There were a number of exciting announcements from Apple at WWDC 2024, from macOS Sequoia to Apple Intelligence. However, a subtle addition to Xcode 16 — the development environment for Apple platforms, like iOS and macOS — is a feature called Predictive Code Completion. Unfortunately, if you bought into Apple’s claim that 8GB of unified memory was enough for base-model Apple silicon Macs, you won’t be able to use it. There’s a memory requirement for Predictive Code Completion in Xcode 16, and it’s the closest thing we’ll get from Apple to an admission that 8GB of memory isn’t really enough for a new Mac in 2024.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        4 months ago

        No AVR, it’s a small LPC from NXP. Chosen for the price, of course, but I have to somehow squeeze the software in it. At this point, even 8k would make me happy…

        • uis@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          NXP, fancy. I expected ST, AVR, nRF, WCH or some chinese cheaptroller.

          Why them? Something to do with NFC?

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        4 months ago

        Yes. 2 kilobytes. Coincidentally, this is as big as the displays internal buffer, so I cannot even keep a shadow copy of it in my RAM for the GUI.

              • Treczoks@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                4 months ago

                I never said anything about framebuffers. The 256x64 pixel display in 16 brightness levels probably has something comparable inside. I just tell it that i want to update a rectangle, and send it some data for that.

                • uis@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  It should have.

                  Then, if you don’t store contents of entire screen in memory, which simple math says you can’t, I was partially wrong(depending on if you don’t count buffer in display as framebuffer) when interpreted “shadow copy” as backbuffer.

    • Fishbone@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      This is my biggest lament about getting a 2060 without knowing how important vram is. I can make it perform better and more efficiently a bunch of different ways, but to my knowledge, I can’t get around the 6GB vram wall.

  • resetbypeer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    79
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    4 months ago

    Opens chrome on a 8GB Mac. Sees lifespan of SSD being reduced by 50%. After 2-3 years of heavy usage SSD starts to get errors. Apple solution: buy a new one. No wonder they are 2nd/3rd wealthiest company on the planet.

    • otp@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      25
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      buy a new one.

      Buy a new SSD and swap out the old one?

      …buy a new SSD, right??

        • Dojan@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          4 months ago

          Well they do charge particularly hard for SSDs as well. They’ve found a way to eat the cake twice.

      • WereCat@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        4 months ago

        SSD is soldered to the board. With only 8GB you’ll be using the swap partiton a lot so for anything exceeding 8GB of RAM you will be using the SSD as a slower “RAM” which will wear it’s lifespan down by constantly writing/reading into it’ s swap partition.

        • maxinstuff@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          13
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          “tHATs nOT tRuE the aRCHiteCTuRe iS cOmPlETlY dIffErEnT!!!1!11!!ONEONE!!!” <— Apple fanboys when this was predicted on launch of the M1 🤖

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            4 months ago

            No you don’t understand the architecture is different and so the laws of physics don’t apply. Constantly energizing and de-energizing capacitors can only increase life expectancy, everyone knows that.

      • vingetcxly@thelemmy.club
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        4 months ago

        Nah ur nat doin that with apple. Cmon just buy a new PC! Wa don car abt the env! Who cares anyway! Cmon not that expensive

  • _number8_@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    91
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    4 months ago

    imagine showing this post to someone in 1995

    shit has gotten too bloated these days. i mean even in my head 8GB still sounds like ‘a lot’ of RAM and 16GB feels extravagant

    • Bjornir@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      4 months ago

      I have a VPS that uses 1GB of RAM, it has 6-7 apps running in docker containers which isn’t the most ram efficient method of running apps.

      A light OS really helps, plus the most used app that uses a lot of RAM actually reduce their consumption if needed, but use more when memory is free, the web browser. On one computer I have chrome running with some hundreds of MB used, instead of the usual GBs because RAM is running out.

      So it appears that memory is full,but you can actually have a bit more memory available that is “hidden”

      • derpgon@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        4 months ago

        Same here. When idle, the apps basically consume nothing. If they are just a webserver that calls to some PHP script, it basically takes no RAM at all when idle, and some RAM when actually used.

        Websites and phone apps are such an unoptimized pieces if garbage that they are the sole reason for high RAM requirements. Also lots of background bloatware.

