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eRondeau

macrumors 65816
Mar 3, 2004
1,167
394
Canada's South Coast
Apple once pushed the computer industry forward, but decisions like this keep them languishing in the past. It really does seem that Apple enjoys punishing their customers and themselves. Making 16GB RAM standard would probably cost them about $15/unit, their customers would be thrilled, and they'd be rockstars for finally doing it. Meanwhile they decided they'd rather take a humiliating beating from Mac bloggers, p*ss off early adopters, and anger their long-time customers -- all to save 1% on a $1500 sale.
 

brofkand

macrumors 65816
Jun 11, 2006
1,416
3,566
Disagree. There's an option to upgrade if needed. Why should customers pay for more memory they don't need?

This is a separate discussion from the pricing of memory.

If 8GB of RAM is fine, get the $799 MacBook Air M1. The fact that this machine costs twice as much is inexcusable.

There is no workload in which 8GB of RAM is acceptable but the M1 isn't.
 
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ZachHarley

macrumors newbie
Dec 16, 2012
22
4
Memory controllers are on SOC, and have everything to do with memory. This is why you see a binned 3 channel memory max vs a 4 channel max m3 ...
Sure, but all RAM variants of the base M3 have the same memory bandwidth so it doesn’t make a difference if the package has 8GB or 24GB.
 
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Plutonius

macrumors G3
Feb 22, 2003
9,062
8,450
New Hampshire, USA
As I’ve said for a while now, Apple stopped caring about making great products around 2011. Now they just care about making great profits.

I’m not saying there haven’t been some great products since 2011, just look at the 2013 MacPro (sarcasm intended), but Apple has clearly changed the order of importance.

It's no different from all other corporations. Apple's primary concern is its shareholders.
 
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salamanderjuice

macrumors 6502a
Feb 28, 2020
527
570
This is a production thing and not a marketing thing. Chips dont always come out perfect, so you need to bin them for what class they fall under, if you have a m3 chip that can operate just fine with 8gb of ram and 256gb of storage, why throw it out?! This is why intel has so many product lines when a new chip is released and the top chips are so expensive, they try to price out the demand curve for the high end product and sell everyone the binned ones.
That's not how it works...

You can turn off a CPU or GPU core that doesn't work. If the memory or storage controllers are broken then you just can't use that chip.
 
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Thejunkie

macrumors newbie
Nov 10, 2023
1
1
Another low-quality clickbait from that channel, which doesn't know what they're talking about. Every configuration has a bottleneck.

Would you call the base M chip a bottleneck too?

Need more? Buy more. Simple as that. Not everyone needs 16 GB.
Cant believe i scrolled down so far to find the right comment.
I have the pro with 8gb of ram, and i dont need more, i like the nice display, i like the enough for me speed, and all that with 8GB.

Lets just say apple makes the 16gb the base model, now you got yourself a base model, whats to stop apple from just making the base model cost $1799 instead of 1599.

A lot of people would not want the pro now, but would go with the cheaper air that is not as nice as the pro.

Give the people the option to get whatever they want to get with their money. Or go get yourself a chromebook.
 

4nNtt

macrumors 6502a
Apr 13, 2007
918
719
Chicago, IL
As low as memory costs are now, why would Apple cheap out like this?
Right. It feels like a decision made for artificial diversification of the lineup. Packaging costs are probably higher for unified memory, but 8 vs 16 GB would still be the same number of chips. It isn’t like stepping up above the M3 where memory chip count changes for more bandwidth.
 

fredn

macrumors member
Aug 2, 2011
76
40
Cinebench ... Photoshop ... Final Cut ... Adobe Lightroom Classic ... Blender

Why are they testing these kind of software on this machine?

If you even know the names of these software and what they do, then you also know this is not the machine to do that work with.

This is clearly a machine aimed squarely at students, writers, office workers, etc. So test it with Chrome, Page, Excel, Keynote (or the M$ equivalents), Zoom, playing Youtube/Netflix, etc.

Not everyone is a YouTube content creator.
 

ddhhddhh2

macrumors regular
Jun 2, 2021
223
344
Taipei
Having 8 GB as an option is a good thing.

Whether you think the price is reasonable is a separate issue.

I really admire your relentless defense of the 8GB model, but I have to say, the price (or cost) isn’t a separate issue – it's the main issue. Why not start at 16 or 32 then? Like I said before, Apple could flip it and start with 16 or 32GB. For users who don't need that much memory, they could choose to 'reduce' it. Oh, but sorry, this game might be tough to play because, in Apple's world, 8GB is actually bigger than a WinPC's 16GB – I mean, in terms of price.
 

boak

macrumors 65816
Jun 26, 2021
1,493
2,405
Making 16GB RAM standard would probably cost them about $15/unit
No.

1. Keep starting price at $1599, upgrade all 8 GB to 16 GB: Apple loses potential profit of $185/unit.
2. Raise starting price to $1799, remove 8 GB models: Apple loses potential sale due to higher starting price.

Apple has done the market research and knows that starting at 8 GB is the sweet spot. Moving in either direction leads to loss of potential revenue.
 
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