8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests
Apple's new MacBook Pro models are powered by cutting-edge M3 Apple silicon, but the base configuration 14-inch model starting at $1,599...
8gb in a "pro" machine is rediculous. And the 8gb == 16gb thing was always rubbish.
And at this point the cost difference couldn’t possibly be so stark that they have to make it a great leap in price. I think they offer these 8GB models for non power-users. People doing spreadsheets and presentations all day, but honestly even then 8GB of memory just seems like they’re cheaping out.
Even then, 8GB isn't really enough. Get a few browser tabs going (with full apps integrated) in a Zoom meeting and you'll run out of memory right quick.
Hell, I regularly use all of my 32GB of memory. Granted, with my job and ADHD, I often have 20+ tabs open in each of several browser windows at the same time with multiple documents and spreadsheets and other apps all running.
But, still. 16GB+ is non-negotiable for me in an entry-level laptop today. And there are decent options available for under $500 CAD rn.
I bet the 8 GB model ismore for lowering the advertised price then it being useable.
My company is deploying new basic, mass-produced, small form-factor office PCs. No graphics-editing, no programming, integrated graphics card, just basically spreadsheets and web browsers. The standard is that each of them have 32gb of memory. 8 is ridiculous...
Computers are cheap, employee time is expensive. Giving your employees computers that limit or slow them down is a very poor investment. Maxing RAM, CPU and GPU even for relatively basic work can make some sense if you look at it that way (within reason, dont need to give everyone 4090's, but definitely go better than an etch-a-sketch :) ).
When I built my first computer a decade ago, I put 16gb of ram in lol.
Is it just me or is 16GB even on the low side for a pro user? I have 128 on my desktop and 80GB usage is normal for what I do (software dev; lots of local virtualization)
Answer probably depends on the nature of your usage?
I have a 16gb m1 air, and it is okay for development, but i dont have any VMs (except docker i guess, and also android VMs). I have run out of RAM once, with multiple pycharm/clion/browser windows open. Its not great, but its livable. I run out of screen realestate first usually. I use it for personal projects to kill time on trains, so not super heavy stuff.
But otherwise yeah, more is better. I have 64 gb in my desktop and 96gb in my work PC, and occasionally i can hit the limits there.
Let's be honest 8gb is lower end for a phone now never mind a computer. Then again if someone just wants to watch YouTube or shop on the Web it's fine.
Shouldn't be on anything named pro though.
But if you just want to watch YouTube and shop on the Web you definitely don't need an M3.
An M3 chip with a 8gb RAM is just plain stupid. The problem it's not the 8gb RAM per sé.
If that's all you wanna do then get a tablet, not a damn MacBook pro
... one of the tests here is editing an 8K video. That's not an every day use case.
There are pro users that don't need anywhere near that much memory.
For example QLab. It's definitely "pro" software - but it's just automation software and commonly used for tasks like sending a 20 character text string to another computer on the network when you hit a button... it can do more complex things but most of the time the cheapest Raspberry Pi has enough compute power (you can't run it, or anything like it, on Linux however).
A MacBook Air would be useless, because it doesn't have HDMI, and that often is needed. Professionals don't want to use dongles.
While most people running QLab won't be too budget sensitive... they might be buying six Macs that won't be used to do anything else ever*,... so since it only uses a few hundred megabytes of RAM why spend Apple's premium prices on 16GB?
(* half of them will probably never even be used, since they'd be backups powered on and ready to swap in with a few seconds notice if the main one fails, which almost never happens)
There are pro users that don't need anywhere near that much memory.
Well, every computer is ”Pro” if you take professional writers as an example. But this is a marketing term anyways, not a definition. If it was an actual definition then I’d take it to cover ”most professional computing tasks”.
It’s the year 2033, Apple releases the M11 MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM.
We removed the headphone jack for your benefit.
We kept the lightning cable for your benefit.
We didn’t increase the base model’s memory for your benefit.
Mac SSDs are fast, but they are not nearly fast enough to replace RAM - especially in a UMA where RAM speed is critical to performance. 8GB in a Pro machine is not enough. It’s barely enough for a ChromeBook in this age of electron and web app everything. The prosumer market needs 16GB starting, and while we’re on the topic we need 512GB standard storage too.