      • Specal@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        This is resource reservation, it happens at an OS level. If chrome is using what appears to be alot of ram, it will be freed up once either the OS or another application requires it.

        It just exists so that an application knows that if it needs that resource it can use X amount for now.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      4 months ago

      You just have to watch your favorite tablet get slower year after year to understand that a lot of this is artificial. They could make applications that don’t need those resources but would never do so.

    • Shadywack@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      We measure success by how many GB’s we have consumed when the only keys depressed from power on to desktop is our password. This shit right here is the real issue.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      4 months ago

      You can always switch to a text based terminal and free up your memory. Just don’t compain that YouTube doesn’t play 4K videos anymore.

        • Aux@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          4 months ago

          MPV doesn’t work in terminal (well, technically it does, but what’s the point of 4K HDR video in ASCII mode?). Please don’t confuse terminal emulator in GUI mode with a real text mode terminal.

          • DefederateLemmyMl@feddit.nl
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            4 months ago

            The point is that your example use case of “YouTube 4k videos” doesn’t need a browser full of bloated js garbage.

            • Aux@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              4 months ago

              The point is that MPV will use shitloads of memory too.

              • DefederateLemmyMl@feddit.nl
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                4 months ago

                Actually lot less than the browser. Under 300MB, I just checked, and that’s mostly just the network buffer which is 150MB by default.

                • Aux@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  That’s about what my Slack is using, while being written in Electron, lol. Oh, you people…

          • uis@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            4 months ago

            KMSDRM is in terminal enough for me. Fbcon too.

            EDIT: obviously not dummy terminal over UART or like that.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      4 months ago

      I chalk it up to lazy rushed development. Good code is art.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        4 months ago

        That’s not true at all. The code doesn’t take much space. The content does. Your high quality high res photos, 4K HDR videos, lossless 96kHz audio, etc.

        • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          But there are lots of shortcuts now. Asset packs and coding environments that come bundled with all kinds of things you don’t need. People import packages that consume a lot of space to use one tiny piece of it.

          To be clear, I’m not talking about videos and images. You’d have these either way.

          • Aux@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            All these packages don’t take much memory. Also tree shaking is a thing. For example, one of the projects I currently work on has over 5 gigs of dependencies, but once I compile it for production, the whole code based is mere 3 megs and that’s including inlined styles and icons. The code itself is pretty much non-existent.

            On the other hand I have 100KB of text translations just for the English language alone. Because there’s shit loads of text. And over 100MB of images, which are part of the build. And then there’s a remote storage with gigabytes of documents.

            Even if I double the code base by copy pasting it will be a drop in a bucket.

    • jas0n@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      Guy from '95: “I bet it’s lightning fast though…”

      No dude. It peaks pretty soon. In my time, Microsoft is touting a chat program that starts in under 10 seconds. And they’re genuinely proud of it.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      25
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      I still can’t fully accept that 1GB is not normal, 2GB is not very good, and 4GB is not all you ever gonna need.

      If only it got bloated for some good reasons.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        The moment you use a file that is bigger than 1GB, that computer will explode.

        Some of us do more than just browse Lemmy.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          4 months ago

          Wow. Have you ever considered how people were working with files bigger than total RAM they had in the normal days of computing?

          So in your opinion if you have 2GB+ of a log file, editing it you should have 2GB RAM occupied?

          I just have no words, the ignorance.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        15
        ·
        4 months ago

        High quality content is the reason. Sit in a terminal and your memory usage will be low.

        • lastweakness@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          17
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          4 months ago

          So we’re just going to ignore stuff like Electron, unoptimized assets, etc… Basically every other known problem… Yeah let’s just ignore all that

          • Aux@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            9
            ·
            4 months ago

            Is Electron that bad? Really? I have Slack open right now with two servers and it takes around 350MB of RAM. Not that bad, considering that every other colleague thinks that posting dumb shit GIFs into work chats is cool. That’s definitely nowhere close to Firefox, Chrome and WebStorm eating multiple gigs each.

            • lastweakness@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              16
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              4 months ago

              Yes, it really is that bad. 350 MBs of RAM for something that could otherwise have taken less than 100? That isn’t bad to you? And also, it’s not just RAM. It’s every resource, including CPU, which is especially bad with Electron.

              I don’t really mind Electron myself because I have enough resources. But pretending the lack of optimization isn’t a real problem is just not right.

