• @[email protected]
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    1477 months ago

    Well yeah, they’re enough to meet the minimum use cases so they can upsell most people on expensive RAM upgrades.

    That’s why I don’t buy laptops with soldered RAM. That’s getting harder and harder these days, but my needs for a laptop have also gone down. If they solder RAM, there’s nothing you can (realistically) do if you need more, so you’ll pay extra when buying so they can upcharge a lot. If it’s not soldered, you have a decent option to buy RAM afterward, so there’s less value in upselling too much.

    So screw you Apple, I’m not buying your products until they’re more repair friendly.

    • @[email protected]
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      297 months ago

      I had a extra stick of RAM available the other day so I went to open my wife’s Lenovo to see if it’d take it and the damn thing is screwed shut with the smallest torx screws I’ve ever seen, smaller than what I have. I was so annoyed

        • @generichate1546
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          177 months ago

          IFixit kit is a great toolset from the site that has every type of bit in it.

          • @[email protected]
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            77 months ago

            Got myself an IFixit Mako a while ago, really nice even if I mostly just use the philips head ones

            • @generichate1546
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              37 months ago

              Right? It’s nice to have the occasional reverse tri head metric upside down weird random bit when you need it.

            • @generichate1546
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              27 months ago

              I’ve taken apart so so so many things… sometimes for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong reasons…my ZuneHD still works. I’ll never ever try to open a Surface product.

      • @[email protected]
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        117 months ago

        I bought the E495 because the T495 had soldered RAM and one RAM slot, while the E495 had both RAM slots replacable. Adding more RAM didn’t need any special tools. Newer E-series and T-series both have one RAM slot and some soldered RAM. I’m guessing you’re talking about one of the consumer lines, like the Yoga series or something?

        That said, Lenovo (well, Motorola in this case, but Lenovo owns Motorola) puts all kinds of restrictions to your rights if you unlock the bootloader of their phones (PDF version of the agreement). That, plus going down the path of soldering RAM gives me serious concerns about the direction they’re heading, so I can’t really recommend their products anymore.

        If I ever need a new laptop, I’ll probably get a Framework.

          • @[email protected]
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            67 months ago

            Yeah, ThinkPad used to allow either a CD drive or an extra battery in their T-series. They stopped offering the extra battery and started soldering RAM, so I got the cheaper E-series (might as well save cash if I can get what I want).

            I think there’s a market there. Have an option for a hot-swap battery to bring on trips and use the GPU at home. Serious travelers could even bring a spare battery to keep working for longer.

            touchpad with three mechanical buttons

            Yes please! And give me the ThinkPad nipple as well. :) If they had those, I’d not bother with even looking at Lenovo. The middle button is so essential to my normal workflow that any other laptop (including my fancy MacBook for work) feels crappy.

            I’m guessing the things they made modular are just the low hanging fruit. It’s pretty easy to make a USB-C to whatever port, it’s a bit harder to make a pluggable battery in a slot that can also support a GPU.

              • @[email protected]
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                27 months ago

                The thing is, I only like the Trackpoint in a laptop. It’s really nice to scroll while holding the middle mouse button and just shifting my finger. That way, my hand is ready to type, unlike using the trackpad, where I have to move my hands to type, and it works well in my largely keyboard-driven workflow (ViM for text editing, Trackpoint for web browsing).

                On a desktop, I have multiple screens and way more real estate, so the Trackpoint isn’t nearly as effective and it’s worth using the mouse instead.

                But I honestly don’t use my laptop all that often, so it’s something I’m fine doing without. But all other things being similar, I’ll prefer the Trackpoint since it’s a nice value add.

                It’s cool that they’re making those keyboards though. I have and nice mechanical keyboards, so I’m not looking for one, but I would be very interested in a Framework-compatible keyboard with a Trackpoint.

        • @[email protected]
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          7 months ago

          puts all kinds of restrictions to your rights

          The document mentions a lot of US laws. I wonder if they try the same over in the EU.

          • @[email protected]
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            27 months ago

            I’m guessing it wouldn’t hold. But I’m in the US, so I’ll just avoid their phones going forward, and will probably avoid their laptops and whatnot as well just due to a lack of trust.

    • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)
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      67 months ago

      That’s why I don’t buy laptops with soldered RAM.

      Oh, that shit is soldered on…
      I mean, I did see that on some laptops, but only those cheap things in €150 range (new) which even use eMMC for storage.

      • @[email protected]
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        77 months ago

        It became pretty common even on higher end laptops when they switched to DDR5, but some manufacturers are starting to go back to socketed RAM.

      • @[email protected]
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        57 months ago

        I upgraded my personal laptop a year or so after I got it (started with 8GB, which was fine until I did Docker stuff), and I’m probably going to upgrade my desktop soon (16GB, which has been fine for a few years, but I’m finally running out). My main complaint about my work laptop is RAM (16GB I think; I’d love another 8-16GB), but I cannot upgrade it because it’s soldered, so I have to wait for our normal cycle (4 years; will happen next year). I upgraded my NAS RAM when I upgraded a different PC as well.

        I don’t do it very often, but I usually buy what I need when I build/buy the machine and upgrade 3-4 years later. I also often upgrade the CPU before doing a motherboard upgrade, as well as the GPU.

        Meanwhile they just keep selling like crazy and people love them. I think the issue comes from having pricing expectations set over the in race-to-the-bottom world of commoditized Windows/Android trash.

        I might agree if Apple hardware was actually better than alternatives, but that’s just not the case. Look at Louis Rossmann’s videos, where he routinely goes over common failure cases that are largely due to design defects (e.g. display cable being cut, CPU getting fried due to a common board short, butterfly keyboard issues, etc). As in, defects other laptops in a similar price bracket don’t have.

        I’ve had my E-series ThinkPad for 6 years, with no issues whatsoever. The USB-C charge port is getting a little loose, but that’s understandable since it’s been mostly a kids Minecraft device for a couple years now, and kids are hard on computers. I had my T-Mobile series before that for 5-ish years until it finally died due to water damage (a lot of water).

        Apple products (at least laptops) are designed for aesthetics first, not longevity. They do generally have pretty good performance though, especially with the new Apple Silicon chips, but they source a lot of their other parts from the same companies that provide parts for the rest of the PC market.

        If you stick to the more premium devices, you probably won’t have issues. Buy business class laptops and phones with long software support cycles. For desktops, I recommend buying higher end components (Gold or Platinum power supply, mid-range or better motherboard, etc), or buying from a local DIY shop with a good warranty if buying pre built.

        Like anything else, don’t buy the cheapest crap you can, buy something in the middle of the price range for the features you’re looking for.

  • Alien Nathan Edward
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    687 months ago

    Tim Apple be like “We’ve tried charging more money. Have we tried charging more money and delivering less stuff in exchange?”

    • @[email protected]
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      177 months ago

      Yes, they do constantly. Yet, people still keep buying. I hate that I have to use Apple for my job because of the software and interface is exclusive.

      • Alien Nathan Edward
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        77 months ago

        I really like my macbook for dev work, and I think that now that macos is essentially a linux distro it’s quite nice, but it’s not that much better than the free distros and it’s getting worse while they get better. Right now the only thing keeping me on a mac at work is that they gave it to me and the only thing keeping me on a mac at home is that it’s already paid for.

      • @[email protected]
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        47 months ago

        Yup, same. I really don’t like macOS, but that’s what we’ve standardized on. I’m a Linux guy and use Linux at home for everything.

    • @[email protected]
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      77 months ago

      Lol, audio jacks come to mind. As well as a physical button. And shipping devices without cords or chargers.

  • Juniper (she/her) 🫐
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    647 months ago

    I was using my 2016 (or so) MacBook Air the other day and getting low memory errors. I thought, wow, this thing only has 8 gb, maybe it’s time to upgrade, just to see this 😐

    • @[email protected]
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      117 months ago

      My 2009 Mac mini had 8gb of RAM. And it wasn’t even very expensive to do so when I did it in ~2013. Couple hundred bucks max.

        • Pope-King Joe
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          57 months ago

          Yeah I didn’t even pay a hundred bucks for the 32GB of RAM in my current desktop, and it’s DDR5.

