this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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About time. This also applies to their older models such as M2 and M3 laptops.

In the U.S., the MacBook Air lineup continues to start at $999, so there is no price increase associated with the boost in RAM.

The M2 macbook air now starts at $1000 for 16GB RAM and 256GB storage. Limited storage aside, that's surprisingly competitive with most modern Windows laptops.

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[–] Mwa@lemm.ee 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

People don't want the 8gb ram because they are all used to windows I bet it.

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[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

watch how (corporate) operating systems will now be heavier accordingly.

[–] FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yes it’s described as being for “Apple intelligence” which I’m sure won’t be bloated nor hard to disable at all.. sigh

[–] histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 days ago

It’s literally a toggle in the settings under apple intelligence

[–] praise_idleness@sh.itjust.works 73 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Considering their industry-leader status, it's about 5-7 years too late.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 25 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I dunno if I'd even consider them an industry leader, unless you break down their ubiquity by industry category (in which they lead graphic design and maybe video editing, iirc). They lead phone sales in the US by a lot, but their overall desktop share is still relatively small (<10%), and their global footprint is buoyed only by iOS (which is still below Windows and Android).

I would say they're an innovator, and they push certain companies to innovate, but they don't really lead by that many metrics.

[–] praise_idleness@sh.itjust.works 21 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I meant leading as in "if Apple does something, others will too". That has been true for quite a long time now.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 7 points 5 days ago

And by that definition, I agree

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 33 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Finally the RAM on that thousand dollar machine is on par with my decade old T420!

[–] dch82@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Hello fellow 7-row-keyboard Thinkpad user! (I use a W520)

EDIT: btw it's a bit older than a decade ago

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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 25 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

The localllama people are feeling quite mixed about this, as they're still charging through the nose for more RAM. Like, orders of magnitude more than the bigger ICs actually cost.

It's kinda poetic. Apple wants to go all in on self-hosted AI now, yet their incredible RAM stinginess over the years is derailing that.

[–] rebelsimile@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago

I do have a 64gb m1 MacBook Pro and man that thing screams at doing LLM AI. I use it to serve models locally throughout my house, while it otherwise still works as a fantastic computer (usually using about half the ram for llm usage). I still prefer a 4080 for image generation though.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago (1 children)

insultingly tiny, unupgradeable storage aside, that's surprisingly competitive with most modern Windows laptops

[–] simple@lemm.ee 24 points 5 days ago (8 children)

It's not ideal, but you're getting probably the best hardware in the market in return. The M series still dominates Windows CPUs, and the build quality on most $1000 laptops leaves a lot to be desired.

[–] schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business 33 points 5 days ago (1 children)

build quality on most $1000 laptops

You're not kidding.

I have a couple of laptops from various vendors, and they're all built like shit.

ASUS is especially eyerolly: the case is literally crumbling into pieces. Like seriously? You couldn't have picked a material that's not literally going to disintegrate in two years on a $1200 laptop?

[–] simple@lemm.ee 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Yeah, a lot of manufacturers are just bad. I knew people who had Dell and MSI laptops and those things feel like toys. Cheap plastic and very wobbly hinges. The only manufacturer I genuinely trust is Lenovo. My Legion is a bit thick but I can at least rest easy that it's built well.

Lenovo is, outside of their really cheap consumer options - like, the $500-and-under options - are pretty solid.

But yeah build quality is one reason when I roll my eyes at the 'haha stupid buying apple! apple tax! lol ripped off!' crowd: I mean maybe, but as soon as you pick up a Macbook whatever it's immediately obvious that you're getting something for what you're paying, and not some bendy flexy piece of plastic crap that will maybe physically survive the warranty period, but not much more.

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

I saw someone’s Samsung laptop last year and the screen was wobbling all over the fucking place. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I commented on it, and the owner just gave me a blank look.

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[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 22 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Just in time for 32gb to become the necessary standard, so they can still sell you egregiously overpriced ram upgrades.

