Apple Finally Did It... RIP 8GB RAM Macs

After years of complaining, we've finally got what we wanted - all Macs now start at 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB. Why did Apple suddenly change their mind?



00:00 Artificial Intelligence
02:27 Competition
04:14 Improving Product Pipeline
04:42 Simpler Upgrade Options for Customers

#mac #macmini #macbook
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[Jemlim]

3:54
One small addition: Apple Refurbished still sells 8GB RAM ones.

[sathsang]

if it closes 256 GB Hard disk and make it 512GB then we can make festival

[UbuntuPersonNoMint]

Apple needs to make the base model have 32 gb and 1tb ssd for its price. That would make pcs become even cheaper

[graxxor]

I’m hoping that we can choose to Disable AI completely And maintain access to all the 16 GB instead of being forced to handover half of it to AI.

[mohamedfayed]

Apple can turn a $8 into $200 .
that is why it is a 3 trillion dollars company.
96 GB ram for $200 is available for all consumers every where shipped to their door .
imagine the price Apple pays to the suppliers for 8 GB (less than one dollar per GB which means 8 GB update cost them $8) and charges $200 for .

[Dfit]

They should have upgraded the base storage to 512gb too.

[PeterEmery]

I suspected that Apple Intelligence was primarily responsible for the 16GB minimum boost, as it became available simultaneously with Apple Intelligence. Additionally, I anticipated that 16GB might not suffice in the future. Consequently, when I purchased an M4 Mac mini, I opted for 24GB of memory and 1TB of storage, as I noticed that 512GB was filling up rapidly.

[franzpleurmann]

I wish there was a way to run macOS in headless mode on a mac mini to free up some ram for other use.

[ricarmig]

They released THREE generations with 8 GB because it works as 10 GB with very fast swap and for many people it’s enough. I just bought the M4 because it will last longer and has faster video editing, other than that, my M1 base runs pretty well

[GilbertTV]

Apple just need to upgrade the base hard drive now to 512GB now ... haha

[Alex-vpky]

I don’t need a why, just grateful they did. Now if they can bump up storage then we’d be cooking 😅

[RunForPeace-hkcu]

Apple needs Apple intelligence to succeed.

They need all their devices to run Apple intelligence.

16gb is required without impacting performance

If Apple intelligence performs poorly, customers will not adopt to the tech. That’s a bigger problem for Apple than giving customers extra 8GB of ram.

In return, they make their money back off storage/memory upgrade prices

😬

[oblivious_]

That terminator joke was good lol. Imagine a base model terminator ran out of swap memory.

[pbrigham]

It was the only good thing I saw about IA this year, yeah looks is time for me to upgrade my mid 2015 MacBook. And by the way, the era of Macs lasting 10 years is over, the Apple Silicon Macs will never last that much, and I don't think people realised that yet when they are buying this new machines.

[benzaitenapollo]

Cuz Apple knows the world is heading towards a big economic slump where people have a lot less money. In other words, Apple has been able to sell 8gbs as a way to indirectly force people to pay more money to get over 16 gbs, knowing that people have money due to quantative easing financial policies worldwide that have created a severe degree of inflation

[andyH_England]

My explanation is that Apple, being a small player, has an 8% market share, which is dictated to by the Windows competition, so when MS insisted this year that to get a CoPilot+ stamp, OEMs had to start at 16GB, Apple responded. Last year, nearly every Windows OEM also started at 8GB, but they were hidden from view, with Windows OEMs sending high-config PCs for reviews or paying for sponsored content. So we never saw the truth, and instead, as Apple does not pay creators, YouTube decided to embrace a narrative of negativity versus Apple with the 8GB stick.

I doubt it has much to do with Apple Intelligence, as Apple states AI can run on 8GB due to their onboard quantized small learning models. If you are going to be running LLMs, then 16GB is nowhere near enough—64GB or more is recommended. We can follow this logic for base storage; Apple will have to move to 512GB as CoPilot+ requires minimum storage.

It was never about Apple being stingy with 8GB; it was about Apple falling in line with the competition. Despite the influencers' prescription for flexing on this, Apple would never be the first to base 16GB as that would cause Windows rivals to respond. Apple cannot compete with its small OS share, so pushing the market is not a suitable economic move when facing a Windows monopoly.

[marcanthonyskidmore]

16GB? Childa play compared to my 64GB Acer Predator 700/