Apple quietly admits 8GB isn't enough in 2024, M4 iMac to ship with 16GB as standard In a surprise announcement on Monday, Apple unveiled a rainbow of new iMacs powered by its M4 processor with 16 GB of memory as standard, a 12 MP webcam, and no shortage of AI gimmicks… er… features. The systems themselves haven't changed much from when the M1 variant first made its debut in mid-2021. Perhaps the biggest …
Apple once put out a statement that their computer was the was the cheapest Risc machine... Acorn pointed out the A3010 was £199 at the time. Apple said "we hadn't heard of Acorn". While being a joint shareholder in ARM with Acorn at the time. Facts have never held back Apple marketing!
Replying to my own comment, but while looking at the Acorn Archimedes article(!), I noticed a reference suggesting that Commodore *did* indeed reduce the A600 to £199 in late 1993 here.
Since Wikipedia states that the A600 was discontinued in late 1993, that's likely to have been a clearance price for the remaining stock, albeit still an "official" one.
"Never cheaper than £399" So the Beebug advert in front of me from Acorn User dec 94 for 339 is a fake? (379 for the 2mb verson) And I haven't even got to the right dates...
https://i.imgur.com/8ct5PFu.png Damn, £175 from desktop projects ltd in july 95.
Not disagreeing with you, but I'd have assumed that was a discounted clearance price rather than the "regular" in-production retail price?
In fact, the Archimedes Wikipedia article has a reference suggesting that the A3010 actually got down to £135 by late 1995, but the article makes clear that definitely *was* massively discounted to a third of its original cost after the user group Beebug bought out Acorn's entire remaining inventory of the (presumably-discontinued) model.
Most likely discounted-after-discontinuation price. In fact, they were actually selling off the last remaining stock of the A3010 for £135 by late 1995.
> Do Apple realise that Linux runs on PC's ?
I’m sure they do, just that most people will be used to Windows running on under specified hardware…
Plus MS, are still in their reality disconnect, with the minimum specifications for W11 being 4GB of memory and a 2-core 1GHz CPU, which as we know is only really sufficient if all you want is to run Windows; put MS Office, 365 and Teams on it and unsurprisingly that becomes something much bigger. To the point that a Mac becomes more attractive than a Surface…
I'd argue 4gb on W10 / W11 isn't sufficient for a web browser, outlook and Teams running at the same time. My work wagon (W10) regularly consumes 4gb at idle without anything launched (mostly thanks to OneDrive syncing), and hovers at around 9-10 GB usage with outlook, teams and several Jira pages open.
Been running W10 16GB since 2020, was happy until recently started (really) using 365 , Teams etc. and note my memory consumption has gone up sufficiently to get me seriously thinking of upping the memory to 32GB along with upgrading the home WiFi et all...
Do Apple realise that Linux runs on PC's ?
That's irrelevant because Linux use on the desktop is a tiny niche (and I say that typing from my Linux PC, and have used Linux on my desktop since 1997) and almost all Linux use is servers. Apple doesn't sell servers, so that market doesn't exist to them.
"That's irrelevant because Linux use on the desktop is a tiny niche (and I say that typing from my Linux PC"
Yes I understand that the Linux desktop is a niche but in that case Apple should be honest enough to say that :
Late last year Apple execs opined that 8 GB on a Mac was the equivalent of 16 GB on a PC running MS Windows.
"Apple should be honest enough to say that :
Late last year Apple execs opined that 8 GB on a Mac was the equivalent of 16 GB on a PC running MS Windows."
You do realise that Apple aren't going to say that an "Apple exec opined" anything... I don't actually know what the full quote was, but the "running M$_Win~1" is a given in the context of a direct comparison.
There is no multinational multibillion-dollar conglomerate that has any honesty whatsoever. It's all lies, all the way down.
The only honest thing is the sales price of the smartphone when you purchase it and, even then, you get surprises with the "additional charges" on your monthly bill.
"My god. You got four downvotes. For stating facts."
5 downvotes so far, including mine. The first reason being, it's categorically impossible to state that all multinational, multibillion-dollar conglomerates are all lies, all the way down. In fact as many people here on El Reg both (a) work in a multinational multibillion-dollar conglomerate and (b) are fundamentally honest, it's a verifiably untrue statement.
