There were a number of exciting announcements from Apple at WWDC 2024, from macOS Sequoia to Apple Intelligence. However, a subtle addition to Xcode 16 — the development environment for Apple platforms, like iOS and macOS — is a feature called Predictive Code Completion. Unfortunately, if you bought into Apple’s claim that 8GB of unified memory was enough for base-model Apple silicon Macs, you won’t be able to use it. There’s a memory requirement for Predictive Code Completion in Xcode 16, and it’s the closest thing we’ll get from Apple to an admission that 8GB of memory isn’t really enough for a new Mac in 2024.
And now all the fan boys and girls will go out and buy another MacBook. That’s planned obsolescence for ya
Opens chrome on a 8GB Mac. Sees lifespan of SSD being reduced by 50%. After 2-3 years of heavy usage SSD starts to get errors. Apple solution: buy a new one. No wonder they are 2nd/3rd wealthiest company on the planet.
This isn’t a big deal.
If you’re developing in Xcode, you did not buy an 8GB Mac in the last 10-years.
If you are just using your Mac for Facebook and email, I don’t think you know what RAM is.
If you know what RAM is, and you bought an 8GB Mac in the last 10-years, then you are likely self-aware of your limited demands and/or made an informed compromise.
If you know what RAM is, and you bought an 8GB Mac in the last 10-years, then you are likely self-aware of your limited demands and/or made an informed compromise.
Or you simply refuse to pay $200+ to get a proper machine. Like seriously, 8GB Mac’s should have disappeared long ago, but nope, Apple stick to them with their planned obsolescence tactics on their hardware, and stubbornly refusing to admit that in 2023 releasing a MacBook with soldered 8Gb of RAM is wholy inadequate.
I get around this by simply not buying a Mac. Free’s up so much money for ram.
Yeah, the 8GB model’s purpose is to make an “starting at $xxxx” price tag possible.
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Funny: knowing that you only get one shot, I bought 32GB of RAM for my Mac Mini like 1.5 years ago. I figured that it gave me the best shot of keeping it usable past 5 years.
imagine showing this post to someone in 1995
shit has gotten too bloated these days. i mean even in my head 8GB still sounds like ‘a lot’ of RAM and 16GB feels extravagant
Absolutely.
Bad, rushed software that wires together 200 different giant libraries just to use a fraction of them and then run it in a sandboxed container with three daemons it needs for some reason doesn’t mean “8 Gb isn’t enough”, it means write tighter, better software.
That ship has long sailed unfortunately. The industry gave up on optimization in favour of praying that hardware advancements can keep up with the bloat.
You just have to watch your favorite tablet get slower year after year to understand that a lot of this is artificial. They could make applications that don’t need those resources but would never do so.
We measure success by how many GB’s we have consumed when the only keys depressed from power on to desktop is our password. This shit right here is the real issue.
Guy from '95: “I bet it’s lightning fast though…”
No dude. It peaks pretty soon. In my time, Microsoft is touting a chat program that starts in under 10 seconds. And they’re genuinely proud of it.
You can always switch to a text based terminal and free up your memory. Just don’t compain that YouTube doesn’t play 4K videos anymore.
They moved to on-die RAM for a reason: To nickel and dime yo ass.
I needed to expense a Mac Mini for iOS development, and everyone (Me, the company, our purchasing department) was baffled at how much it cost to get 16 GB. And they only go up to 24GB. Imagine how much they’ll charge for 32 in a year!
Mac Mini is meant to be sort of the starter desktop. For higher end uses, they want you on the Mac Studio, an iMac, or a Mac Pro.
I assumed that the Mini was the effectively a Mac without a monitor. Is it relatively underpowered too?
Its not underpowered for average users, but it’s not meant for professional uses beyond basic office work.
Similar to the mini they offer the Studio which doesn’t have a monitor built in https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/compare/?modelList=Mac-studio-2023,Mac-mini-M2
Then for the higher end uses they offer a more typical tower format https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
But would an M1 Mini be similar to an M1 iMac?
As far as I understand, the Mac lineup don’t have screens, the IMacs are stationary and do have a screen, the MacBooks are the laptops.
HP seems to think 4 GB is an acceptable amount of RAM to put in a modern notebook (although they don’t charge even close to what Apple charges).
https://www.amazon.com/HP-Micro-edge-Microsoft-14-dq0040nr-Snowflake/dp/B0947BJ67M
Edit: Thinking about it, this is worse. Apple isn’t targeting low-income people. This is HP selling the poor a computer that doesn’t work properly.
Shipping with Windows S. That’s Microsoft’s version of a Chromebook for some light web browsing for 188 dollars. I wouldn’t buy it but this doesn’t look like a rip off at this price point.
Sounds about right for HP.
8GB is definitely not enough for coding, gaming, or most creative work but it’s fine for basic office/school work or entertainment. Heck my M1 Macbook Air is even good with basic Photoshop/Illustrator work and light AV editing. I certainly prefer my PC laptop with 32GB and a dedicated GPU but its power adapter weighs more than a Macbook Air.
I mean I develop software on an 8GB laptop. Most of the time it’s fine, when I need more I have a desktop with 128GB ram available.
Really depends what type of software you’re making. If you’re using python a few TB might be required.
