAM.
I cannot +1 this hard enough. There was once upon a time, back in the Darwin days, when I had my eyes on a Macbook as my next computer. Apple Silicon almost got me there again. I’m itching for a Snapdragon X Elite Oryon OMGLOLBBQ SBC, but I’m not holding my breath. I bet laptop makers snap up all the chips for 2024, and then I get one in 2025.
Which LLM are you running on your macbook?
Not an LLM, but stable diffusion runs on them… Very slowly due to extreme swap usage.
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Microsoft’s exclusivity deal with Qualcomm expires soon, so there should be more options coming around. After all this time, RISC will finally change everything (without getting into the technical details of how it did already).
Damn, even my phone got 8GB memory
My phone (pixel 6 pro) has 12gb and it’s a 2021 model. It’s outrageous a pro laptop only has 8.
My phone is a Galaxy A52 from 2021. Not even a flagship. It costed me around $500 new.
My phone (Moto G Stylus 5G 2022) costed $300 and has 8GB RAM and 256GB storage
It seemed obvious to me that they do this so that they can say the MBP costs “as low as X”, but in fact everyone needs to pay at least $200 more
I’m not paying for it, I just go to downloadmoreram.com, DUH
I don’t pay for the computer, I just go to downloadmorecomputer.biz
This is the way
RAM is boring… THE FINISH IS TITANIUM!!!
THAT’S LITERALLY OUR ENTIRE MARKETING CAMPAIGN!
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If Windows didn’t wanna make me punch my monitor at least once a month, that’d be a good deal…
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Problem: the software I primarily use under Windows are
• Photoshop • A 20 year old negative scanner software • Games
The latter is less of a problem nowadays, however, I‘d like to use HDR in supported titles and Linux HDR support wasn’t really a thing yet, last time I checked…
Same with macOS, I primarily use proprietary software that doesn’t have a Linux version, nor decent Linux alternatives
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Doesn’t solve the negative scanner and HDR issues though… The scanner has a solution, in theory, however I’m not ready to spend 100€ on scanner software for Linux, when the 20 y/o free software works just fine…
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That I‘d love to replace my Windows with Linux but QEMU is not a solution for my problems.
I am having the same feeling towards the Mac I have to use at work. That stupid piece of shit is just a usability nightmare. I’ve no idea why people insist on Apple products being simpler or more efficient to use. It’s just not true.
I guess it depends on individual preferences and experiences
To each their own, after having had the ‘pleasure’ of maintaining a fleet of Macs I’m personally quite happy with Windows these days. I’m never touching anything running MacOS ever again, that bullshit OS almost made me want to practice my frisbee skills on more than one occasion. Stability issues galore, that stupid single menubar that changes depending on which window has focus, crap like ‘sudo rm somefile’ failing with a ‘not enough disk space remaining to remove file’ error message when the disk is full, and many many other issues that were such a pita to solve. MacOS feels like having to work with one hand tied behind your back and a hammer in the other. Never again.
I mean, some of those are preference things. I like the menu bar on top because it’s easy to home in on it. It’s always up there. For every program. No searching.
I cannot complain about stability, either. I had a hackintosh running macOS on PC hardware, that was more stable than Windows on the same machine…
And I also rarely do things in the terminal besides ssh-ing into my Linux server…
I’d agree though, that Windows is easier to maintain. It’s just a pain in the ass to daily drive, because, at least in my experience, something will always refuse to work for no apparent reason, even though it’s supposed to.
We are? Pretty sure I ain’t.
Yeah, I’m not complaining either
It’s even worse when you consider there’s no dedicated video memory, so this is shared between graphics and the rest of the system.
I can’t believe that Apple would do this. It’s so not like them to cripple great machines with one horrendous bottleneck. Like could you imagine if they released an iMac in 2020 that they sold until the release of the M1 iMac that had a 1TB hard drive in it as a boot device? That’d be insane.
Hah, I just wrote a comment about how they used to ship computers back in the 90’s that had resistors in them to make them slower, so they could sell cheaper “budget” versions of their faster computer models.
This is a prime example of how capitalism “innovates”.
