Apple’s MacBook Pro memory problem is worse than ever::Apple still sells expensive “Pro” computers with just 8GB of RAM and charges a fortune for more.
Then stop buying it.
I have the feeling that a big chunk of apple consumers (I know there are many professionals and developers that love apple) don’t even know what RAM is used for and will just buy it because it’s the “cheapest version of the newest thing” without much critical consideration
How much ram do you need to pretend to be a writer at Starbucks? 64k ?
You don’t need a computer for that.
Wish I could. I hate working on Macs, but it seems like half of my mission-critical programs at work are Mac exclusive for some reason. Apple really pushed the “we’re built for art and artists” thing, so there are a lot of programs in the fine arts world that are Mac exclusive. Digital art, music, live entertainment, etc are all wholly dependent on Macs, purely because the programs needed to make those things are Mac exclusive.
Wait what? I’ve been using windows exclusively for art and music. Not specifically for live music and nothing stops me from that. What are these exclusive Mac apps that can’t be replaced with something else?
They’ve put a lot of work into locking people into an ecosystem. To pick one example, if you’ve got a Logic project you want someone to be able to edit, even if you manage to migrate it with all of the required stuff, they’re still going to need a Mac to open it.
Could you name a couple? I’m not aware of any industry standard applications that are exclusive to macos. Or is this some custom designed stuff?
Look up what a “hackintosh” is. You’re welcome.
Doesn’t work for newer MacOS versions since they’ve gone to ARM.
What? Macos Sonoma is compatible with MacBooks from 2017. Hackintoshes are absolutely still possible on Intel, and from a cursory googling it appears they’re out there. Apple will eventually cut off support for Intel Macs on some future (major) release, sure, but there’s probably a few more years until that happens.
With that said, hackintoshes are a suboptimal solution to OPs problem. Ideally they should really move to other applications properly supported on multiple platforms.
The base models (the air’s, not pro’s), should have shipped with 12-16GB standard, and the pro’s should have shipped with 16-24GB standard. I’d argue that a minimum of 24-32GB should really be the standard on something named a “pro” model.
Apple’s M-based laptops are really great - excellent display, best-in-class speakers, good keyboard, industry-leading trackpad…But 8GB of RAM for $1600? Get out of here.
Do they still solder the SSD?
Of course
Well that’s not very “green” coming from a company who stopped supplying customers with chargers “because of the environment.” When a hard drive craps out the only solution is to replace the entire board rather than a single part with an industry standard connector?
They disassemble those replacements and use them to create warranty parts. Apple is one of the few companies that actually does reduce and reuse first. Any parts that fail testing get recycled.
They desolder components and reuse them or they scrap old laptops and scavenge the good bits like the screen and keyboard? Assuming someone brings in a laptop with a bad hard drive, what components later get disassembled?
All of them. They have machines that strip down the components:
This article is about the iPhone robots but they also have machines that do this with Macs too. Every Apple device is made with recycled content but the majority of their components are reused in remanufactured warranty devices (remanufactured rather than refurbished because refurbished reuses existing whole components, remanufacturing breaks down components, tests them, and reuses them to create entirely new components from working parts).
Could just solder a new ssd no?
Removing individual soldered NAND chips directly connected to the motherboard, attaching new NAND chips, and somehow getting a working computer out the other end is so far beyond the abilities of most users that it’s not even funny.
It’s way beyond the skillset of even most computer repair specialists too.
In fact, in terms of “getting it working again” is concerned, anyone outside of an Apple assembly plant is unlikely to be much use.
People have done it on M1’s at least. You’ll need a well equipped rework station to do it though, especially since the NAND is essentially glued to the motherboard in addition to solder.
Technically they don’t even have an SSD anymore. They just have a bunch of NAND chips.
The drive controller is in the CPU. Which is great for performance… especially when you’re reading data that is already cached by the drive controller you’re limited by RAM speed instead of PCIe - but it’s a bit of a headache when it comes to upgrades.