The second reason being: I disagree on two counts with the second statement about smartphones. The sales price - at least in the US - is the most dishonest part as sales tax is added at checkout. This is at odds with sales practices in most other countries which make it a legal requirement to have the sticker price reflect the actual price.
The statement about surprises on your monthly bill is irrelevant for any sensible phone buyer, as they will be buying the phone outright. Only mugs buy it on contract.
I stand by the statement. Buying a phone on contract is a dumb way to buy it, and you're asking to be ripped off; it's the one area where the previous poster and I agree.
Besides, you hear that whooshing sound, somewhere in the stratosphere? That's the point; going riiiiight over your head.
"The sales price - at least in the US - is the most dishonest part as sales tax is added at checkout. This is at odds with sales practices in most other countries which make it a legal requirement to have the sticker price reflect the actual price."
Those countries probably don't vary the tax depending on your locality. In the US, sales tax is charged by state and local governments (separately) and therefore differs from one city to another one. It is confusing, but that is how local government gets a lot of its revenue. It's not really dishonest when people know it's going to happen. As surprising as it must be for people who are used to taxes being calculated before purchase, people who have lived in the country for a while already know that it will happen and what rate it is, so they can calculate what the final price will be beforehand if they want. I think that, to be dishonest, they would have to hide that it was going to happen or how much it is.
You might suggest a different system of taxation, and you might have a point. With so many states able to choose their own tax system, you can't implement most of the easiest methods. Some states have no sales tax and tax income, others have no income tax and usually a high sales tax, and others have both. A couple states have low or zero rates for both because they have other sources of revenue, for example special taxes on mining which don't apply to states without such a large mineral sector and a small enough population that that can pay for everything. Unless you have a national policy to unify all the types of taxes, states will need to charge different rates.
I know how it works, and I know why.
Why… is so they can keep a low sticker price, and bait/switch the customers.
Given that product X in state Y will always have a known sales tax of Z, and bricks and mortar stores tend not to travel around much, there is literally no good reason why they can’t include it in the price displayed to the customer. The only exception here is online sales to multiple states.
If you compare the US to Europe, and each US State to a European country which is arguably the closest comparison in terms of size and complexity, you can easily see the difference. In Europe, each country charges a different amount of sales tax but it is ALWAYS included in the sticker price.
It’s easier for the consumer, requires no on-the-fly calculation, and it’s far less deceptive.
Stop making excuses for a deceptive, unnecessary practice.
I'm not defending it as the best way that must not be questioned, but nor do your vehement attacks fit the situation. For example, no, it's not used to deceive. Something that everyone has seen hundreds of times before the age of ten is not deceptive when it works exactly the same way the rest of the time.
Part of the reason it's stated separately is so that prices can be quoted from one area to another. For clarity, the tax doesn't just differ from state to state, but from city to city. Therefore, if you are running an advertisement campaign, you could say that your product costs $50, and everyone who has bought something in the country will understand that it means $50 and your local tax rate, rather than saying "costs $53.25 if you buy in Kansas, costs $52.11 if Missouri, and then add all the different cities that there are on that border to give you the whole list. Quite a few adds will say $50 plus tax just in case, but everyone knows this already.
There will be peculiarities of any tax system which you have to get around. For instance, I am not in the UK but I was trying to buy something from there. The shop from which I wanted to purchase had prices listed, following the UK custom and including VAT in the quoted price. Since they were exporting in my case, I wouldn't have to pay VAT on the item, but that price wasn't listed. I would have had to calculate it and then contact the site to get them to accept a different payment. I could react the way you did: "The UK authorities are deliberately hiding the amount of their tax so that people who don't know that they don't have to pay it will pay full price and contribute to HMRC tax they don't owe". I could make that argument at length, the only flaw in it being that it's wrong. The UK's tax system and UK shops were mostly built for selling to UK customers, and it isn't surprising that they might work differently in a way that international users would have to get used to. Someone who wasn't familiar might well think that it could be improved, but without understanding why it works that way, they could come to inaccurate conclusions about it.
