Apple’s MacBook Pro memory problem is worse than ever::Apple still sells expensive “Pro” computers with just 8GB of RAM and charges a fortune for more.
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Then stop buying it.
I have the feeling that a big chunk of apple consumers (I know there are many professionals and developers that love apple) don’t even know what RAM is used for and will just buy it because it’s the “cheapest version of the newest thing” without much critical consideration
Wish I could. I hate working on Macs, but it seems like half of my mission-critical programs at work are Mac exclusive for some reason. Apple really pushed the “we’re built for art and artists” thing, so there are a lot of programs in the fine arts world that are Mac exclusive. Digital art, music, live entertainment, etc are all wholly dependent on Macs, purely because the programs needed to make those things are Mac exclusive.
Wait what? I’ve been using windows exclusively for art and music. Not specifically for live music and nothing stops me from that. What are these exclusive Mac apps that can’t be replaced with something else?
They’ve put a lot of work into locking people into an ecosystem. To pick one example, if you’ve got a Logic project you want someone to be able to edit, even if you manage to migrate it with all of the required stuff, they’re still going to need a Mac to open it.
Could you name a couple? I’m not aware of any industry standard applications that are exclusive to macos. Or is this some custom designed stuff?
Look up what a “hackintosh” is. You’re welcome.
Doesn’t work for newer MacOS versions since they’ve gone to ARM.
What? Macos Sonoma is compatible with MacBooks from 2017. Hackintoshes are absolutely still possible on Intel, and from a cursory googling it appears they’re out there. Apple will eventually cut off support for Intel Macs on some future (major) release, sure, but there’s probably a few more years until that happens.
With that said, hackintoshes are a suboptimal solution to OPs problem. Ideally they should really move to other applications properly supported on multiple platforms.
The base models (the air’s, not pro’s), should have shipped with 12-16GB standard, and the pro’s should have shipped with 16-24GB standard. I’d argue that a minimum of 24-32GB should really be the standard on something named a “pro” model.
Apple’s M-based laptops are really great - excellent display, best-in-class speakers, good keyboard, industry-leading trackpad…But 8GB of RAM for $1600? Get out of here.
Do they still solder the SSD?
Of course
Well that’s not very “green” coming from a company who stopped supplying customers with chargers “because of the environment.” When a hard drive craps out the only solution is to replace the entire board rather than a single part with an industry standard connector?
Could just solder a new ssd no?
Of course not, the “Bios” is stored on the SSD, so if you replace it your computer won’t even boot.
Oh, and if your SSD dies it won’t boot too.
Oof.
Removing individual soldered NAND chips directly connected to the motherboard, attaching new NAND chips, and somehow getting a working computer out the other end is so far beyond the abilities of most users that it’s not even funny.
It’s way beyond the skillset of even most computer repair specialists too.
In fact, in terms of “getting it working again” is concerned, anyone outside of an Apple assembly plant is unlikely to be much use.
People have done it on M1’s at least. You’ll need a well equipped rework station to do it though, especially since the NAND is essentially glued to the motherboard in addition to solder.
They disassemble those replacements and use them to create warranty parts. Apple is one of the few companies that actually does reduce and reuse first. Any parts that fail testing get recycled.
They desolder components and reuse them or they scrap old laptops and scavenge the good bits like the screen and keyboard? Assuming someone brings in a laptop with a bad hard drive, what components later get disassembled?
All of them. They have machines that strip down the components:
This article is about the iPhone robots but they also have machines that do this with Macs too. Every Apple device is made with recycled content but the majority of their components are reused in remanufactured warranty devices (remanufactured rather than refurbished because refurbished reuses existing whole components, remanufacturing breaks down components, tests them, and reuses them to create entirely new components from working parts).
Technically they don’t even have an SSD anymore. They just have a bunch of NAND chips.
The drive controller is in the CPU. Which is great for performance… especially when you’re reading data that is already cached by the drive controller you’re limited by RAM speed instead of PCIe - but it’s a bit of a headache when it comes to upgrades.
The band chips are on a daughter board on their larger desktops. And soldered on laptops and the tiny Mac Mini.
Yes. There is no internal upgradable parts. I believe you can only replace the battery cells, the fans, and the mainboard (motherboard with soldered CPU/RAM(VRAM)/SSD, and all connected modules like the USB chipsets, audio chipset, etc.).
Everything is soldered these days, RAM included, hence the issues and complaints. I find it extra comical that they tried to cheapen on the solder as well, but when that resulted in issues with GPU splitting away from PCB, they glued shoe rubber on top the chip so case pushes it to make contact and called it a “solution”. Haha. Imagine the amount of savings they made on such a wast amount of solder per PCB. It might even approach range in pennies.
It’s not even soldered, they’ve gone further than that. They literally print the memory and storage onto the system on a chip, as part of the fabrication process. No amount of soldering skill will be able to remove and replace that memory/storage, because it’s on the chip itself.
32gb might have been “pro” 5 years ago but not anymore, not when a run of the mill 32gb DDR5 kit can be had for $100
Apple won’t even offer that for the 8GB models, the best you can do for those is pay $400 to get them with 24GB included.
And obviously everything is soldered and nothing is upgradeable.I meant as a base spec for a “pro” system.
yes, my opinion is that 32gb was the minimum spec for a “pro” system 5 years ago. Nowadays, if 32gb is actually enough as a minimum spec then you’re in “enthusiast” territory in my opinion, not “pro”. Perhaps that’s more telling about my standards as a PC enthusiast though, and about how far PC hardware has come
If you ask me, everyone and everything that’s calling itself a pro isn’t really pro.