The band chips are on a daughter board on their larger desktops. And soldered on laptops and the tiny Mac Mini.
Yes. There is no internal upgradable parts. I believe you can only replace the battery cells, the fans, and the mainboard (motherboard with soldered CPU/RAM(VRAM)/SSD, and all connected modules like the USB chipsets, audio chipset, etc.).
Replacing the motherboard triggers the screen drm and the screen gets all fucked up and won’t go to sleep.
Everything is soldered these days, RAM included, hence the issues and complaints. I find it extra comical that they tried to cheapen on the solder as well, but when that resulted in issues with GPU splitting away from PCB, they glued shoe rubber on top the chip so case pushes it to make contact and called it a “solution”. Haha. Imagine the amount of savings they made on such a wast amount of solder per PCB. It might even approach range in pennies.
32gb might have been “pro” 5 years ago but not anymore, not when a run of the mill 32gb DDR5 kit can be had for $100
Apple won’t even offer that for the 8GB models, the best you can do for those is pay $400 to get them with 24GB included.
And obviously everything is soldered and nothing is upgradeable.I meant as a base spec for a “pro” system.
yes, my opinion is that 32gb was the minimum spec for a “pro” system 5 years ago. Nowadays, if 32gb is actually enough as a minimum spec then you’re in “enthusiast” territory in my opinion, not “pro”. Perhaps that’s more telling about my standards as a PC enthusiast though, and about how far PC hardware has come
If you ask me, everyone and everything that’s calling itself a pro isn’t really pro.
And than again John from finance is a professional who want a MacBook Pro. IT gave him a 8gb pro. John is happy and doesn’t know a damn thing about computers.
Disclaimer: I’m in no way trying to defend Apple here.
Saying that X amount of RAM (or any other component spec for that matter) is not enough for a “Pro” computer is not really a universal truth or something, you can’t compare people running multiple instances of Docker with people doing photo editing or web dev for example.
Either of those can be “Pros” within their field, their hardware requirements doesn’t make them professionals or enthusiasts. I know I’m being a bit tangential here, but arguing about the “correct” spec por a Pro computer has always irked me.
That being said, I agree it’s ridiculous that Apple is shipping $1K+ computers with merely 8GB of RAM. Also, it’s known that Apple’s “pro” devices most of the time just mean they’re just their most expensive tier. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Also, it’s known that Apple’s “pro” devices most of the time just mean they’re just their most expensive tier. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Your lack of knowledge shows. Everyone with at least 2 brain cells and capability to read can understand that this is just plain wrong.
Macbook pro for example has a CPU cooler inbuilt (first ever on a laptop BTW)
That part of my comment was a bit of an hyperbole tbh, but it’s also true that Apple just slaps the “Pro” moniker to their most expensive tier without always making them deserve it.
Before the iPhone 15 Pro series, there wasn’t really much “pro” in the Pro models. Same with the iPad Pro, sure they’re way nicer and higher end, but hardly anything “pro” about them.
And don’t get me started with the new baseline 14 inch MacBook Pro, with a regular M3 and 8GB of RAM.
Yeah I was just joking - since the MBA - MBP difference is basically that MBP has a cooling fan
Also, have in mind that main memory shared with igpu, so if we talking about memory heavy tasks like 8k video render with masks, effects and stuff, then this memory will be eaten not only by app, but also with gpu encoder. 64gb would be more close to “bearable minimum” but oh well, magic apple ram I guess.
People could rage about the memory cost all they want but as long as people keep buying the expensive upgrade, Apple wouldn’t give a fuck. Why would they voluntarily shut down the money hose?
Raging about it can stop people from buying it, so I say carry on.
I mean, I get why people don’t like it but at the same time, no one forces you to buy one. I like Macs, I enjoy using OS X and would use it as my primary OS. I don’t because I don’t find the value proposition of their hardware worth it.
Their loss, they have a market, they just aren’t interested in it.