                • lastweakness@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  6
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  CPU usage is famously terrible with Electron, which i also pointed out in the comment you’re replying to. But yes, having multiple chromium instances running for each “app” is terrible

                • nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  First of all, 350MB is a drop in a bucket

                  People don’t run just a single app in their machines. If we triple ram usage of several apps, it results in a massive increase. That’s how bloat happens, it’s a cumulative increase on everything. If we analyze single cases, we could say that they’re not that bad individually, but the end result is the necessity for a constant and fast increase in hardware resources.

                • jas0n@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  4 months ago

                  Just wanted to point out that the number 1 performance blocker in the CPU is memory. In the general case, if you’re wasting memory, you’re wasting CPU. These two things really cannot be talked about in isolation.

                • Verat@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  4 months ago

                  When (according to about:unloads) my average firefox tab is 70-230MB depending on what it is and how old the tab is (youtube tabs for example bloat up the longer they are open), a chat app using over 350 is a pretty big deal

                  just checked, my firefox is using 4.5gb of RAM, while telegram is using 2.3, while minimized to the system tray, granted Telegram doesnt use electron, but this is a trend across lots of programs and Electron is a big enough offender I avoid apps using it. When I get off shift I can launch discord and check it too, but it is usually bad enough I close it entirely when not in use

            • nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              4 months ago

              It sure is. I’m running ferdium at this very moment with 3 chat apps open, and it consumes almost a gigabyte for something that could take just a few megabytes.

            • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              4 months ago

              What’s wrong with using Gifs in work chat lmao, can laugh or smile while hating your job like the rest of us.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          4 months ago

          256MB or 512MB was fine for high-quality content in 2002, what was that then.

          Suppose the amount of pixels and everything quadrupled - OK, then 2GB it is.

          But 4GB being not enough? Do you realize what 4GB is?

          • lastweakness@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            8
            ·
            4 months ago

            They didn’t just quadruple. They’re orders of magnitude higher these days. So content is a real thing.

            But that’s not what’s actually being discussed here, memory usage these days is much more of a problem caused by bad practices rather than just content.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              4 months ago

              I know. BTW, if something is done in an order of magnitude less efficient way than it could and it did, one might consider it a result of intentional policy aimed at neutering development. Just not clear whose. There are fewer corporations affecting this than big governments, and those are capable of reaching consensus from time to time. So not a conspiracy theory.

          • Aux@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            4 months ago

            One frame for a 4K monitor takes 33MB of memory. You need three of them for triple buffering used back in 2002, so half of your 256MB went to simply displaying a bloody UI. But there’s more! Today we’re using viewport composition, so the more apps you run, the more memory you need just to display the UI. Now this is what OS will use to render the final result, but your app will use additional memory for high res icons, fonts, photos, videos, etc. 4GB today is nothing.

            I can tell you an anecdote. My partner was making a set of photo collages, about 7 art works to be printed in large format (think 5m+ per side). So 7 photo collages with source material saved on an external drive took 500 gigs. Tell me more about 256MB, lol.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              edit-2
              4 months ago

              Yes, you wouldn’t have 4K in 2002.

              4GB today is nothing.

              My normal usage would be kinda strained with it, but possible.

              $ free -h
                             total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
              Mem:            17Gi       3,1Gi        11Gi       322Mi       3,0Gi        14Gi
              Swap:          2,0Gi          0B       2,0Gi
              $ 
              
      • DefederateLemmyMl@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        I remember when I got my first computer with 1GB of RAM, where my previous computer had 64MB, later upgraded to 192MB. And there were only like 3 or 4 years in between them.

        It was like: holy shit, now I can put all the things in RAM. I will never run out.

    • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      4 months ago

      Absolutely.

      Bad, rushed software that wires together 200 different giant libraries just to use a fraction of them and then run it in a sandboxed container with three daemons it needs for some reason doesn’t mean “8 Gb isn’t enough”, it means write tighter, better software.

    • qqq@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      I once went for lower CAS timing 2x 128MB ram sticks (256 MB) instead of 2x 256s with slower speeds because I thought 512MB was insane overkill. Realized how wrong I was when trying to play Star Wars galaxies mmorpg when a lot of people were on the screen it started swapping to disk. Look up the specs for an IBM Aptiva, first computer my parents bought, and you’ll understand how 512MB can seem like a lot.