        • @[email protected]
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          7 months ago

          11 years ago. May very well have been less. Apples still probably charging more than that to go from 8 to 16 and I had to buy all 8 and replace both DIMMS.

    • @[email protected]
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      77 months ago

      Part of the difference is that the Apple silicon Macs aggressively use SSD swap to make up for limited memory. But that’s at expense of the SSD lifespan, which of course isn’t replaceable.

      I’d never recommend a Mac, but the prices they charge to get a little more RAM or SSD over base are crazy. The only configurations offering any “value” are the base models with 8gb RAM.

  • @[email protected]
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    587 months ago

    Why tf can’t they sell mac with upgradable parts?? They are “so” into renewable and recycling stuff and saving planet and stuff. Then they should start selling shits with upgradable parts. Even cpu’s if possible. Now apple fan boys argue with that. And don’t bullshit me with soc should be near cpu for faster optimisation they can redesign the mobo.

    • @[email protected]
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      327 months ago

      There are legitimate advantages of the RAM being soldered right next to the SoC. However, if anyone could figure out how to create a proprietary RAM module, that slots in right next to the SoC (or even just an SoC module including RAM) that can be swapped out and that doesn‘t have any meaningful performance impact, it would be Apple. Just that it never could be Apple…

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        The problem is the electrical resistance of the socket. Most of the performance on apple silicon is achieved through extremely high bandwidth, low latency memory. Unfortunately that necessitates a socketless design at the moment, and you can see that happening on the snapdragon X too.

        • @[email protected]
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          27 months ago

          Yea, not just snapdragon and apple. Even intel and amd processors usually get paired with higher bandwidth soldered ram on many mobile offerings.

          And on GPUs soldered VRAM has been a thing for a loooong time, with HBM memory being the prime example for what RAM close to the chip can do. AMD‘s Vega cards were highly sought after during the mining craze, even though they weren’t that fast in general computing, simply because their memory bandwidth was so beyond any other consumer cards…

    • @[email protected]
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      257 months ago

      Because that gives the user as much or more control over the device as Apple themselves have. One of the fairly consistent things about Apple over the years has been a desire to maintain tight control for themselves over the products they make.

    • Phoenixz
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      57 months ago

      There is what they say they are in favor of, and there is what they really are in favor of.

      They are in favor of apple getting all the monies, the end

    • @[email protected]
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      37 months ago

      They certainly used to. My wife’s 2012 MacBook Pro has upgraded RAM and SSD parts I’ve put in over the years and still runs fine, though it isn’t used much anymore and OS upgrades stopped a while ago.

      Their current environmental marketing is pure greenwashing bullshit and their stances on upgradability and repairability are terrible.

    • @[email protected]
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      27 months ago

      It’s basically just greenwashing. They pretend to be into renewables and recycling only when it doesn’t disincentivize people from buying the newest product. Ex: iPhone trade in for recycling - Yes, they do recover some raw material but you can only do it if you’re buying a new iPhone with that credit, and its probably also an attempt to keep cheap used iPhones off of the market.

  • Veraxus
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    517 months ago

    My basic web dev Docker suite uses about 13GB just on its own, which - assuming you were on 16GB (double Apple’s minimum) - wouldn’t leave much for things like browser tabs, which also eat memory for breakfast.

    A fast swap is not an argument to short-change on RAM, especially since SSDs have a shorter lifespan than RAM modules. 16GB remains the absolute bare minimum for modern computing, and Apple is making weak, ridiculous excuses to pocket just a few extra bucks per MacBook.

    • @[email protected]
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      197 months ago

      Playing devils advocate here: As someone who deals with stuff like that, you also wouldn’t buy the base model mac. The average computer user can get by with 8GB just fine and it’s not like you can’t configure Macs with more than that.

      That of course doesn’t justify the abhorrent price of the upgrades…

      • @[email protected]
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        137 months ago

        And here I am, putting 16gb in every machine I work on because it’s so damn cheap there’s no reason not to future proof

        • @[email protected]
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          67 months ago

          I mean, same. The difference in price for 8GB and 16GB is negligible, especially if you want dual channel on desktops

          • @[email protected]
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            37 months ago

            My girlfriends mum wanted to know why her laptop was slow… It was because HP thought that 4gb of ram is acceptable in 2022 (when the laptop was sold). Granted ram wasn’t as cheap then as it is now… Still I paid £30 for a brand new 8gb DDR4 sodimm, there’s not reason hp couldn’t do that. It’s annoying the corners these company cut.