And than again John from finance is a professional who want a MacBook Pro. IT gave him a 8gb pro. John is happy and doesn’t know a damn thing about computers.
Disclaimer: I’m in no way trying to defend Apple here.
Saying that X amount of RAM (or any other component spec for that matter) is not enough for a “Pro” computer is not really a universal truth or something, you can’t compare people running multiple instances of Docker with people doing photo editing or web dev for example.
Either of those can be “Pros” within their field, their hardware requirements doesn’t make them professionals or enthusiasts. I know I’m being a bit tangential here, but arguing about the “correct” spec por a Pro computer has always irked me.
That being said, I agree it’s ridiculous that Apple is shipping $1K+ computers with merely 8GB of RAM. Also, it’s known that Apple’s “pro” devices most of the time just mean they’re just their most expensive tier. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Also, it’s known that Apple’s “pro” devices most of the time just mean they’re just their most expensive tier. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Your lack of knowledge shows. Everyone with at least 2 brain cells and capability to read can understand that this is just plain wrong.
Macbook pro for example has a CPU cooler inbuilt (first ever on a laptop BTW)
That part of my comment was a bit of an hyperbole tbh, but it’s also true that Apple just slaps the “Pro” moniker to their most expensive tier without always making them deserve it.
Before the iPhone 15 Pro series, there wasn’t really much “pro” in the Pro models. Same with the iPad Pro, sure they’re way nicer and higher end, but hardly anything “pro” about them.
And don’t get me started with the new baseline 14 inch MacBook Pro, with a regular M3 and 8GB of RAM.
Yeah I was just joking - since the MBA - MBP difference is basically that MBP has a cooling fan
Also, have in mind that main memory shared with igpu, so if we talking about memory heavy tasks like 8k video render with masks, effects and stuff, then this memory will be eaten not only by app, but also with gpu encoder. 64gb would be more close to “bearable minimum” but oh well, magic apple ram I guess.
Laughs in ThinkPad running Linux.
Cries in soldered RAM
That’s a trend that needs to die. I blame MacBook airs and ultrabooks for this nonsense.
I will be the devil’s advocate here and say that having the 8 Gb ram config on their cheapest machines (MBA, Mac Mini) is perfectly fine, but having it as the base config on the MBP is borderline false advertising.
Yeah I’m a fan boy but I agree with this 100%. In the old days I’d just buy lowest ram config and then replace with after market but obviously we dont have the option anymore. It sucks because I could use at least 64 in my m3 but it was cost prohibitive.
I’m positive the minimum went up to 16gb like a generation or two back. It’s sickening that they went back over.
I have a couple of work MacBooks with 8gb for managers and they often complain of them going slow as molasses when having a good few tabs open in chrome. I’m talking less then 10 though, but heavy sites like email and AdWords and other horrible sites.
Less than 10 ? Sounds a bit far fetched. Any modern OS with 8 gb ram can handle 10 tabs. It is probably for other reasons may be
Don’t underestimate the black hole of ram that is Google AdWords and Google analytics. And chrome.
Also don’t underestimate all of the background services that the IT department loads: email certificate managers, VPN client, DLP client, backup client, endpoint protection, etc.
I noticed the other day that each jira cloud tab takes about 250-350MB of ram. For just viewing a single ticket too! Still doesn’t add up to 8GB but ten tabs of that would eat up a good chunk of that.
The base model isn’t really the base model. If you are buying a Mac you just have to accept you are spending $2k on it
Yup. The MacBook I would actually want is about $1.9-2.3k, but Windows laptops with similar specs also cost a similar amount, so I guess I’ll stick with my current one.
I think what Apple has done with their M series of chips is actually incredible and very interesting. However actually purchasing their hardware is just out of the question when I’m just going to run a Linux distro on whatever I purchase.
That’s okay, because their 8GB is the same as 16GB on other machines. They are just that better. /s
Apple has surpassed its peak age. Downfall is coming.
11GB idling?? Maybe not as optimized as it seems…
There’s absolutely nothing wrong since their ultra zealous base will continue to buy their complete asinine bullshit products at their shitty premiums and anti consumer practices.
Remember the G4 iBook? I used the crap out of that machine, it was built like a tank. I upgraded the ram, installed a new wifi card, swapped the broken keyboard and bought a new battery, all by myself. The little beast still runs, albeit suffering a lot with new modern, web based tasks.
The Macbook M1 I got from work makes me terrified to even use it, because it feels so fragile in comparison. I don’t carry it around like I used to do with the iBook.
Is it a MBP M1? The ones they’ve been handing out at my office are tanks compared to the pre-2017 (modern) MacBooks.
I think that’s also just part of how laptops are made now. How Thin/Light a laptop is can be a major selling point
If you have a problem with Apple hardware, don’t buy it. Simple as.
They do this because they know people will buy it. If less people bought it, they would stop doing it.
And still no ecc?
What consumer grade laptop has ECC? Only high end workstations have ECC, and even then it’s usually an expensive option that probably very few opt for.
DDR5 in the spec
It has some data correction built in, but doesn’t have ECC in the traditional sense.
Just to clarify.
For the price they’re asking ECC should be mandatory no matter what.
Yeah, not gonna happen. The only real reason Mac Pros had ECC was because it was standard with Xenon. ATPs latest episode goes over why we’ll probably never see ECC on the M series Macs and why it’s not actually as useful anymore (lookup linked ECC).