8gb RAM and 256 gb storage is perfectly fine for a pro-ish machine in 2023. What's not fine is the price point they are offering it (but if idiots still buy that, that's on them and not apple). I've been using a 8gb ram 256 gb storage Thinkpad for lecturing, small code demos, and light video editing (e.g. zoom recordings) this past year, it works perfectly fine. But as soon as I have to run my own research code, back to the 2022 Xeon I go.
Is it Apple's fault people treat browser tabs as a bookmarking mechanism? No. Is it unethical for Apple to say that their 8GB model fits this weirdly common use case? Definitely.
8gb RAM and 256 gb storage is perfectly fine for a pro-ish machine in 2023.
Pro-ish is not Pro though. I could barely run Docker and PyCharm with a few Safari tabs without it paging to SSD and chugging on an 8GB machine, never mind an entire k8ts cluster. If for some reason you also need a VM you are going to feel it Mr. Krabs with only 8GBs of RAM. Any sort of multi-tasking require more than 8GB these days, and as an SRE I'm not just running my dev environment. Slack, Email, Teams, and the dozen other productivity and business apps all eat RAM I cannot spare on an 8GB system. I'm not worried about price because my field in general isn't sensitive to that, but perhaps Apple is trying to please both crowds here? IDK. Like you allude to, heavy or extended workloads go on dedicated servers, but I still need to be able to develop for those systems and the thought they sell a "Pro" machine to anyone with such anemic specs is concerning.
Are they fast now? The cheapest M2 MacBook Pro does not have a fast SSD.
I mean relatively speaking. Macs used to be known for fast storage. I haven't been tracking the news on that front lately. I haven't noticed any SSD speed issues so I haven't looked into it.
It's the ultimate cash grab in my opinion. Just imagine how much faster the SSD will wear out from all the swap that'll be needed. The SOLDERED SSD.
Gotta love Apples commitment to maintaining a steady stream of e-waste.
So apple made a claim about 8GB Mac vs 16gb non mac, and they're testing here 8gb Mac vs 16gb Mac? Am I seeing that right?
That’s precisely correct. Even if you tested against a 16GB non-Mac machine in that price point ($1799), you would probably see similar results. This is something Apple has been trying to convince people against for decades and at one point they may have been at least somewhat correct.
I don’t get why Apple won’t just add more RAM and storage to their base models. They’ll ship more units and get better PR. Simple as.
Because they get an extra $200 per upgrade to a usable amount, while getting to advertise the lower price. And the low specs force early upgrades for the people who purchase the base model. As always, it's about the money.
Exactly. I forget the term, but companies don't want you to buy the absolute base, budget model. Same with cars. They want it that low to advertise the line, expecting most people to pay a few hundred *more for a vastly better product.
Aye, but they could lower the starting price, increase specs and ship larger volume for an overall larger profit, right?
If I was running the company, I’d rather more people buy my product for a lower price than far fewer people buy my product for a somewhat higher price. Plus, higher sales figures itself is better, no? I don’t get the strategy. They’re leaving out the whole $2,000 that someone would have otherwise spent if the base model was actually useable.
I think that was the tactic they are using. Enterprises and engineers are going to spec out the RAM and/or CPU, and anyone else will get it in the default config and possibly not even notice the difference. If you know, then you know sort of thing?
It's that whole thing where the medium amount of ram upsells you to the large amount of ram.
The base model has 8gb of ram and 512gb of storage, but is only £1700.... But that's not useable.
1TB of storage is only £200 more, but it doesn't have enough ram.
18gb of ram is only £200 more again, but it's back to a 512gb ssd.
18gb of ram with 1tb ssd is £2500. And that's what most folk would consider to be acceptable.
And that's an £800 upsell, by making little bits unpalatable.
It's aggressive marketing. Or unfair marketing.
Like that thing where a cosmetic is 600 game-coins. 500 game-coins is £5, and 1000 game-coins is £7.50.
Might as well but 1000 game-coins. But then you have 400 game-coins left over, and you will never be able to buy the perfect amount of game-coins to spend on cosmetics, and that little amount left over makes you want a new cosmetic for "only £5 more".
It's just scammy
It’s aggressive marketing. Or unfair marketing.
I believe the technical term is "horseshit"
Have you ever tried to buy the absolute base model car at a dealership? They have few to none in stock.
It's the same phenomenon. Smaller number on the advertisement, fleece you on the upgrade.