      Now my current computer has 64 GB (most gaming computers go for 32GB) at the time I built it. My workstation at work has 128GB which really isn’t even enough for some workloads we have that use a lot of in-memory cache… And large servers can have multiple TB of RAM. My mind has been blown multiple times.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      4 months ago

      Sorry, boo, everyone wants to hate Apple these days. It’s the Zeitgeist. Even if you say something reasonable or perhaps factual, the people are against you and will react violently.

    • sverit@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      Well, 2000€ for a “Pro” model of the Macbook 14" with only 8GB RAM sounds a bit strange, tbf. And +230€ for +8GB is straight up greedy.

      They said “Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems” and well , that’s definitely not the case for their upcoming AI usecases, because - and many people seem to overlook that - their RAM is shared RAM (or as they call it “unified memory”), which means that the GPU is limited by these 8GB of (V)RAM because it can only use what is left by the System usage.

      • stoly@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        4 months ago

        The unreasonable escalation of your response really makes you come across as exceedingly insecure.

        • Shadywack@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          4 months ago

          I was quite literally illustrating the absurdity by being similarly absurd. Telling people to shut the fuck up about an issue is funny as hell to respond with a similar statement.

    • MiDaBa@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      16
      ·
      4 months ago

      If you choose to be a weak little quiet corporate Stan then that’s up to you. Apple is well aware that third party apps exist and they’re well aware that machines with less ram will need replaced far sooner than machines with more. RAM is cheap and Apples intigrated memory is no different in the regard. The only reason to use less is planned obsolescence. If you don’t believe that then you’re either Tim Cook or you’re an idiot.

      • vermyndax@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        12
        ·
        4 months ago

        What is the obsession with shitting on people’s choices? I don’t understand the irony of demanding choice in this industry, then shitting on people when they make a choice you don’t agree with.

        • stoly@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          4 months ago

          What is the obsession with shitting on people’s choices?

          As much as people want to act like they are better than they were, say, 100 years ago, it’s not really true. Humans are really just advanced monkeys running around and very few can actually surpass that nature.

        • MiDaBa@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          4 months ago

          No one is shitting on other people’s choices. They are criticizing a major corporations choices to skimp on specs while charging a premium price. Specs that can’t be upgraded and will absolutely lead to a shorter usable life. I find it odd that people get upset about criticism that isn’t aimed at them at all. The only thing I can think is maybe they realize they were ripped off after putting so much money into Apple products and they need to defend their financial decisions. Even then I don’t fully understand. I’ve purchased overpriced junk many times and don’t feel the need to defend the offending company. Maybe it’s because Apple has managed to make their customers feel like they’re in an exclusive club even though everyone uses Apple products these days. A publicly traded company is around to make money and nothing more. They should never be held in reverence.

    • 31337@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      I wonder what is the general use for the Mac Mini, MacBook Air, iMac, and MacBook Pro? People generally seem to do all the lightweight stuff like social media consumption on their phones; and desktops/laptops are used for the more heavy-weight stuff. The only reason I’ve ever used a Mac was for IOS development.

      • vermyndax@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        I have a friend who is self-employed. He uses an iPhone and a MacBook Air. He only uses iMessage, Numbers, Safari and Apple Music for entertainment. He gets away with 8gb just fine and rarely has to reboot.

        He probably could use a Chromebook or something even lighter, but the support and ecosystem were enough for him to pay the premium. His time is valuable to him so it was worth it to him.

  • SpeedLimit55@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    48
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    4 months ago

    8GB is definitely not enough for coding, gaming, or most creative work but it’s fine for basic office/school work or entertainment. Heck my M1 Macbook Air is even good with basic Photoshop/Illustrator work and light AV editing. I certainly prefer my PC laptop with 32GB and a dedicated GPU but its power adapter weighs more than a Macbook Air.

    • cheddar@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      8GB is definitely not enough for coding, gaming, or most creative work but it’s fine for basic office/school work or entertainment.

      The thing is, basic office/school/work tasks can be done on any laptop that costs twice less than an 8GB MacBook.

      • SpeedLimit55@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        This is true for part time or casual use but for all day work use including travel you get better build quality and far less problems with a pro grade machine. We spend the same on a macbook, thinkpad, surface or probook for our basic full time users.