That's not why the sales tax isn't included in the price.
The sales tax isn't included in the price because of people who don't like the concept of taxes. It's so you're made painfully aware of how much tax you're paying every time you buy something.
Saying it's because of differing tax rates is bullshit, in many states it's illegal to include the sales tax in the posted price even if you're a retailer who wants to pre-calculate it and advertise honest prices.
Buying a phone outright or paying for it monthly in a contract does not determine if you are a mug. Having the balls to think that saying it does just shows how immature and materialistic you are.
Many people source a phone via contract not because they can’t afford it, for many it’s convenience or the fact that there is virtually no difference in price at launch between purchase or contract payment here in the UK. Where there is little to no difference I would suggest that the mug is the one who empties their piggy bank in one hit because it makes them feel superior.
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None of those things are facts. They are all opinions. You may agree that everything is lies, all the way down, but since that isn't a provable statement in any case, it isn't a fact. Their office building is probably not made of solid lies. If it is, please send me instructions for construction with lies because they are really cheap. Arguing the honesty or lack thereof of a purchase price is also confusing. You could have a dishonest statement about prices where they forget to include some things, but that's not what they said either.
I did not vote on this or any related post, but your suggestion that it contains facts probably explains why you don't understand those who did vote. What you have there are opinions, and at least six people disagree with them. What I think of the opinions is irrelevant here.
> Apple should be honest enough.
Doesn't compute. Apple is a master at marketing.
Aww, couldn't resist. I have an old-ish Macbook and a newer Linux laptop. I like both, but I am happy Apple's base RAM allowance has gone up for when I'll have to replace the MBP - they really make you pay up the wazoo for extra RAM.
I have thought of dual booting Win 11 on the Linux box, but all that talk about MS running ads on a piece of software you've paid $$$ for turned me off.
If you look at the architecture you'll see what they mean also applies to any PC OS due to the way memory is used/shared between CPU and GPU: as long as you have enough, this is way faster and, therefore, efficient on MacOS than other platforms but more and more programs want access to GPU resources, so more memory will be required.
Why cant you just the true cause of the problem, American corpoate leadership greed and lies ?
WHy do you keep pretending they made a dumb decision instead of appreciating the true cause, their fucking greed.
Americans are so brainwashed by their culture and media, they cant even see the cause of most of the probles in modern america, because they think this level of greed is a postive thing.
Just like i predicated, you claim i make dumb statements, and yet you are unable to provide a single example.
Coward.
Yet again y9ou have shown the only thing you can do is lie and make childish insults.
Your multiple comments show what im saying to be precisely true.
From what I've seen online, you can buy a NXTPAPER tablet for a lot less, which is probably justified, because it's an Android tablet with 6 instead of 16 GB of slower RAM, at most 256 GB of storage, a 6-year old CPU which the M4 out-benchmarks by about 800%, and doesn't get Android updates because TCL can't be bothered. Also, it's a tablet instead of a desktop. I'm not sure why you picked that as your comparison. Apple products are often more expensive than they need to be, but completely different products don't make that point.
When i first got the laptop im typing this on in 2022 it had 8GB as standard and i was running Linux Mint Mate and the OS was using about 700MB of the system RAM before i launched any programs. But as soon as you start opening lots of browser tabs that 8GB can soon be eaten up so i ended up needing another 8GB in to double my total RAM usage.
Thankfully i had bought a laptop with upgradable RAM unlike those who bought the current generation of Apple Macs which will only ever be able to support 8GB due to it being integrated on the board.
I typically keep around 30 tabs open on my work machine. It's a lot faster toog in once then maybe not again for my shift than it would be to open a tab, sign into that VPN, find the password, approve the 2 factor login, do my little thing, then close the tab, just to do it all again 15 minutes later. If the day is at least moderately busy, if I keep the tabs open I may only need to do all that once per shift.
Oh, and these are the tabs I use constantly. There are other apps I have to use that I may only use once a week, I don't keep those tabs open.
Perhaps that's why I've found the16GB on my M1Pro MacBook plenty, even when editing video in DV Resolve, or having a Windows and Linux VM running.
