this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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326
Entire Mac Lineup Now Finally Starts With at Least 16GB RAM, Ending 8GB Era (www.macrumors.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/technology
79 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

About time. This also applies to their older models such as M2 and M3 laptops.

In the U.S., the MacBook Air lineup continues to start at $999, so there is no price increase associated with the boost in RAM.

The M2 macbook air now starts at $1000 for 16GB RAM and 256GB storage. Limited storage aside, that's surprisingly competitive with most modern Windows laptops.

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

My daily driver MacBook Pro has 8GB of RAM, and so far, that’s been perfectly sufficient for my needs. Some might argue that 8GB is inadequate for a 1,700€ device, but I don’t think most people would notice a difference. This focus on specs might make more sense with computers, but with smartphones especially, I never understood the obsession with performance. My mid-range Samsung handles everything instantly - I can’t think of a reason it would need to be any faster. Numbers on a paper seem irrelevant when it doesn't translate to everyday use.

[–] Defaced 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

MacOS, no matter what anyone says, has extremely efficient memory management. It's seriously impressive how efficient that OS truly is, and it's no surprise they stuck with 8GB for so long. The thing these clickbait articles don't really bring to light is that the 16GB increase is really for Apple intelligence. If that wasn't a thing these Macs would stick to 8GB.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It is "efficient" because they just dump everything on swap. If I cold boot my M1 air, it'll be using 7GB of RAM and 4GB of swap without anything running in the background. I have this ongoing bug as well where some background apps will stop responding and the system can't stop the process, so it starts a new one and it keeps doing this until I either stop the app manually, or my storage is completely full because swap is taking 80GB of my internal storage.

[–] Defaced 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Not sure you know what swap is...I looked at my m1 after a night of gaming on GeForce now and filling out forms on Google Chrome. My swap was at 0, my used ram was at 4GB used out of the 8GB and didn't show down at all. I'm sorry you have had a terrible experience with your Mac, I love my Mac mini and will enjoy it as a really cool piece of tech.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Your MacBook is a cell phone?! Hahaha jk