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Even Apple finally admits that 8GB RAM isn't enough (www.xda-developers.com)

submitted 5 months ago by sverit@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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.

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[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

They moved to on-die RAM for a reason: To nickel and dime yo ass.

I needed to expense a Mac Mini for iOS development, and everyone (Me, the company, our purchasing department) was baffled at how much it cost to get 16 GB. And they only go up to 24GB. Imagine how much they'll charge for 32 in a year!

[–] stoly@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Mac Mini is meant to be sort of the starter desktop. For higher end uses, they want you on the Mac Studio, an iMac, or a Mac Pro.

[–] FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I assumed that the Mini was the effectively a Mac without a monitor. Is it relatively underpowered too?

[–] PrettyLights@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

Its not underpowered for average users, but it's not meant for professional uses beyond basic office work.

Similar to the mini they offer the Studio which doesn't have a monitor built in https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/compare/?modelList=Mac-studio-2023,Mac-mini-M2

Then for the higher end uses they offer a more typical tower format https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

[–] Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

As far as I understand, the Mac lineup don’t have screens, the IMacs are stationary and do have a screen, the MacBooks are the laptops.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 months ago (3 children)

It's technically a bit faster, but yeah, I think charging more is the bigger motivation.

[–] dojan@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

Companies primarily make decisions to maximise the profitability of someone and it's never the consumer.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It's a bit first but if their primary motivation was performance improvements they wouldn't be soldering 16 GB.

If you're going to weld shoes to your feet, you better at least make sure that they're good shoes.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why not? There is a performance benefit to being closer to the CPU, and soldering gets you a lot closer to the CPU. That's a fact.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah but if you're only putting 8 GB of RAM on then you're also going to be constantly querying the hard drive. So any performance gain you get from soldering, is lost by going all the way to the hard drive every 3 microseconds.

It's only better performance on paper in reality there's no real benefit. If you can run an application entirely entirely within the 8 GB of RAM, and assuming you're not running anything else, then maybe you get better performance.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And that's the idea. Soldering memory is an engineering decision. How much to solder is a marketing decision. Since users can't easily add more, marketing can upsell on more RAM.

It's not "on paper," the RAM itself is performing better vs socketed RAM. Whether the system runs better depends on the configuration, as in, did you order enough RAM.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 0 points 5 months ago

I can't tell if you're a stooge or if you really think that. I hope you are stooge, because otherwise that's a really stupid position you've decided to take and you clearly don't actually understand the issue.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 0 points 5 months ago

Sounds like one of those rare cases where engineering and marketing might agree on something.