Their loss, they have a market, they just aren’t interested in it.
They are very interested in your money and parting your money from you.
Capitalism is as capitalism does
Life is like an overpriced box of chocolates
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I’m kinda of in the same boat.
My “main” computer is a M1 iPad at this point. It’s fast, and I can do all my day to day things on it. If I want to play games I do have a PC for that, but Windows isn’t that “pleasant” to use so I don’t spend much time with it beyond games.
I was reminded how much MacOS is just a pleasant experience a couple months ago when I found a sale for old mac minis. They had a 2014 model for $60. I put a new SSD in it, and I’m typing on that machine right now. It can get Monterey, but nothing newer. But that still lets me send texts, and the machine unlocks with my watch when I wake it up.
All that to say is: I’ve now been looking at buying a brand new Mac Mini, but the memory and hard drive charges are insane. They always have been, but it’s just ridiculous at this point.
You can look into this if you want to upgrade to a newer macOS.
Thanks!
I feel like I remember seeing this project right when I got this computer, but I didn’t look too far into it. I’ll have to check it out.
I do have a little worry that running the newest MacOS would make this little, old mini run pretty slow. I need to do some research.
No if anything newer OS is faster. Apple works extremely hard to improve battery life and has been gradually reducing the size of the batteries in their laptops to get the weight down. My latest Mac has a 50Wh battery that lasts 18 hours in real world use. Years ago I used to get 5 hours from a 100Wh battery.
Those battery improvements aren’t just from efficient hardware - it also comes from more efficient software.
If you still had a HDD that’d be a problem, the software assumes a fast drive now and leaves memory on the disk that, years ago, would have been pulled into RAM, but you won’t have that problem since you have an SSD (also… that’s a big part of why Macs don’t need much RAM compared to Linux or Windows).
Apple drops support for old Macs when the cheapest configuration of that Mac is no-longer fast enough. With upgrades, like yours has, it’s often fine.
… but seriously when you can afford it an M1 processor will be an order of magnitude faster. I’ve got a 2014 Mac Mini at home and also an M1 laptop. The speed difference is astronomical. Mostly I just keep the Mac Mini around for backups/etc since connecting a laptop into an external backup drive is annoying.
I may have already bought a new Mac mini if it didn’t cost $400 to upgrade the ram and hard drive space to something respectable.
I’ve used my M1 iPad with stage manager with my external monitor quite a bit, and it smashes this old Mac mini on opening and closing apps and whatnot.
I have the same mini which runs Sonoma like a champ. OCLP is a wonderful tool.
That’s good to know. I may try and see if I can get it up and running.
Yeah. I use a MacBook for its build quality and being UNIX (cough Windows cough), plus some niceties like iCloud, but the RAM cost is insane.
The whole thing boggles my mind. Keep in mind that a good number of “Pro” users are corporate types running PowerPoint and Excel but certainly wouldn’t stoop to using a consumer model.
Not everyone is in that boat - for example in our theatre we have Mac’s with QLab installed and nothing else. They’re not even connected to the internet.
QLab needs about 250MB of RAM.
Oh, and because reliability is critical (it controls large robots that operate heavy fast moving objects in close proximity to humans) we need two of them. They run next to each other with a big red button you can smash with your fist at any time to seamlessly disconnect one and connect the backup.
A bit of money saved by having less RAM is fine with me. We could afford 16GB (or a lot more) but why waste money on that? Especially when one of the Macs will hopefully never be used except for routine testing to check if it works.
QLab doesn’t run on other operating systems and doesn’t really have any viable alternative either. There’s plenty of professional software that doesn’t need a bunch of memory. This one is essentially just a graphical programming tool that allows artistically talented people to do things that would normally require a software engineer.
But seriously - the MacBook Pro has a HDMI port. Apple’s cheaper laptops are too thin for HDMI, so they obviously don’t have one. If all you do is email and meetings - then HDMI is totally worth it and 8GB is fine. It would be nice if protectors around the world switched to DisplayPort (which can run over USB-C) but that’s not the world we live in.