Why do they struggle so much with some “obvious things” sometimes ? We wouldn’t have a type-C iphone if the EU didn’t pressured them to do make the switch
💸💸💸
8GB of dedicated VRAM is hardly enough these days…
Especially with 4k
This is my biggest lament about getting a 2060 without knowing how important vram is. I can make it perform better and more efficiently a bunch of different ways, but to my knowledge, I can’t get around the 6GB vram wall.
Oh man, I remember so many people defended 8GB since the M1 first came out (and since).
I always argued it would significantly reduce the lifetimes of these machines if you bought one, not just because you’d be swapping a lot more on the (soldered in BTW) ssd, but because after a few years of updates it would become unbearably slow, or hardware would fail, or both.
Didn’t stop people constantly “tHe aRchITecTuRE iS cOmPlETelY diFFeRenT!!!”
Sure it’s different, but it’s still just a computer. A technical person can still look at the spec sheet and calculate effective performance accounting for bus widths etc.
Disclosure: I bought a top spec 16GB M1 Mac Air on launch and have been extremely happy with it - it’s still going strong.
They should do 4Gb. I hear M3 mac’s make it seem like 8Gb.
If you allocate it right, you can add 200GB of swap space and then that 4GB of RAM will feel like 408GB!
I think you mean gigabytes, not gigabits.
8 Gb = 1 GB
You mean they can even make 0.5GB appear as 8GB?! That’s 16x! That apple silicon is just something else!
I can’t believe, there’s no Linux reference yet!
Give your “8 gigs not enough” hardware to one of us and see it revived running faster than whatever you’re running now with your subpar OS.
Software and AI development would be hard with 8gb of RAM on Linux. Having you seen the memes on AI adding to global climate change? Not even Linux can fix the issues with ChatGPT…
I actually bought a m1 mini for a linux low power server. I was getting tired of the Pi4 being so slow when I needed to compile something. Works real well, just need the Asahi team to get TB working. And for my server stuff, 8gb is plenty.
I can run Arch Linux (BTW!) in a potato with starch RAM!
I’d love to see you run xcode 16 code completion on your superior OS. Send me a link once you’ve uploaded the vid.
Why limit it to proprietary software? Almost every linux distro can run Github Copilot X and Jetbrains, which both have had more time to be publicly used and tested and work better in my opinion.
Send me a video link of Mac having direct access to containers without using a VM (which ruins the point of containers). THAT is directly related to my actual work, as opposed to needing a robot to code for me specifically using Apple’s AI
Because that was what the article was about…I actually am a Linux user and fan, folks just misreading the intentions of my post.
I would genuinely love to see it, because I’m stuck on mac hardware to do my job and I really hope one day they get crucified for their anticompetative practices so I can freely choose the OS my business uses.
Pls provide source code.
There is a project being worked on called Darling, but it isn’t ready yet. The developers are making progress though.
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As I said: feel free to upgrade your MacBook just don’t throw the one with a “meager” 8 gigs away since it’s totally usable with a non-bloated system.
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You replied, I replied back. That’s how public social media work. It’s unlikely we know each other.
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For who? My mother who only use facebook, youtube and googling don’t need 8gb
Sounds like all she needs is a dirt cheap chromebook then
That’s what she has
Then her situation isn’t applicable to this topic
This comment chain made me chuckle. It’s such an “internet comment section” …trope? I don’t know the right word.
It’s a straw man argument that doesn’t address the main point the comment or was making.
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That all depends on how much work they want to put into troubleshooting it for her. I got my mom a Mac Mini when her PC needed to be replaced. It’s way less responsibility on my part. I mostly just answer the occasional how-to.
Mac is easier than Windows, sure, but not easier than a chromebook. Nothing is simpler than a Chromebook. You can do much more with a Mac, but a chromebook is much easier.
I had a laptop with 8GB. Doing one of those things was fine, but when you open up another program it takes forever to switch to the browser
I don’t know what Xcode is so yeah, I haven’t been found wanting with my 8GB M2. Videos, downloading, web browsing, writing, chat applications, some photo editing, games (what I can actually play on a Mac, anyway), all good here.
16GB+ is obviously going to be necessary though, and not exactly that expensive to put into their base models so it should be put in soon.
I’d love to have 8GB of RAM. The SOC I’m working with has only 2K ;-)
Bet your compiler isnt running on that hardware either ;-)
Luckily, no ;-)
2 kilobytes?
Yes. 2 kilobytes. Coincidentally, this is as big as the displays internal buffer, so I cannot even keep a shadow copy of it in my RAM for the GUI.
Thanks for clarification.
For the record, on Windows 10, I’m using 9GB (rounded up from 8.something) to run Firefox and look at this website, can’t forget Discord inviting itself to my party in the background, and the OS. I had to close tabs to get down here. Streams really eat the RAM up.
Throw a game in there, with FF open for advice and Discord running for all the usual gaming reasons, and yeah, way over.
Notice I haven’t even touched any productivity stuff that demands more.
8? Eat a penis, Apple. Fuckin clown hardware.
MacOS’s memory scheduler is leaps and bounds better than what Windows uses. It’s more apt to compare the RAM on a machine running MacOS to one running a common Linux distro. Windows needs more RAM than the other two by two to three times because it’s fuckterrible at using it.
