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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve been using an iPad with m1 for a while, can’t wait to get this power on a regular machine… but the ram price makes me want to wait another gen at least.
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).
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
Yes. Unfortunately people who buy Apple don’t care. This is what happens when you prioritise brand and design over functionality. You end up paying more for the brand (worse shit, but hey you can feel good about buying such a great product!).
As an Apple user: I do care. However, the alternative is using Windows, which makes me wanna punch my monitor at least once a month. And I’m not even using it as a primary OS.
I don’t prioritize design and don’t care about brand at all but I care about a frust free experience and I just don’t have that with windows.
Running a hackintosh was less frustrating than using windows on the very same hardware…
If Linux supported the software and the features I need/want, I would very much just use that
There are things in Mac that also make me want to punch my monitor. No tree view in Finder, so I have to open two windows to copy stuff? No titles in the launcher so I have to scroll over all the windows to find the one I need? It’s a nightmare for working with documents. I much prefer windows for that.
What does Windows do to make you want to punch your monitor?
For example (and that is only one out of many over the years), on my one PC search just refused to work. Windows search isn’t great but not having it is even worse than that and no matter what I did, neither the search in the Start menu nor in the Explorer worked. Couldn’t type in anything. If I opened the on screen keyboard, it did work but not with my physical one. I even reinstalled Windows from scratch and it worked for a few weeks and then stopped again. No one why. Only got fixed once I went back to Win 10.
Another Example is Microsofts over-insistence to force Edge, bing, OneDrive, Office365, etc. on you. It feels like, once a month, when I log in, I get a splash screen to please subscribe to one of those services and also use Bing and also, they put the Edge icon back onto my Desktop.
It’s things like those that just annoy the shit out of me. I want to use my PC, not to constantly fix it. And it’s a myriad of other thing like that. Some small, some bigger.
It’s not that macOS is better in every way, there are a few things Windows undoubtedly does better (like having a keyboard shortcut to open the file explorer) but for my day to day use, macOS has kept out of my way and just done what it’s supposed to. And sadly macOS is a package deal with Macs, which are great, hardware wise but also very expensive. But considering the software advantage, the Apple tax is worth it, at least to some extent
I personally never had much problems with Windows 11, but I fully understand the edge frustration. I used MacOS for many years, but not without tweaking and porting the hell out of it. The problem with Apple for me is their lack of reparability and the absurd prices of their hardware. I now mostly use Linux, although it’s far from perfect and nowhere near as good as some claim, so I’m still forced to stick with Windows.
Use “everything” by VoidTools to search the file system. It’s the perfect search tool, very powerful and lightning fast.
Noted. Does it also start programs?
You can click on the files it shows, and if it’s a .exe file you can start the program
So it’s not useful for that. But having a decent search is defs a pro.
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*fan bois are paying for it
RAM is boring… THE FINISH IS TITANIUM!!!
THAT’S LITERALLY OUR ENTIRE MARKETING CAMPAIGN!
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”.
We are? Pretty sure I ain’t.
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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.
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.