        While it may be a bit overkill for someone who spends their day in word, excel, chrome and zoom we save money in the long term due to reliability. There is far less downtime and IT time spent on each user over the life of the system (3-4 years). The same is true about higher quality computer accessories.

    • Specal@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      I mean I develop software on an 8GB laptop. Most of the time it’s fine, when I need more I have a desktop with 128GB ram available.

      Really depends what type of software you’re making. If you’re using python a few TB might be required.

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      8GB would be fine for basic use if it was upgradable. With soldered RAM the laptop becomes e-waste when 8GB is no longer enough.

      • slaacaa@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        Yeah, the soldering is outrageous. I miss the time when Apple was a (more) customer friendly company. I could open my Mac mini 2009 and just add more RAM, which I did.

        • DJDarren@thelemmy.club
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          4 months ago

          When I bought my first MacBook in ‘07 I asked the guy in the store about upgrading the RAM. He told me that what Apple charged was outrageous and pointed me to a website where I’d get what I needed for much less.

          I feel that if Apple could have soldered the RAM back then, they would have.

          • boonhet@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            I feel that if Apple could have soldered the RAM back then, they would have.

            Apple used to ship repair and upgrade kits with guides on how to apply them. Not sure they were as anti-repair then as they are now.

  • poorlytunedAstring@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    10
    ·
    4 months ago

    For the record, on Windows 10, I’m using 9GB (rounded up from 8.something) to run Firefox and look at this website, can’t forget Discord inviting itself to my party in the background, and the OS. I had to close tabs to get down here. Streams really eat the RAM up.

    Throw a game in there, with FF open for advice and Discord running for all the usual gaming reasons, and yeah, way over.

    Notice I haven’t even touched any productivity stuff that demands more.

    8? Eat a penis, Apple. Fuckin clown hardware.

    • howlingecko@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      4 months ago

      Also for the record, I have experienced an 8GB Mac Mini run Firefox with at least 20 tabs, Jetbrains Rider with code open and editable, Jetbrains DataGrip with queries, somehow Microsoft Teams, MS Outlook and didn’t seem to have a problem. Was also able to share the screen on a Teams call and switch between the applications without lag.

      Windows OS couldn’t handle your application load? Eat a penis, Microsoft. Fucking clown memory management.

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 months ago

      MacOS’s memory scheduler is leaps and bounds better than what Windows uses. It’s more apt to compare the RAM on a machine running MacOS to one running a common Linux distro. Windows needs more RAM than the other two by two to three times because it’s fuckterrible at using it.

  • Jtee@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    159
    arrow-down
    32
    ·
    4 months ago

    And now all the fan boys and girls will go out and buy another MacBook. That’s planned obsolescence for ya

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      4 months ago

      These were obsolete the minute they were made, though… So it’s not really planned obsolescence. I got one for free (MacBook Air), and it’s always been trash.

      • bamboo@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        4 months ago

        I have an M2 MBA and it’s the best laptop I’ve ever owned or used, second to the M3 Max MBP I get to use for work. Silent, battery lasts all week, interface is fast and runs all my dev tools like a charm. Zero issues with the device.

    • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      4 months ago

      And why they solder the RAM, or even worse make it part of the SoC.

      • Balder@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        In this particular case the RAM is part of the chip as an attempt to squeeze more performance. Nowadays, processors have become too fast but it’s useless if the rest of the components don’t catch up. The traditional memory architecture has become a bottleneck the same way HDDs were before the introduction of SSDs.

        You’ll see this same trend extend to Windows laptops as they shift to Snapdragon processors too.

      • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        51
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        4 months ago

        There are real world performance benefits to ram being as close as possible to the CPU, so it’s not entirely without merit. But that’s what CAMM modules are for.

        • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          4 months ago

          Apple’s SoC long predates CAMM.

          Dell first showed off CAMM in 2022, and it only became JEDEC standardised in December 2023.

          That said, if Dell can create a really good memory standard and get JEDEC to make it an industry standard, so can Apple. They just chose not to.

        • akilou@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          25
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          4 months ago

          But do those benefits outweigh doubling or tripling the amount of RAM by simply inserting another stick that you can buy for dozens of dollars?

          • FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            And even if the out-of-the-box RAM is soldered to the machine, it should still be possible to add supplementary RAM that isn’t soldered for when the system demands it. Other computers have worked like this in the past with chip RAM but a socket to add more.

          • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            19
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            4 months ago

            That’s extremely dependent on the use case, but in my opinion, generally no. However CAMM has been released as an official JEDEC interface and does a good job at being a middle ground between repairability and speed.

            • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              20
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              4 months ago

              It’s an officially recognized spec, so Apple will ignore it as long as they can. Until they can find a way to make money from it or spin marketing as if it’s some miraculous new invention of theirs, for something that should just be how it’s done.

          • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            4 months ago

            Yes, there are massive advantages. It’s basically what makes unified memory possible on modern Macs. Especially with all the interest in AI nowadays, you really don’t want a machine with a discrete GPU/VRAM, a discrete NPU, etc.

            Take for example a modern high-end PC with an RTX 4090. Those only have 24GB VRAM and that VRAM is only accessible through the (relatively slow) PCIe bus. AI models can get really big, and 24GB can be too little for the bigger models. You can spec an M2 Ultra with 192GB RAM and almost all of it is accessible by the GPU directly. Even better, the GPU can access that without any need for copying data back and forth over the PCIe bus, so literally 0 overhead.

            The advantages of this multiply when you have more dedicated silicon. For example: if you have an NPU, that can use the same memory pool and access the same shared data as the CPU and GPU with no overhead. The M series also have dedicated video encoder/decoder hardware, which again can access the unified memory with zero overhead.

            For example: you could have an application that replaces the background on a video using AI. It takes a video, decompresses it using the video decoder , the decompressed video frames are immediately available to all other components. The GPU can then be used to pre-process the frames, the NPU can use the processed frames as input to some AI model and generate a new frame and the video encoder can immediately access that result and compress it into a new video file.

            The overhead of just copying data for such an operation on a system with non-unified memory would be huge. That’s why I think that the AI revolution is going to be one of the driving factors in killing systems with non-unified memory architectures, at least for end-user devices.

          • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            It’s highly dependent on the application.

            For instance, I could absolutely see having certain models with LPCAMM expandability as a great move for Apple, particularly in the pro segment, so they’re not capped by whatever they can cram into their monolithic SoCs. But for most consumer (that is, non-engineer/non-developer users) applications, I don’t see them making it expandable.

            Or more succinctly: they should absolutely put LPCAMM in the next generation of MBPs, in my opinion.

        • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          4 months ago

          Well. The claim they made still holds true, despit how I dislike this design choice. It is faster, and more secure (though attacks on NAND chips are hard and require high skill levels that most attacker won’t posses).

          And add one more: it saves power when using LPDDR5 rather DDR5. To a laptop that battery life matters a lot, I agree that’s important. However, I have no idea how much standby or active time it gain by using LPDDR5.

    • Mongostein@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      10
      ·
      4 months ago

      And the apple haters will keep making this exact same comment on every post using their 3rd laptop in ten years while I’m still using my 2014 MacBook daily with no issues.

      Be more original.

      • Jtee@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        4 months ago

        Nice attempt to justify planned obsolescence. To think apple hasn’t done this time and time again, you’d have to be a fool

        • Mongostein@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          👍

          -posted from my ten year old MacBook which shows no need for replacement

          • Jtee@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            And is what, 3 or 4 operating systems behind due to it being obsolete

          • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            4 months ago

            At which point did Apple decide your MacBook was too old to be usable and stop giving updates or allow new software to run on it?

            • Mongostein@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              4 months ago

              Still gets security updates. All the software I need to run on it runs on it.

              My email, desktop, and calendar all still sync with my newer desktop. I can still play StarCraft. I can join zoom meetings while running Roll 20. I can even run Premiere and do video editing… to a point.

              I guess if you need the latest and greatest then you might have a point, but I don’t.

              This whole thread is bitching about software bloat and Apple does that to stop the software bloat on older machines, but noooo that’s planned obsolescence. 🙄

      • stoly@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        4 months ago

        This is pretty much it. People really just want to find reasons to hate Apple over the past 2 - 3 years. You’re right, though, your Mac can run easily for 10+ years. You’re good basically until the web browsers no longer support your OS version, which is more in the 12-15 year range.