            • @[email protected]
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              27 months ago

              My experience is, that 4GB is just about useable for a bit of web browsing and similar stuff. Even on windows 11. I have an old Surface Pro 4 laying around that, in a pinch, works perfectly fine with 11. Of course, it’s not fast. But it’s totally useable.

              • @[email protected]
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                37 months ago

                Her laptop just wasn’t having it, windows 11, windows was using 3.7gb ram took about 30 seconds for task manager to open. As soon as I upgraded the ram is was usable.

                I checked for any surprising background services or anti virus software and there was nothing really

                • @[email protected]
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                  17 months ago

                  That sounds more like issues Windows would have running on an HDD (or maybe eMMC) instead of an SSD… Bit that wouldn’t explain why it got better, when you upgraded the RAM…

            • @[email protected]
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              67 months ago

              Oh yea, absolutely. I meant that in regards to the price of memory itself, be it as modules for your desktop PC or the chips itself for soldered solutions. Apple’s markup is bonkers

            • @[email protected]
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              67 months ago

              That’s because apple is a greedy grabby company who wants all your money. The easiest solution is to stop buying their products

        • @[email protected]
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          57 months ago

          I just slap in 32GB on every computer I build because the MoBos can take 128GB and anything less feels cheap and silly.

      • @[email protected]
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        87 months ago

        The average computer user can get by with 8GB just fine

        Hard disagree. The average computer user is idling at 5gb already because the average computer user is stupid.

        • @[email protected]
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          47 months ago

          Still leaves 3gb for the web browser and the average user isn’t using anything else anyways. And even on chrome that’s quite a few pages.

      • @[email protected]
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        57 months ago

        No they can’t. I ran 8gb of ram for years and it turns out that that’s why my computer sucked

        • @[email protected]
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          67 months ago

          Maybe you’re not an average user then. Most people just browse the web and maybe manage some photos or fill out a document once in a while. You could do that on 4GB if you wanted to, let alone 8.

          • @[email protected]
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            47 months ago

            I wouldn’t say 4gb is usable for the average consumer. Using the assumption they’re using windows 11 that’ll eat 3.7 ish GB of ram just idling.

              • @[email protected]
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                17 months ago

                Tabs of what? Chromes ram usage is more of a meme than an actual ram issue, windows will only allow an application to use so much ram depending on ram availability

                • @[email protected]
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                  7 months ago

                  108 tabs in chromium. Mentioned RAM usage is total RAM usage including all system and kernel, but excluding page cache. Forgot to mention libreoffice in background.

            • @[email protected]
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              17 months ago

              You forget there though, that a lot of the RAM, that Windows (and most modern operating systems) uses, while idling, is a cache of programs you’re likely to open and that gets cleared, if you open something else. That has been a thing since Vista and was btw one of the reasons why Vista was criticized for high memory useage. Windows 11 is very useable with 4GB of RAM, if you’re not planning to do something bigger than browsing the web or editing a word document.

              • @[email protected]
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                17 months ago

                I’m not forgetting that, but it won’t just clear that ram it will want to put it into swap, and depending on your storage speed that can slow tasks down. Making it quite stuttery.

                • @[email protected]
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                  17 months ago

                  I mean, a (good) SSD is worth quite a lot, even on very old systems. I have an old 2008 MacBook laying around. It’s certainly not fast but with an SSD it’s totally useable, even on current macOS versions.

    • @[email protected]
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      107 months ago

      Wow! 13GB! I did some heavy stuff on my computer with like a shit ton of Docker servers running together + deployment and I never reached 13GB!

      Without disclosing private company information lol what are you doing ;)

      • @[email protected]
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        7 months ago

        not OP, but I have to run fronted and backend of a project in docker simultaneously (multiple postgres and redis dbs, queues, search index, etc., plus two webservers), plus a few browser tabs and two VSCode instances open, regularly pushes my machine over 15gb ram usage

        pretty much like this

        • Veraxus
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          7 months ago

          That is basically my use-case. You add a DB service (or two), DNS, reverse proxy, Redis, Memcached, etc… maybe some containers for additional proprietary backend services like APIs, and then the application themselves that need those things to run… it adds up FAST. The advantage is that you can have multiple projects all running simultaneously and you can add/remove/swap them pretty easily.