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[–] echodot@feddit.uk 17 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

The M2 macbook air now starts at $1000 for 16GB RAM and 256GB storage. Limited storage aside, that's surprisingly competitive with most modern Windows laptops.

What do you mean limited storage aside?

If we disregard the fact that it's terrible value for money, it's a good deal. No laptop sold in 2025 and costing over a grand, should have anything less than a terabyte.

[–] BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 10 points 4 days ago

But it has a apple logo and it browses facebook just fine.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago

“640k is enough for anyone.”

[–] JDPoZ@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Completely laughable. Literally had 16 GB of DDR3-1600 for my 2600K from 2011 that I handed down to a kid nephew for their first PC to tinker with. Hell, my local NAS has more than that...

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 5 days ago (4 children)

We use windows PCs at work as software engineers now, but when I was training I used a MacBook Pro M1 with 16GB of RAM and that thing was incredibly performant.

I know it in vogue to shit in Apple, but they build the hardware and the software and they’re incredibly efficient at what they do and I don’t think I ever saw the beachball loading icon thing.

Now the prices they charge to upgrade the RAM is something I can get behind shitting on.

[–] independantiste@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

The chip and OS won't do shit when your ram is saturated by electron apps taking 800MB each. Maybe MacOS behaves better under very high memory pressure than windows does, but it doesn't mean it's okay to rip off consumers. That whole 8GB on mac = 16GB on windows has been bullshit all along, and is mostly based on people looking at the task manager and seeing high ram usage on windows (which is a good thing)

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[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 15 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I used Windows, Mac and Linux in the past year.

It's not Mac that's fast, it's Windows that sucks hard.

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 5 days ago (9 children)

Same.

  • Mac - Fast, user friendly, and UNIX based.
  • Windows - Fast (I have a beast), bloated, stupid command prompt (“Add-Migration”, capital letters really.), wants to spy on me.
  • Linux - Fast, a lot of work to get everything working as you would on Windows or Mac and I’m past those days, I just want to turn the thing on and play Factorio or Minecraft, not figure out if my 4080 will run on it etc.

it’s almost like people make choices to suit their needs and there isn’t a single solution for everybody.

I wonder what the industry standard is for developers? Genuinely. I’ve heard it’s Max, but my company is all in on Microsoft, not really heard of companies developing on Linux. Which isn’t to say Linux doesn’t have its place, but I’m aware this place is insanely biased towards Linux.

[–] OhYeah@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Every place I've been at had developers using windows machines and then ssh into a linux environment

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

Makes sense for sysadmin or something but little sense for developers and engineers writing code to build enterprise software.

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[–] kalleboo@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I wonder what the industry standard is for developers?

The Stack Overflow developer survey (which has it's bias towards people who use Stack Overflow)... says 47% use Windows, 32% use Mac, and uh, Linux is split up by distro so it's hard to make sense of the numbers but Ubuntu alone is at 27%. (each developer can use multiple platforms so they don't add up to 100%)

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[–] RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I just want to turn the thing on and play Factorio or Minecraft, not figure out if my 4080 will run on it etc.

Funny that you chose two games that run natively on Linux.

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[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

You can use Linux with RAM compression to have the same kind of economy that MacOS does.

Just nobody bothers.

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[–] Mercuri@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago

Fucking PHONES had more RAM. It was so fucking stupid. And despite their arguments, it was proven time and time again 8GB was not enough.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 11 points 5 days ago

Perfect, just when I've decided 16GB is the bare minimum these days too. My day to day I max out 16 on my laptops without even trying. 32 is my new minimum.

[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 9 points 4 days ago

Apple finally caught up with 2018 technology

[–] Player2@lemm.ee 7 points 5 days ago

And here I thought that 8GB on Mac was at least as good as 16GB on plebian PCs.

[–] Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Now that 64GB is the standard

[–] WereCat@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Where? Workstations at best.

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[–] synapse1278@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Cool cool cool cool. Can I buy 16GB now and upgrade my Mac later ?

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