        • theneverfox@pawb.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          4 months ago

          In fairness, most computers built after around 2014-2016+ last way longer, performance started to level off not long after that. After all, devs write software for what people have, if everyone had 128 gigs of RAM we’d load everything we could think of into memory and you’d need it to keep up

          Macs did have some incredible build quality though, the newer ones aren’t holding up even close to as well. I’m still using a couple 2012 Macs to play videos, it’s slow as hell when you interact, but once the video is playing it still looks and sounds good

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        I still have a fully functioning Windows 95 machine.

        My daily driver desktop is also from around 2014.

    • bamboo@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      64
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      Someone who is buying a MacBook with the minimum specs probably isn’t the same person that’s going to run out and buy another one to get one specific feature in Xcode. Not trying to defend Apple here, but if you were a developer who would care about this, you probably would have paid for the upgrade when you bought it in the first place (or couldn’t afford it then or now).

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        4 months ago

        Well no, not this specific scenario, because of course devs will generally buy machines with more RAM.

        But there are definitely people who will buy an 8GB Apple laptop, run into performance issues, then think “oh I must need to buy a new MacBook”.

        If Apple didn’t purposely manufacture ewaste-tier 8GB laptops, that would be minimised.

        • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          I wouldn’t be so sure. I feel like many people would not buy another MacBook if it were to feel a lot slower after just a few years.

          This feels like short term gains vs. long term reputation.

  • ryannathans@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    17
    ·
    4 months ago

    Wake me up when phones have enough ram to run good voice to text engines on the phone itself

  • Hux@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    110
    arrow-down
    15
    ·
    4 months ago

    This isn’t a big deal.

    If you’re developing in Xcode, you did not buy an 8GB Mac in the last 10-years.

    If you are just using your Mac for Facebook and email, I don’t think you know what RAM is.

    If you know what RAM is, and you bought an 8GB Mac in the last 10-years, then you are likely self-aware of your limited demands and/or made an informed compromise.

    • filister@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      43
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      If you know what RAM is, and you bought an 8GB Mac in the last 10-years, then you are likely self-aware of your limited demands and/or made an informed compromise.

      Or you simply refuse to pay $200+ to get a proper machine. Like seriously, 8GB Mac’s should have disappeared long ago, but nope, Apple stick to them with their planned obsolescence tactics on their hardware, and stubbornly refusing to admit that in 2023 releasing a MacBook with soldered 8Gb of RAM is wholy inadequate.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      4 months ago

      Funny: knowing that you only get one shot, I bought 32GB of RAM for my Mac Mini like 1.5 years ago. I figured that it gave me the best shot of keeping it usable past 5 years.

    • DJDarren@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      I’m not gonna stand up and declare that 8gb is absolutely fine, because in very short order it won’t be. But yeah, currently for an average use case, it is.

      My work Mac mini has 8gb. It’s a 2014 so can’t be upgraded, but for the tasks I ask of it it’s ok. Sure, it gets sluggish if I’m using the Win11 VM I sometimes need, but generally I don’t really have any issues doing regular office tasks.

      That said, I sometimes gets a bee in my bonnet about it, so open Activity Monitor to see what’s it’s doing, and am shocked by how much RAM some websites consume in open tabs in Safari.

      8gb is generally ok on low end gear, but devs are working very hard to ensure that it’s not.

  • small44@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    arrow-down
    16
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    For who? My mother who only use facebook, youtube and googling don’t need 8gb

    • iopq@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      4 months ago

      I had a laptop with 8GB. Doing one of those things was fine, but when you open up another program it takes forever to switch to the browser

      • Petter1@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        And then you have to activate linux app support for a thing she needs and can not do with chromebook and suddenly it is more complicated than macOS?

      • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        That all depends on how much work they want to put into troubleshooting it for her. I got my mom a Mac Mini when her PC needed to be replaced. It’s way less responsibility on my part. I mostly just answer the occasional how-to.

        • Glowstick@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          4 months ago

          Mac is easier than Windows, sure, but not easier than a chromebook. Nothing is simpler than a Chromebook. You can do much more with a Mac, but a chromebook is much easier.

    • ABCDE@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      I don’t know what Xcode is so yeah, I haven’t been found wanting with my 8GB M2. Videos, downloading, web browsing, writing, chat applications, some photo editing, games (what I can actually play on a Mac, anyway), all good here.

      16GB+ is obviously going to be necessary though, and not exactly that expensive to put into their base models so it should be put in soon.