          RAM is cheap. There is no excuse for shipping a 8GB computer… even if it’s mostly going to be used for family photos and internet.

      • Veraxus
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        27 months ago

        Running a suite of services in containers (DBs, DNS, reverse proxy, memcached, redis, elasticsearch, shared services, etc) plus a number of discreet applications that use all those things. My day-to-day usage hovers around 20GB with spikes to 32 (my max allocation) when I run parallelized test suites.

        Dockers memory usage really adds up fast.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      7 months ago

      Have you seen the difference between the 8 and 16Gb Macbooks, it is ridiculously expensive.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          37 months ago

          Yes, my bad, I wanted to say the difference in price between the 8 and 16Gb model, I know that RAM became dirt cheap nowadays and there aren’t any excuses for Apple to continue offering 8Gb model, as this is exactly a planned obsolescence.

          • @[email protected]
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            27 months ago

            Yeah I was just pointing out the insanity of their pricing, using sarcasm. Its the main way we communicate over here.

            The price difference between the first 2 models where 8gb ram is the only change, is £200. Post 2025 I’m going to need some solution to replace my windows install which solely runs CAD/CAM software. If it wasn’t for this scumbaggery I’d buy a Mac to replace win10, but at present apple are such a shower of cunts I think I may have to put up with win11.

            What a fucking choice…

  • @[email protected]
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    497 months ago

    There is exactly one reason why they do this: So they can charge you $200 to upgrade it to 16GB and in doing so make the listed price of the device look $200 cheaper than it actually is. Or sometimes $400 if it’s a model where the base model comes with a 256GB SSD (the upgrade to 512GB, the minimum I’d ever recommend, is also $200).

    The prices Apple charges for storage and RAM are plain offensive. And I say that as someone who enjoys using their stuff.

    • @[email protected]
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      97 months ago

      That’s why I dropped them when my mid-2013 MBP got a bit long in the tooth. Mac OS X, I mean OS X, I mean macOS is a nice enough OS but it’s not worth the extortionate prices for hardware that’s locked down even by ultralight laptop standards. Not even the impressive energy efficiency can save the value proposition for me.

      Sometimes I wish Apple hadn’t turned all of their notebook lines into MacBook Air variants. The unibody MBP line was amazing.

      • @[email protected]
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        47 months ago

        Sometimes I wish Apple hadn’t turned all of their notebook lines into MacBook Air variants. The unibody MBP line was amazing.

        Typing this from a M2 Max Macbook Pro with 32GB, and honestly, this thing puts the “Pro” back in the MBP. It’s insanely powerful, I rarely have to wait for it to compile code, transcode video, or run AI stuff. It also does all of that while sipping battery, it’s not even breaking a sweat. Yes, it’s pretty thin, but it’s by no means underpowered. Apple really is onto something with their M* lineup.

        But yeah, selling “Pro” laptops with 8GB in 2024 is very stupid.

  • kamen
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    457 months ago

    Yeah, sure. Even if what they say about the OS resource usage is true, it’s only a fraction of the total usage. A lot of the multiplatform software will use the same resources regardless of the OS. Many apps eat RAM for breakfast, doesn’t matter if it’s content creation or software development. Heck, even smartphones these days have have this much or more RAM.

    I won’t argue, I just won’t buy an Apple product in the near future or probably ever at all.

  • Ghostalmedia
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    7 months ago

    I bought one of the early M1s and bought into a lot of the early reviewers that claimed 8 was enough on the ARM architecture. Honestly, for most folks, it’s probably fine. For me, it’s not.

    My wife and I use the M1 has a multi-account family machine. And we’re both experience design directors, so we both have RAM hog design apps open under our accounts. The poor little Mac just can’t handle all that abuse with 8 gigs.

    Our old ass Intel Mac with 16gig of RAM had no problems keeping a ton of crap open.