USB-C to HDMI cables are unreliable in my experience. They might work, but sometimes you get weird issues around areas like detecting the supported list of resolutions/aspect ratios and so on.
I really do one want but can’t justify €1800-2000 for one or even €3500 if I actually get the one, I want (14 inch screen).
I can get probably a better laptop or PC with lower costs. Plus I have been told that unfortunately MacBooks don’t do well with Excel (still sad about this).
MacBooks don’t do well with Excel
I’m curious about this. My past experience with Office 365 is that the apps works better on MacOS, but maybe it’s short on more advanced features, like complex macros?
So I’m studying Finance with a mix of Accounting and I have been told that MacBooks don’t have the “ALT” key which is a key button for Excel in terms of shortcuts.
As well as what you said probably certain advanced features might not be available. But I’m not certain about this because never had a MacBook.
As well as a software called Power Bi doesn’t work well on MacBooks (slow, freezing or straight up not working). My friend had this issue in university and was forced to use my laptop to do the models.
Macs have an alt key, it’s just called option. https://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/option-alt-keys-apple-us-keyboard.jpg
Most key combos are slightly different on mac though. Windows has a lot of ctrl or alt + key combos, Mac largely just has them all done with the command key. But that’s obviously down to the developer, they could do whatever they want.
I have been told that MacBooks don’t have the “ALT” key
Correct. Almost all apps use the “option” key on a Mac, which is not a key on Windows keyboards. It more or less is just a change in the key name for most apps. I just tried using it in Excel to create a new line in a cell, and it has the same behavior as the ALT key on a Windows device.
As well as a software called Power Bi doesn’t work well on MacBooks (slow, freezing or straight up not working). My friend had this issue in university and was forced to use my laptop to do the models.
Third-party software compatibility is obviously going to be an issue for some software on MacOS.
Laughs in ThinkPad running Linux.
Cries in soldered RAM
That’s a trend that needs to die. I blame MacBook airs and ultrabooks for this nonsense.
Yeah I’m a fan boy but I agree with this 100%. In the old days I’d just buy lowest ram config and then replace with after market but obviously we dont have the option anymore. It sucks because I could use at least 64 in my m3 but it was cost prohibitive.
Gonna have to try pricing up a laptop for next year. Want to get a MacBook next year for Final Cut after having tried it on a Hackintosh. Not looking forward to pricing up the memory lol
Ram price aside, the m3 MacBook pros are fucking monsters. My handbrake encodes went from 35fps to about 200fps (from an 8core i9), stable diffusion tasks that took 70 seconds now take 5, LLMs are spitting results out at 30+ tokens a second, even baulders gate 3 runs great. Battery life is SICK. Handbrake and BG3 are about the only things that even turned on the fans which are normally totally off, just passive cooling. The whole thing is cool on my lap. The i9 was a leg burner pretty much all the time. Bringing MagSafe back with 140watts was a real win. The screen is beautiful. The speakers… shit I dont remember the last time I was impressed by laptop speakers- this is one of those times. It’s worth it, even if your wallet cries buying ram.
Buy expensive, cry once.
I’m positive the minimum went up to 16gb like a generation or two back. It’s sickening that they went back over.
I have a couple of work MacBooks with 8gb for managers and they often complain of them going slow as molasses when having a good few tabs open in chrome. I’m talking less then 10 though, but heavy sites like email and AdWords and other horrible sites.
Less than 10 ? Sounds a bit far fetched. Any modern OS with 8 gb ram can handle 10 tabs. It is probably for other reasons may be
The base model isn’t really the base model. If you are buying a Mac you just have to accept you are spending $2k on it
Yup. The MacBook I would actually want is about $1.9-2.3k, but Windows laptops with similar specs also cost a similar amount, so I guess I’ll stick with my current one.
