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The MacBook Air gets a surprise upgrade to 16GB of RAM
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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These don’t use DDR5 memory. It’s all on the silicon with the CPU. The same pricing rules don’t apply.
And Mac users tend to be less “price sensitive” than PC users. My M4 Mac mini will be here next week. 24GB should be just fine on it.
Happily work is footing the entire bill for it, including a new monitor so it’s a pretty sweet upgrade for me.
Then make it apply. Have 8gb of on die memory and a slot for more ram.
I'm a apple typical environmentally sensitive type.
A ram boost can take a machine from e-waste and make a usable box out of it. I'm still getting use out of my intel MPB but needed to add ram. I like to get about a decade of use out of computers to lessen the impact of consumerism.
Then you have to ask how would that change benefit Apple?
If there’s no significant benefit they won’t do it.
There would be single CPU die to make allowing for increased yields as opposed to an unique CPU per ram spec. As well a single motherboard sku that only requires a DIMM to be added to change system configurations. Future larger configurations would be offered on the same cpu process for longer. I'm honestly floored that they are going through the extra expense and supply chain challenges to avoid using a socketed RAM. There are plenty of reasons why this could work for them.
Now work profits over time into that equation and you’re getting it.
They make far more money selling entirely new computer hardware with integrated memory. They charge a fairly steep price for memory and I’m sure their fab costs are nowhere near that.
Banging out a new CPU with different amounts of memory is relatively cheap, not like they’re redesigning from scratch to throw in a few more memory components. Memory is simple and predictable.
If I was them I’d make a single chip with 32-64GB of RAM and just blow fuses to the necessary sizes to make it cheap, but although that makes sense for manufacturing it’s a PR issue down the road when someone finds out.
I got it the first time.
Any mismatch between CPU configuration and memory from a sales stand point is unrecoverable. It creates garbage for the pursuit of profit while making the consumer experience worse.
Ah well. I’m an Apple user and I own stock in them. I’m on both sides of this fence.