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Comment by foldr | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I think a lot of people are assuming that 8GB will work as poorly on an Mx system as it would on an older Intel Mac. But it's widely reported that this is not the case. (The faster SSDs help, and I suspect that memory compression may work more effectively too.)

See various anecdotal reports such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26913643, or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38103103 in this very thread.

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Why would you want RAM to swap to fast SSDs when you can avoid it with more RAM in the first place, though? Sure it's not a molasses-slow spinning HDD..... but SSDs are still far slower than RAM, and having swap hit the SSDs means unnecessary writes/wear... especially on systems where the SSDs can't even be replaced

I think whether or not people always encounter it "feeling slow" is a different concern as to whether or not 8GB of RAM should ever even be offered by Apple on a system that will for sure eventually swap to disk for users. Adding Apple's huge margins on RAM upgrades on top of this just makes it even more disgusting... they should start their models at a higher baseline- it costs them next to nothing (8GB RAM vs 16GB RAM is not a cost-to-Apple issue, it's an extremely cheap component), but then of course they can't squeeze customers for ludicrous amounts of upsell margins (their cost-to-consumer RAM upgrade margins are absolutely appalling)

Selling suboptimal hardware configurations might be a good business decision but I wish our standards weren't so low for companies, especially ones selling $1600 machines with 2013-amounts of RAM in them

I don’t really care if it swaps to disk if there’s no noticeable slowdown. I understand that some people just take it as axiomatic that 8GB isn’t enough, but I think it makes more sense to look empirically at whether the majority of users would notice a significant improvement for their workloads. Some users do need 16GB (or more), but I suspect they’re a fairly small minority. So why put it in the base model? That’s money Apple can spend on more important features of the base laptop (e.g high quality display, speakers, trackpad - all the stuff that 90% of plasticy Wintel machines at the same price point fail on).

I’m puzzled by the idea that there’s something inherently bad about swapping. It’s a natural consequence of virtual memory and is pretty much required for optimal exploitation of available RAM. Let apps allocate as much RAM as they’d ideally like to have, and then leave it to the OS to keep the most frequently used pages in physical RAM.

> Some users do need 16GB (or more), but I suspect they’re a fairly small minority. So why put it in the base model?

Most users don't need 3 whole Thunderbolt ports either, why put that on there too?

More RAM in the base-model Pro signals that it is a higher-end product. It raises the bar for the entire product category and makes it easier to not depreciate an entire year's worth of functional computers (you know how Apple is). It decreases the write pressure on the soldered SSD, and ensures that future MacOS releases, AI features and games don't get bottlenecked by a $15 component. It reduces the friction when casual users want to use their current Mac for more demanding workloads. It future-proofs against needing a newer machine and increases the value of said laptop secondhand.

In every way, the old Macbook Pro 14" pricing model was a more sustainable, attractive and user-friendly. This spec drop is a sad excuse to direct would-be 13" owners to a more expensive alternative.

> I’m puzzled by the idea that there’s something inherently bad about swapping.

If you're doing it to non-replaceable flash storage, then yeah there is something inherently wrong about relying on swap.

>Most users don't need 3 whole Thunderbolt ports either, why put that on there too?

At a guess, because varying the number of physical ports between models complicates production more than varying which RAM chips are soldered to the board. (Apple has generally shunned having physically identical USB-C ports with differing capabilities.)

>If you're doing it to non-replaceable flash storage, then yeah there is something inherently wrong about relying on swap.

All modern multitasking desktop OSes rely on swap and have since the mid 90s.

SSD lifetime concerns are way overblown in my opinion. The first MacBooks with soldered SSDs came out in 2016. I'm sure there are individual instances of SSDs failing, but the much-heralded SSD lifetime apocalypse seems not to have materialised.

What you really want with an SSD isn't the theoretical highly-conservative estimate of its lifetime write limit, but the probability that it is going to be the thing that fails on your laptop after n years, in comparison to all the other things that could fail. My guess is that by the time the SSD has a significant probability of failing (which is going to take many years, even with heavy usage), then many other components are going to have a higher probability of failing.

As someone in possession of a perfectly functional 15+ year Macbook, what other components do you expect to fail?

Sorry, I don’t completely understand the question. Lots of things could fail. I don’t have stats on the relative probabilities.

Then you can buy a MacBook or MacBook Air. The pro line is meant for people doing more than browsing and zoom calls. The probability that a person buying a n 8Gb pro will find it limited is very high. I can’t see how Apple would be in the right here.

>The probability that a person buying a n 8Gb pro will find it limited is very high.

Perhaps, but I would like to see evidence for this based on actual tests. Most of the commentary here just takes it as axiomatic that 8GB won't be enough and isn't based on actual comparisons of the 8GB and 16GB models.

My employer provided 8GB mbp has a hard time running some nodejs container workloads. The build step is particularly resource intensive to the point it slows down the whole system. So if you're developing with auto reload enabled, you're in for a hard time. So my solution is to use a separate intel server I have around, with VS Code remote extension. So now I'm tied to that server and my MBP is reduced to being an expensive terminal. If I travel, I can't work without a stable connection to that server. But that was exactly why MBP exists, to allow professionals to do their work. Had I not had the server, that'd be impossible.

Ok, it’s definitely believable that container workloads would be difficult in 8GB, but have you ever tried the same workload on a 16GB model?

I obviously don’t have stats on this, but I suspect it’s a tiny minority of base model MacBook Pros that ever run a container.

Seems like you’re putting a lot of effort in stretching the definition of pro to defend Apple. I have a personal 16GB mbp, they both struggle. Still don’t see your point.

I don't have a definition of 'pro', and my point is not based on any assumptions about what the word means. I don't care how the Apple marketing department decides to name their laptops, and I can't imagine why anyone else would either.

I buy the extra memory with the hope that it extends the lifetime of my computer. I can still use my MBP 10 years later.

I bought a 15” Air two weeks ago with 16GB and I expect I’ll still be able to use it a decade from now.

Have barely used the Air because my software is set up on my Intel. Will transition soon and will be able to compare performance.

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