    The battery life and low heat are absolutely amazing on the M1. That stuff was a monumental upgrade. But we absolutely can’t be lazy and just leave crap open unless it’s actually needed.

    The fact that Apple is selling “Pro” machine with 8 gigs is a joke. 8 would be fine for my folks who fart around on Facebook all day, but it’s not enough for a lot of heavy multimedia work.

    • BreakDecks
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      207 months ago

      8 megs of RAM? I didn’t know they brought back the Macintosh II.

    • @[email protected]
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      7 months ago

      I dunno if you noticed or if that was the joke. But you said “8 megs” three times in your comment when I think you meant to say “8 gigs”. 1 gigabyte ~ 1024 megabytes. Just wanted to let you know in case it wasn’t a joke about how 8 wasn’t enough. That’s all, thank you!

      • Richard
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        27 months ago

        Actually, 1 gigabyte (109 B) is 1000 megabytes (106 B), while one gibibyte (230 B) corresponds to 1024 mebibytes (220 B). I know that in some circles, 1 GB is treated as 1 GiB, so I don’t blame you. This system of quantities is standardised internationally in order to conform with the SI (mega must mean a million times and not 220 times), but many don’t conform to it, such as Microsoft as far as I know.

    • @[email protected]
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      67 months ago

      I found for most CS-ish tasks 8GB is okay. I also bought an early M1 and haven’t had too many problems outside of running VMs, which I expected. I purchased one of the stocked configurations at an Apple store, so there were slim pickings with 16GB of memory that weren’t like double the price of the machine.

      • Ghostalmedia
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        7 months ago

        Yeah, my guess is 2x accounts is the cause of 90% of my performance issues. One person’s Adobe crap is fine, but two us too much for 8gigs without the occasional beach ball.

          • Ghostalmedia
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            27 months ago

            Depends what you’re doing, but for branding and print media, Adobe still dominates most shops. If you’re doing UX, then you’re probably in Figma these days.

              • Ghostalmedia
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                27 months ago

                Yeah, Figma is the new standard for UX design. Adobe was trying to buy them for the last couple years because most people no longer use Adobe tools for UX work.

  • @[email protected]
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    357 months ago

    Apple said some pretty dumb things to defend that 8gb, but let’s not pretend that most manufacturers do the same thing.

    For years people have known it can’t be upgraded. You know that going in.

    No one complains that video cards on (most) laptops can’t be replaced, yet many of them wind up being useless for anything but daily tasks.

    • @[email protected]
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      67 months ago

      For years people have known it can’t be upgraded. You know that going in.

      Not sure that is true, lots of people see the marketing for a MacBook and think that any of them will be enough. Or see the price difference and think they are getting a good deal, or don’t understand why that is. I’ve had to tell people, sorry I know you spent a lot of money on this, but it does not have the storage for what you are wanting to do. Yes, the only way is to buy another one.

      Otherwise yea, everyone tries to gaslight customers into thinking they didn’t get ripped off.

      • @[email protected]
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        27 months ago

        Sure, some people buy a computer without knowing anything about the computer.

        Unified memory is not user accessible. If you think you’ll need additional memory, it’s a good idea to upgrade now.

        They say it right there. Should it be red and flashing? Should there be a confirm button?

        If you go into the Apple Store, someone who is trained to help is always available, and various models are typically in stock.

        I’d like to firmly repeat, that Apple never should’ve said that bullshit. Also I feel that 16 gigs should be the standard amount for any Apple laptop. They are premium products. Perhaps the Mac Mini could start at 8.

        And since you pulled out the gaslight, I’ll call you a misinformed accuser.

  • @[email protected]
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    327 months ago

    As engineers, we should never insert proprietary interfaces into our designs. We shouldn’t obfuscate the design.

    The motivation for these toxic practices comes from the business side because it’s profitable. These people won’t share the profits with you because they are psychopaths. Ultimately we are making more waste when electronics cannot be upgraded, maintained and repaired. It’s bad for people and it’s bad for the environment.

    • @[email protected]
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      7 months ago

      So much stuff in both the hardware and software world really annoys me and makes me think our future is shit the more I think about it.

      Things could be so much better. Pretty much everything could be open and standardised, yet it isn’t.