I come from a time when the computer I was using had to be upgraded to 32kB to let me run a BASIC program I was developing to control a camera (to display component profiles on its VDU - for inspection), and then (a few years later) having a desktop with a whole 640kB to run a large Lotus Symphony spreadsheet under DOS. I have a habit of closing down what I don't need for the task in hand, and I don't think I've ever kept more than 5 or so browser tabs open. If I think I'll need something from a page I'll either bookmark it or print (to pdf) what I need.
But then, I'm also one of those people who don't use their desktop of email inbox for storage: my desktop is where files are parked temporarily, before being moved to a more logical folder, and my inbox is for what has arrived and moved (or deleted) once read (if it needs actioning later, it gets flagged as such). Perhaps I'm a bit OCD...
Amazes me that a web browser becomes a benchmark of memory use. Let's try comparing when I'm doing desktop publishing on a graphic novel or catalog with InDesign, Photoshop and Bridge all open simultaneously in order to get work done [on the embedded linked/smart objects]. Or DaVinci Resolve (or Premier / AfterEffects, all are quite memory intensive once you add your source and assets).
A web browser is for amateurs :D lol
Heavy-duty editing that requires multiple applications running simultaneously is a specialised workflow and (from what I've heard) tend to be run on workstations that are specifically kitted out with bucketloads of RAM for the express purpose of supporting that specialised workflow.
Namely, if your workflow includes multiple memory-hungry applications, then Apple provide a workstation computer tower for you - the Mac Pro. iMacs get access to the MacOS specific software that a lot of creative types prefer to what's available on Windows, but the intended audience's most commonly used application will be a web browser, because so much is done in browsers these days.
All too often we had to get rid of the original memory in order to upgrade capacity. I have loads of ancient DIMMs upstairs...
If you have a spare slot (or slots) and can put your choice of module capacity in, yes, it's good. If you have to spend ages working out what options are available and try to understand whether certain combinations will (or won't) work, or might negatively affect performance, it was all rather less than wonderful.
I learned from my parents example who managed to fill a 5000 sq ft house after living there for 40 years. I could easily have afforded to "upgrade" from my under 2000 sq ft house years ago, but having less space means I need to get rid of things sometimes to make room for new things. If I had twice the space it would be too easy to pile things up in the extra space I'm not using rather than figure out what I don't need anymore and either discarding it, selling it, or giving it to Goodwill (charity)
Instead of what is happening at my mom's house now where my brother has spent 5-10 hours a week for nearly two years going through her house first cleaning out my dad's study, then slowly bringing stuff up from the basement for my mom to look at and decide what she can part with. He's found leaving it sitting in her living room is a much more effective way of getting her to decide what she REALLY needs to keep, versus pointing at stuff in the basement like he tried at first. It is all important when it is out of the way, when it something she has to look at multiple times a day she's more willing to part with most of it lol
He's about 2/3 of the way done with the basement, then there are two spare bedrooms to go and it'll be done. Gotta give him credit, the thought of dealing with the massive contents of that house after she eventually passes was giving me lowkey anxiety, I'm glad that will be a much smaller nut to crack when the time comes.
That's a bit like the approach I took to my files (all paper) back in the 1980's (I was a project engineer overseeing bespoke kit destined for new North Sea production platforms). I had one filing cabinet and a bookshelf in my cubicle. At the end of each year (usually in that oft dead period between Christmas and New Year) I would go through each cabinet drawer and move folders into an archive box - leaving only the current stuff (or that which I otherwise knew I still needed) in the cabinet. The box would be clearly labelled with the year and a note to say it should be destroyed 7 years later; I'd then stack it at the bottom of my bookshelf.
If I needed anything from the box in the following year, I'd put it back in the filing cabinet and, at the end of that year, the box went into the company warehouse (on a mezzanine allocated for archived paperwork), to be replaced with a new box for the just-past year. I never needed to visit the mezzanine to retrieve anything and always had enough room in my filing cabinet.
"I had lots of space when I moved in"
Back in the 60s a research student newly arrived in Belfast having graduated from from Trinity, Dublin (TCD is a copyright library so receives copies of all new UK books) commented - I think seriously - about the newly built QUB library having so many empty shelves.
