I can't speak for Macs. But in the Linux world, 8GB is fine. In Windows it's awful because of all that bloat. I'm guessing Macs fair better for OS efficiency.
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He pointed to the laptop’s 8GB of “unified memory,” or what amounts to its RAM, and how customers can’t upgrade it.
Given the price of RAM, you'd need to sell a kidney to upgrade it in a Windows laptop these days, so that's not much of a difference, although 8MB is a little skimpy, I'll give him that one.
[…] although 8MB is a little skimpy
Have we already downgraded to this???
/s, and sorry for being pedantic
My phone has more RAM than that. I can't imagine running a computer with that little memory considering how poorly optimized software tends to be at this point.
I'm not sure what the overhead for Mac OS is, but that has to be basically rock bottom to be even considered functional unless you're running one of the lighter Linux builds.
I got a free, going to be recycled, dell with 8gb of ram from work. I threw in an nvme and installed Linux. It's not the lightest Linux install, but it is Arch, so definitely on the lighter side. I idle at under 1gb and under normal use don't break 2. I do some coding which uses more but nothing super crazy. MacOS probably uses a little more ram, but it's not Windows. I'd wager than the vast majority of people don't come close to using all of that RAM, and power users are going to get hardware for the task, and this isn't it.
Under 1GB on a modern build is pretty light. I run CachyOS and I'm pretty sure I idle at significantly more than that. Though I honestly haven't checked, and don't really want to close everything out to find out haha. I do know I'm currently using more than 8GB and not doing anything super heavy, but I do have multiple programs running. And multitasking is always going to be a killer for a system with low RAM limits. There is a reason my laptop has 32 and my desktop has 64.
I did just check and I was wrong. I idle at 1.6GB. I may have been thinking of a single app I had open when I looked the other day. I did just open Firefox and it took about a gig. Opening about 20 tabs and navigating to different sites did Bum it up to about 5gb. So yea, 8 is on the lower end, but it's usable and I'd bet most people would be fine. Throw in things like swap and high speed storage, I feel most people wouldn't notice. Definitely not enough for high usage though.
I miss when 4gb was good enough.
I mean, at its heart, Mac OS is a heavily re-tooled fork of the BSD platform, so it's not inconceivable that it's light enough to run on 8G. I doubt it would run well on 8G, but it could do it.
My M1 MacBook Air idles at 1.03GB, my XPS 13 running Gnome on Vanilla OS idles at 2.4GB
GNOME on immutable distros = very bloated. Try antiX instead, as it uses a lighter DE.
Even a bloated GNOME runs with much less ram than Windows
It runs fine, unless you load up on chrome tabs, or try to run pro apps. Itdoes basic photo editing and admin apps and phone holiday video editing just fine for average users. I have a lot of clients with 8GB M1 machines.
I know it was lighter than windows the last time I used Mac, but that has been quite a few years now. Hopefully it is a decent machine. Computing just keeps getting more expensive, so having more budget options is definitely good as long as they are reasonably functional.
MacOS' kernel is derived from Mach, though with with some BSD code, and is Apple's own work since then. Its API is compatible with FreeBSD, but it's not FreeBSD. And the FreeBSD userland tools don't have effect on systemwide memory management.
I have a 2013 MBP that shipped with 8GB, the minimum amount they came with.
Of course it also is upgradable. Which I did, to 16GB. A decade ago.
What the fuck are you doing on a phone that you need 8 GIGABYTES of RAM? Damn son!
Just to play devil’s advocate: a smartphone is definitely a computer and has no trouble competing with older laptop CPUs in benchmarks. I see this as a difference without a distinction beyond form factor.
8GB is 💯 barely serviceable. I see this is a product for a casual user only, with excellent build quality. I don’t think it ages well when pushed.
I mean… of course it’s for the causal users what kind of observation is that?
or what amounts to its RAM
You can criticize the amount of RAM, but it’s still RAM. Clown.
They’re hinting at the fact that those 8GB are shared between the CPU and GPU. So it’s not dedicated, which you’d expect if someone said “RAM.”
RAM is RAM. If you take issue with it being unified say so, but it’s still RAM.
He sounds like he’s grasping.
The neo is going to eat his lunch, and he knows it.
If you take issue with it being unified say so, but it’s still RAM.
He did say so. 8GB unified when a Linux laptop has 8GB of ram and an Nvidia 5050 with 8 GB of VRAM is 16GB of Ram despite not being marketed as a 16 GB laptop.
Sounds more like you’re looking for reasons to hate on the article.
The perfect time for a relatively cheap Apple laptop when Microsoft is forcing people to buy new hardware just to use their latest version of their operating system. I wonder what the percentage of Microsoft folks who go to the MacBook will be. I wonder what the percentage of users who go the UNIX/Linux route would be. I'm not an apple fan myself so would go linux, but a good business move from Apple though.
That would be interesting to watch.
If I ever had to buy a personal laptop again, it'd definitely make the list.
Obnoxious hardware prices are what kept me off mac for so long. Now all prices are obnoxious maybe it would even out.
Great move if they can capitalize on it
They were making a lot on build quality, convenience, brand, ecosystem, cultism, software quality, but not so much on power.
Now power became more expensive for suppliers, and for things listed before it you have to restructure marketing and everything. Apple doesn't have that problem. They also have rid themselves of the legacy problem by two softer changes (dropping 32 bit Intel, then moving to ARM) instead of one hard change.
Dude, the difference between you and Apple is Windows 11. They don't have a crappy copilot or Edge hoarding 4GB in the background just to show the weather.
That's a big difference but not all. The sub-$1000 ultrabook sector has SO MUCH garbage, like Intel Celerons that stutter when you scroll down a web page designed in 2022+. Manufacturers are happy because they can sell rubbish and uncle John with no idea about computers will say "I want a laptop with 1 TB so it's faster, and it must have free office 365 and an antivirus"...
So when someone puts a phone processor in a laptop and builds a chassis that isn't a $5 extruded plastic shell, they panic because it still manages to be better in both benchmarks and real world use despite the paltry amount of RAM.
Exactly. They should start installing Linux Mint and call it a day.
Fuck Microsoft.
Indeed. PC manufacturers should just invest in the Linux ecosystem.
Unfortunately, these particular devices were kinda shit lol
Eh, I gather the Linux based ones were actually pretty cool. But 99% of netbooks ended up being underpowered mini laptops running XP, so were doomed to failure.
EEEs were amazing! Not because of their performance or specs, but because they were a fully working compute for dirt cheap at only $199! Remember, these were released 5 years before the first Raspberry Pi. The original model of EEE with its 7" screen 512MB RAM and 4GB of slow SSD storage were plenty of compute for small tasks or portable applications. The cheapest fully functional laptop you could buy at retail those days would still cost you $800-$900 for a pretty horrible machine.
Linux was part of the secret sauce that made them successful because it meant they didn't have to pay for an OEM Windows XP license.
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