I think what Apple has done with their M series of chips is actually incredible and very interesting. However actually purchasing their hardware is just out of the question when I’m just going to run a Linux distro on whatever I purchase.
I recently had the need for some apple hardware due to customer projects - and ended up buying an air with 16GB of RAM when it was available relatively cheaply.
The keyboard is shit - but keyboards are shit on pretty much any notebook nowadays unfortunately.
Both memory and storage are a problem - the rest is surprisingly nice. I also have a Windows arm notebook from HP, same 16 GB storage issue, but at least the SSD is user replacable.
We should get rid of 8GB base models in general - that’s pretty much what you’d expect in a phone nowadays, but not in a computer.
If you think the keyboard is shitty now, the keyboard is even shittier during the butterfly keyboard era. If you get a mac 5 years ago you’ll probably curse the keyboard daily. Their current keyboard is basically the best mac users can get in the past 8 years.
What don’t you like about the keyboard? It’s quiet, low profile, easy to type on quickly, lights up… not sure what else you’d want.
low profile
that is a problem
easy to type on quickly
not really, doesn’t have a clear pressure point, so leads to keys not registering surprisingly often. I also get pain in my hands if I’m working on it for several hours.
I only can do something like 70-80 WPM on that, on a proper keyboard I’m doing slightly above 100.
lights up
Don’t care about that.
Additionally half the useful keys (pgup/pgdown/end/home/insert/delete/…) are hidden behind FN combinations.
doesn’t have a clear pressure point, so leads to keys not registering surprisingly often.
Are you trying to press the keys as lightly as possible or something? Just hit them until they bottom out, it’s like 0.1mm more travel than their actuation point.
Are you trying to press the keys as lightly as possible or something?
Pretty much the opposite, I’m usually either typing on a buckling spring keyboard, or on one with Kailh Box Navy switches - which requires quite a bit of force, and both have quite a bit of travel.
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Everyone’s different. I type 8h+/day on my 2019 (Intel) pro, and if I’m writing text as opposed to code I’m hitting 130wpm consistently and accurately. I’m not a small guy either; it’s hard to find gloves that fit me.
I can’t stand most laptop keyboards and the old butterfly design was awful, but the current gen Mac keyboards are pretty good for me.
That’s okay, because their 8GB is the same as 16GB on other machines. They are just that better. /s
11GB idling?? Maybe not as optimized as it seems…
That’s just cached memory. Pretty common practice for any modern OS to retain memory until 60% usage or so. Costs nothing and is snappier performance.
11GB idling is only after having done other things. When you launch it’ll be less than 2 in my experience.
Ohhh right, I totally forgot about that. Remember reading about it somewhere. In that case, I guess it makes more sense.
Yeah you need to be careful what memory numbers you read - I’ve seen some of them hit terabytes on my Mac, and I only have a 256GB SSD so there’s no way that’s physically possible. Just because a memory address is tracked by the kernel doesn’t mean it’s actually being used. You can have a single region of memory counted multiple times (in my case, probably millions of times… I don’t think I was using much swap at all).
Apple has surpassed its peak age. Downfall is coming.
Pretty sure people have said this for like 10 years
If you have a problem with Apple hardware, don’t buy it. Simple as.
They do this because they know people will buy it. If less people bought it, they would stop doing it.
And still no ecc?
What consumer grade laptop has ECC? Only high end workstations have ECC, and even then it’s usually an expensive option that probably very few opt for.
DDR5 in the spec
It has some data correction built in, but doesn’t have ECC in the traditional sense.
Just to clarify.
Yeah, not gonna happen. The only real reason Mac Pros had ECC was because it was standard with Xenon. ATPs latest episode goes over why we’ll probably never see ECC on the M series Macs and why it’s not actually as useful anymore (lookup linked ECC).
I have the base M1 MacBook Pro, but I’m seriously considering eventually switching to a framework laptop with Linux if I ever get the chance. I love the processor and OS on this thing, but it feels like I’m hitting a wall with doing some of the more advanced stuff I want to do.