The scuttlebutt is that the M4 Minis and MBP will be announced in the next two days (Tues and Wed), with the Mini being redesigned. A couple of open questions pertain to the M4 Pro, how many cores and how much memory will be offered? The open question on the Mini is how badly will Apple screw up the design of the Mini? A lot of folks, including me, like it just the way it is.
"The open question on the Mini is how badly will Apple screw up the design of the Mini? A lot of folks, including me, like it just the way it is."
How it is at the moment is mostly an empty box... Be interesting to see them release a "micro", with the approximate form factor of the old Apple TV, and just a row of USBc ports across the back, and a couple on the front.
With the benefit of being from the future, the Mini looks good. I say this as someone who still has an Intel Mac Mini from 2013 and has been priced out of upgrading since then.
It's coming with 16GB RAM as standard and is £600 for the cheapest option. That's more inline with what I spent 11 years ago, so I'm finally allowed an "upgrade".
It's quite impressive seeing it's only what, an inch larger than the Apple TV?
8GB wasn't enough when they first launched their own silicon, years ago. 16GB is an absolute bare minimum.
Packaging the RAM with the CPU and GPU is one way to make things trot along quickly, but it's clearly far too limiting. I'm sure the only reason why they offered 8GB in the first place was that they've had to use some pretty fancy RAM modules to get 8GB on the package in the first place. And as RAM hasn't really progressed in development like CPUs have, they're likely doomed to find their silicon falling away in terms of achievable RAM capacity. For example, if I want to, I can put 128GB into this several years old laptop if I so wished. So far as I'm aware, Apple no longer has any machine that can be fitted with that much memory, and likely needs to resort back to memory SIMMs (or soldered in equivalent) to do so. That in turn would increase their power consumption, thermal challenge, cache design/sizes, etc.
"8GB wasn't enough when they first launched their own silicon, years ago. 16GB is an absolute bare minimum."
Not for most people... I'm sorry, but a web browser with a dozen tabs and maybe a text document open just doesn't take that much memory.
On my machine right now, at the start of the working day, I have just shy of 30 GB RAM in use (27 in RAM, and 2.5 in swap), but my wife's machine is completely happy with 8 GB.
I look at thunderbolt, and want to see external RAM modules, yes it would be a second tier of memory, but it would be connected over PCIe - similar to the setups which share some GPU memory...
To some extent, you are right, but I still don't think Apple was justified in having that as an option. The way they designed their computer, swapping is a big problem. It will put wear on an SSD which is not replaceable. Not only is it soldered down, but they have firmware on that disk so even if you are willing to remove it, you can't install another one and expect the computer to boot. If it fails, the computer won't boot, and by that I mean it won't boot to anything. Not the OS on that disk (of course), not to recovery, not to a USB disk, not to something on the network, that computer is dead.
That means they should want to prevent swapping at all costs, and at the cost of their cheapest computer, they have a lot of budget to afford it. 8 GB is not ridiculous if you're buying a cheap Windows laptop, but the cheapest Mac Mini is well into an area where you can find a Windows laptop with 16 GB of RAM, and their cheapest MacBook could easily get you a lot more. When they've positioned themselves as a high-cost brand, it's not unreasonable to expect they'd have the specs to back that up, and when there's a technical limitation to their design where that spec is necessary to prevent damage, that becomes quite important.
"8GB wasn't enough when they first launched their own silicon, years ago. 16GB is an absolute bare minimum."
My 2021 MBP has 8GB, and it was fine for my use case; web browsing, Office and Outlook, and media consumption. Pretty much what most "basic" laptop owners do. If you need more you need more, but in 2021 it was perfectly valid for Apple to have started at 8GB and offered upgrades from there.
This year things are different; I'm forced to use Teams (my client requires it) and it has to be literally the only thing running if I want to use it in 8GB. It's not practical, so 16GB has become the new minimum and I have to buy a new laptop.
I have an 8GB MacBook Air supplied to me for work. I use it for Java development, the usual bureaucratic necessities of work and, just like everyone else, I’m not tidy about web browsing - and I keep tabs open for far longer than necessary. Usually in multiple windows. Oh, and to make matters worse, I often have two different browsers open - Edge and Safari.