This could be something different, but apple often feels like they intentionally hold upgrades back and instead release them in small improvements over multiple releases.
The purpose of the base model is to make the more expensive higher end models look better in comparison than they otherwise would.
Smaller number on the advertisment really
I want to replace my 2014 13" MBP. But two things are really weighing on me:
Now I've never used my MBPs for anything resource-intensive. Some light-gaming -- Stellaris and Eve Online, rarely -- is probably the heaviest thing I've done it. Could I get by on 8GB RAM? Yeah, probably.
But it's the principle of the thing. This isn't 10yrs ago anymore, where Windows laptops from various manufacturers kinda sucked. My friend and I were looking at Windows laptops just the other day; so many nice Macbook-esque, thin, lightweight, but powerful enough laptops out there. And for the same price or less of an Macbook base model, they start at 16GB RAM, 512GB SSDs, etc. Many are still upgradable aftermarket.
I'm sure Apple Silicon is worth the premium. But not this other stuff that's considered base on so many Windows machines.
I love Apple products, I do. But I'm not gonna keep throwing money at them for things that shouldn't be considered upgrades. Guess I'll keep holding out.
"Pro" suggests power users, but 8 GB is what you'd find in a low end word processing desktop for office use, or even a kid's chromebook. This is crazy, they are REALLY pushing their luck with this.
I would say maybe if there's enough pushback they'll offer a better option, but I doubt it.
My Thinkpad T400 from 2010 has 8GB of RAM. This was wild back then. But this was 13 years ago. Stop milking your customers by putting insane margins on memory and storage, Apple.
32 GB memsticks are cheap. Apple is scamming their own fanbois.
This benchmarking is just nonsense. (I don't recommend MBP 8GB btw.)
Why do you compare MBP 8GB and 16GB... I believe Apple was talking about MBP M3 8GB vs Windows laptops of non-unified 16GB RAM.
And, of course, you won't use Adobe's creator products on an 8GB MBP.
you won’t use Adobe’s creator products on an 8GB MBP.
there's a shitload of students that buy the cheapest macbook that they can afford, because all they know is "professional designers must use a Mac". They can barely know how to launch Photoshop from the applications folder, how they can know that 8gb is not enough for any kind of work? They see the price it's $1600, it's 2-3x than a cheap Windows PC, so they automatically assume it's the best they can get.
It's a real disservice Apple is doing to their own brand here. I work with college students in adjacent fields every day and the logic follows as you describe. It's a $1600 laptop surely it's capable of anything I need as a student or hobbyist right? Nope. An 8GB machine can barely load the VSTs and other audio thingamajigs they like to pile on it, what is prosumer graphics design going to do to it?
As a professional myself, I can say with 100% experience (currently using a 8GB mac pro) that 8GB is NOT enough and I get memory warnings about once every week that causes me to have to shut down a bunch of programs and slow open them back up as needed. But at the same time, I also think given that the 8gb mac pros are only using standard M(x) silicon I think the better answer would be to just not sell standard silicon as "pro" machines.
And if you look at the pricing between an air and a pro (15" vs 14", both 512 mem, both M3 8/10/8 silicon) the price difference is only $100. The machines are very close in capability; so really the 14" mac pro is little more than a rebranded air. This difference was harder to tell pre Apple silicon as it was easier to have different CPU/GPU/etc between the air and pro to give more of an actual difference. Of course if they did do that then the "base" level price for a "pro" would be $1,999 and not look near as nice as the current $1,599.
Ultimately with the advent of apple silicon apple really should just have a single macbook line and let the silicon be the actual air/pro/etc dividing factor. But I'm sure people would have plenty to complain about if they did that and apple themselves put themselves in this position by starting the whole "pro" vs "pleb" marketing in the first place.
The real crime that apple should be held for is the base level of storage their devices have across all of their devices (Phones, computers, iPads).
I got the Hollywood escort from my local Apple store for simply trying to stand my ground over a cell phone that had been returned nine times (yes that's nine appointments) being handed back to me with the exact problem. Being told to make a tenth appointment was the last straw for me, and I asked to simply get this resolved now. Their response was to call security after I calmly told them I wasn't leaving until someone with some common sense would come up with a workable resolution for me.
Y'all are acting surprised here. I'm not surprised. This company is literally scum of the earth, with zero concern over their behavior towards their customers. Fuck apple.
They appear to me to be the "cash grab" made manifest.
