Apple keeps flogging 8GB of RAM for its Mac computers but it's still a dead horse
Apple keeps flogging 8GB of RAM for its Mac computers but it's still a dead horse
Apple says 8GB is dandy for most mainstream tasks but that's not actually true.
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Predictions: the tradeoff here is (1) better thermals and battery wear, but (2) decreased responsiveness and (3) increased storage use, which in certain cases might result in (4) sudden sluggishness.
Explanations:
- Thermals and battery use/longevity are measurably worse in the high-ram configs of prev models (if you need it, you already know) so, price aside, this could be a better config for some users.
- Swapfile on recent SSDs over gen4 is now more than fast enough to keep memory pressure very low while performing most tasks, however I would expect a greater number of noticeable latency spikes (which honestly might not be that noticeable to most users)
- IIRC swap is still unlimited, so attempting high memory pressure tasks may diminish actual free space.
- If that’s already low, purgeable space must be freed, resulting in sudden high CPU use and general performance degradation.
Disclaimer: I don’t work for Apple, haven’t read any tech bulletins on this, and will never read this article. I’m just guessing.
Since the act of writing to an SSD is an act of wear that will eventually lead to a broken storage device, using an SSD for swap is a uniquely bad idea, right? Are Macs still designed so that you can't replace your own hardware easily? I've never owned one, but I was asked to service one many years ago and it was a real pain.
Those SSD are both hardware and software locked to the mother board. Once the SSD goes, the whole machine goes. The same can be said about RAM...once that goes, the mother board does too.
Perhaps the goal is to use the SSD as a sacrifice in order to extend the life of the obviously more important RAM.
Although RAM is vastly more durable than the flash chips of an SSD, so that wouldn't make sense.
It might make more sense from a cost viewpoint, since flash is typically cheaper than RAM.
I know. I wrote it as a crap excuse. The SSD that stores user data is infinitly more important than RAM.
Those SSD are both hardware and software locked to the mother board.
I know they did it with RAM which is bad enough but to do it with SSDs as well. That alone is a reason not to get an Apple device.
They might not specifically software lock the drive, but I do recall somethibg about them enabling disk encryption by default. So you're data is essentially tied to the system.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/protect-data-on-your-mac-with-filevault-mh11785/mac It is enabled automatically, and unless you actually know to store the key somewhere you're fucked.
IIRC this was standard advice in the 2000s and early 2010s when SSDs were recent arrivals and misuse could be an expensive mistake. It’s still generally true about flash memory (easily kills thumb drives and certain types of memory used in embedded systems) but much has since been optimized for system drives (cache management, overprovisioning, trim, cell endurance, etc). The idea was sticky though, like battery “memory,” and you’ll still see it repeated occasionally.
The current advice for any mainstream OS is to trust the defaults. SSDs are uniquely well-suited for virtual memory in these environments since ops are mostly small random reads and large sequential writes, which are fine on SSDs just much faster. Macs also use random unallocated space for swap, which slows (spreads) wear more than usual.
Anyway user reports tend to suggest decent longevity. That said, there was a brief scare a few years ago due to a bug in disk health reporting.
What’s the thermal impact of a ram module? Don’t they use like 2 or 3 watts even in a desktop? Can’t be much…
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Your guess is bad and you should feel bad.
As another Vin once said, the best liars are those who tell the truth most of the time.