      Software can be made in a way that isn’t user-hostile, but that’s not the way of things. Hardware could be repairable and open, without OEMs having to navigate a minefield of IP and patents, much of which shouldn’t have been granted in the first place, or users having no ability to repair or upgrade their devices.

      It’s all so tiresome.

      • @[email protected]
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        27 months ago

        I think Napoleon said something similar to “the army is commanded by me and the sergeants”?

        Well, not true anymore today. All this connectivity and processing power, however seemingly inefficiently they are used, allow to centralize the world more than it could ever be. No need to consider what sergeants think.

        (Which also means no Napoleons, cause much more average, grey, unskilled and generally unpleasant and uninteresting people are there now.)

        It’s about power and it happened in the last 15 years.

        I think it’s a political tendency, very intentional for those making decisions, not a “market failure” and other smartassery. It comes down to elites making laws. I feel they are more similar to Goering than to Hitler all over the world today.

        This post may seem nuts, but our daily lives significantly depend on things more complex and centralized in supply chains and expertise than nukes and spaceships.

        We don’t need desktop computers which can’t be fully made in, say, Italy, or at least in a few European countries taken together. Yes, this would mean kinda going back to late 90s at best in terms of computing power per PC, but we waste so much of it on useless things that our devices do less now than then.

        We trade a lot of unseen security for comfort.

  • Phoenixz
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    317 months ago

    Granted, I’m a developer and my dev ide already uses a good 10+GB, I have probably hundreds of tabs and windows open over 6 desktops… But I got 64GB, and I’m considering upgrading to 128, and these clowns think 8 is okay today? My development laptop of like 10 years ago has 8GB

    • @[email protected]
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      87 months ago

      I’ve been okay with 16 for a while. I use ViM as my editor, and occasionally VSCode. I use a single desktop, but I generally have a half dozen or more tmux tabs for various parts of the project.

      That said, I’ve been feeling a bit squeezed with 16GB. The main RAM consumers are:

      • Firefox - I frequently have 100 tabs open, so it takes a few GBs RAM
      • Docker - running most of our app (a dozen or so microservices) takes 3-4GB if I’m careful about turning stuff off that I don’t need, 5-6 if I’m not
      • Teams and Slack - especially during calls, these use a lot

      So I think 16GB should be the minimum, and 24GB should be average. I’m going to be adding another 16GB to my personal development machine (hobbies and whatnot), and my work laptop can’t be upgraded (MacBook), but I’ll be upgrading to an M3 or M4 soonish and will request more RAM.

      8GB is probably fine if you’re just running a browser and that’s it. If you’re doing anything else, 16GB should be the minimum.

    • @[email protected]
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      27 months ago

      I have 16GB and I have to run shit I dev on local k8s. I have to close teams and my browser to get enough ram sometimes.

      • Phoenixz
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        17 months ago

        Buy more memory, if you have the financial means to do so. If not then I’m sorry you’re in that situation

  • @[email protected]
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    237 months ago

    My X220 and T520 each have 16GB. The designed max was actually “only” 8GB, but it turns out 16 GB actually works. I replaced the RAM modules myself without asking Lenovo for permission. Those models came out in 2011.

    • @[email protected]
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      47 months ago

      This was also true for Apple computers before they started soldering the ram in place. I remember going way over spec in my old G4 tower. Hell, I doubt the system would crash if you found larger ram chips and soldered them in.

      • @[email protected]
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        37 months ago

        I doubt the system would crash if you found larger ram chips and soldered them in.

        You can’t even swap components with official ones from other upgraded models. Everything is tied down with verification codes and shit nowadays. So I doubt you could solder in new ram and get it to work.

    • @[email protected]
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      7 months ago

      My HP Omen 17" was designed for a maximum of 32GB ram. I’m currently running 64GB on it.

    • @[email protected]
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      27 months ago

      Yeah lol my thinkcentre with a 6gen intel had only 8GB (I paid under 100€ for it) so I went shopping to double that on a second hand site, but the price for 4, 8 or the 16GB ddr4 ram stick (sodimm, there seems to be a flood of used ones) I bought was about the same, like 30€ shipping included, so now I got 24GB.