this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
714 points (95.1% liked)

Technology

34981 readers
61 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

No surprises here. Just like the lockdown on iPhone screen and part replacements, Macbooks suffer from the same Apple's anti-repair and anti-consumer bullshit. Battery glued, ssd soldered in and can't even swap parts with other official parts. 6000$ laptop and you don't even own it.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TechnoBabble@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You're getting heavily downvoted by people who obviously don't understand how RAM works. Or how computers work?

Guys, Apple is shitty, we all know this, but onboard RAM is the least of their anti-consumer practices.

The problem with socketed RAM is the length of the traces going back to the CPU. That 100% reduces performance (and battery life) by a significant amount. Especially when using that socketed RAM as iGPU VRAM.

Dell's CAMM standard reduces the latency compared to SODIMM, for socketed RAM, but what we really need is for someone like Apple to invest R&D into really tiny RAM sockets that are super close to the CPU, instead of researching ways to lock users out.

Thanks a bunch. The level of ignorance here to Apple's design choices is palpable. Some of the stuff they do is very anti-consumer. Soldered RAM isn't one of them - at least on Apple Silicon. Having modular GPU RAM hasn't been a thing for over a decade for good reasons.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn't even sound that complex. Little LGA style socket, tiny heatsink clip to hold it in place.

There's even laptops that have soldered RAM and a SODIMM slot. Could you limit the GPU to using the soldered RAM? Still won't help you if it develops a fault though.

The RAM is built onto the substrate. Every contact you add increases signal degredation. Plus actually trying to fit eight sockets on a SoC package would be a complete nightmare.

Dividing RAM like that into two pools would violate the permise of the whole unified memory system. You're really asking for the wrong thing here. Why not convinve them to do something like a modular SSD that's far more achievable? Also memory that doesn't come at sky high prices with an actual sensible mimimum (8GB on MacBooks in 2023, really?).

For other laptops there is actually a solution to this problem called a CAMM. It would even work for the M2 Macbooks possibly (not the M2 Pro or Max) if apple are willing to sacrifice size or battery life of the laptop. The reason this wouldn't work for the M2 Pro and Max is you would need two or four of these things. It would be diffcult enough to fit just one in a Macbook that have tiny, tiny logic boards to begin with.