8GB is not enough. But it’s not enough because of the price of memory vs the cost of an Apple computer. It appears cheapskate. Enough would be 24 or 32GB (taking into account the cost of memory and the impossibility of upgrading later).
But, practically speaking? Yes. I think 8GB is enough. Whether the Mac is particularly efficient about its memory use (it is) or whether its 8GB is more like a huge L2 cache (it kinda is) with the SSD stepping up more like a memory when required (glad I back up - I’m probably wearing out that SSD horribly), my MacBook Air never feels slow and is always ready to do whatever I ask of it.
So yes. 8GB is enough to work with. But they should be providing more. Ideally, I think they should provide DIMM slots so that memory can be added for the computer to page fault to. That way it wouldn’t risk damaging the SSD.
I bought a Samsung laptop (which should tell you how old that is, because they stopped making them) back in 2011.
It had more than 8Gb.
I haven't owned a single machine since that had as little as 16Gb.
My current laptop has 64Gb and that was bought maxxed-out on day one and I'd happily have bought more.
As an (old-school, ex-ZX-Spectrum) programmer, gamer (including VR), browser, IT professional, etc. I don't understand how you can not have 32Gb nowadays minimum.
As an (old-school, ex-ZX-Spectrum) programmer, gamer (including VR), browser, IT professional, etc. I don't understand how you can not have 32Gb nowadays minimum.
Because not everyone is is a programmer, gamer, VR using IT professional. Many simply do a bit of WP, some web browsing and email.
"Then there is no sense in dropping thousands on a laptop (especially a Mac) at all."
What a horribly entitled comment. Some people value quality over shite, and you don't get to dictate that just because their use case is simple, they should be relegated to plastic Windows landfill.
If you only use a car to do the school run and a bit of shopping, does that necessarily mean you're only allowed to buy a Dacia? Or are you allowed, in your world, to say 'I actually want to enjoy the experience, simple though it is' and buy a Mini Cooper JCW?
Apple do not admit that 8GB is not sufficient - it's still going to be sufficient for some people. FFS TheReg is so anti-Apple and just looks ignorant.
My mum and family will be very happy with 8GB in a Windows laptop let alone a Mac, I need 16GB because I edit videos and it's a bit faster with more memory. Why is this so difficult to understand ?
Ten or so years ago I used to think 4GB was enough for web browsing and a few documents. Now it's 8GB to sufficiently run an OS and smoothly access the increasingly bloated content out there on the web.
If I spend a lot of money on a computer I expect it to last me a fairly long time - so to future proof anything 16GB is a minimum given current upwards trends in terms of resource demands from OS's, software and the internet in general.
A modern iMac should go for around 7 years - 10 if you're not worried about being on the latest OS. By that time you'll likely want to replace it anyway.
And yes you can use a 2010 iMac as a monitor, if you're not bothered by the low resolution, massive weight and high power consumption compared to a modern 4K IPS monitor designed for the task. Just because you CAN use something way beyond it's intended lifetime, doesn't always mean it's the smart thing to do.
Where you get so big because the so called "jesus" Jobs loved you that no one can question you, so when you release such shit as the Hockey Puck mouse you oddly get away with it. Ive has also been form over function. Fuck whether something is repairable or not, just make it look nice. He'd have been a master designer in my eyes if he'd also, cleverly, made the shit he designed repairable. But then we know Jobs never wanted anything to be repairable, he wanted people to have to buy new. We know this from Woz who faught for the upgradable Apple 2, originally Jobs didn't want expansion ports, but Woz objected and thankfully got his way. Jobs should of thanked him as the Apple 2 is what kept Apple afloat all those years.
Apart from various fondleslab phones / lablets, the least repairable computing device I have ever encountered has been a 21.5" 2013 iMac. Even with several years experience of servicing various electronics from laptops to robots, the concept of having to rip the screen off to replace the 1TB spinning rust located within fills me with dread. Apple added an extra wheeze to the 21.5" model by embedding the display panel within the glass for some reason - so if you crack it, it's completely game over. If any form of repair had been considered in the first place, I'd have assumed it was designed by a sadist.
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