only if Apple will see this video and understand you cannot ship a 1000$+ with 8GB of RAM in 20xx when you can buy any laptop with 16GB RAM with less than 400$

@@TechwithStefan Yes if only Tim saw my video, then he would definitely lower the prices.

@@AZiskI do sense the sarcasm here Alex, nice point But still I wonder how Apple will be pricing / spec products today if Steve Jobs will still be around, Saying that because I remember watching a lot of keynotes from him and each year he will present more memory for that product and even for same price or cheaper, he understood the impact of this and this helped Apple grow Even back in the day , Apple had let’s say expensive products but some had similar or even better price than what PC can offer Coming back to 8GB on a Pro machine .. the problem is also MacOS , it is no Damn Small Linux , and back in the days I used to build hackingtosh using snow leopard 10.6.8 on my Acer Aspire One with 2GB of ram and it will run great Even before I had a Thinkpad T61 and run MacOS on it and using Paraleles run Windows virtually and had 3GB of ram on a dual core T7100 intel.. today software is demanding too much RAM and we don’t see the improvements, so yes macOS has become like Chrome , hungry for ram. PS: if Steve Jobs will be around we sure will have had better prices or/and 16GB RAM 512GB ssd on 1000$ Apple machines Ps2: maybe also an Apple car and a cheap and good iPhone SE4 for 459$ today PS3 I enjoy your videos , keep up the good work !

it's so refreshing to have a content creator who really gets it, your Analysis is spot on. my father is a woodworker, the money to invest as a developer to be able to work is a complete joke. even if you buy the most expensive mac pro with triple Studio XDR displays + 3 stands for well over 100k it's still nothing in comparison. a single big machine costs more than that, not to mention the building, the energy, the employee's etc... a developer just needs a laptop and that's basically it, yet we are crying for couple 100 bucks for more memory or storage.

8GB is not an option at all, My daily usage of RAM is ~14GB without LLM. Docker (redis+postgresql) + Pycharm + Webstorm + Chrome + all messangers like slack, signal etc. And since this is unified memory e.g. it''s being used by CPU and GPU then we are talking that for CPU it's not even 8B but less, because some RAM is taken by GPU

I have a 2012 MBP15 16GB, 256GB SSD .... (web developer) ... lasted me 10yrs before the SSD died. 🤷🏻‍♂

@@RunForPeace-hk1cu exactly, you had double ram == less swap

RIP SSD. It didn't deserve the RAM abuse.

​@@RunForPeace-hk1cu well like the person before already said the SSD died not because it's a bad SSD but because of Swap. 8Gb of RAM will use SSD as Swap pretty much all thé time especially now in 2024. That's why OP's SSD died in 1.5years

I don't think it's because of the memory swap. My friend did the same, even worse. still good on 4 years

This is the route I was just thinking of going… my old 2013 MacBook Pro just died… so I am thinking the M1 would still be an amazingly faster system compared to my old one.

I did the same 5 years ago with my 2016 MacBook Pro but unfortunately, I had to change it this year because it wouldn't support any new software updates.

thanks for being there along with me

Good comparison, true 👍🏻

I thought you would buy good cars like Toyota or Honda

Buying Audi or VW for reliability ? LMAO

@@BaieDesBaies I have driven every single car as part of my job and VW and Audi are the most reliable from my experience. I have multiple of both over the years and had no issues with any of them and a couple of them did over 200,000 miles and we're still going strong. Mercedes went for a bad time with reliability way back when. So I don't know what else in the premium sector was as good as these two. I did have BMWs but they didn't work for me.

@@andyH_England Of course you have driven every single car since there are only thousands of models among 400 brands.

Not to mention, usable memory is actually lower since some memory is used for the GPU. It’s an absolute insult that Apple is selling entry level products with 8GB of RAM.

That problem is becoming the norm in the industry with most of win ultrabooks and some newly released gaming laps have soldered ram:v

Well, that's kind of understandable considering the soldered RAM is part of what makes the processor so fast. If we're talking about software development or video editing obviously 16GB should be the bare minimum, but we have to understand that the 8GB MacBook Air is also marketed to students and people who will use it for light tasks and who want a laptop that will last them the whole day without having to plug it in. I do agree that $200 for an extra 8GB is outrageous.

​@@bren.r It depends on your use case, if you're doing heavy video editing it might be an advantage. Let's say you're working on a MacBook Pro with 48GB of unified memory and the system/CPU is consuming 10GB of memory, that means there are 38GB left for the GPU/video software to use. This wouldn't be the case if you had a computer with 24GB of RAM and 24GB of VRAM.

Be happy that the battery doesn't come inside the chip(unified battery)😂

Bought an M3 Air 15 16/512 and it is a brilliant laptop. A pro device for people who don’t need something that needs to sit there churning through sustained tasks

@@robgardner4754 that kind of defeats the pro name

@@barknbryce6993 Well he got an Air, not Pro

m3 refurbished? these things are barely out, so they probably have the same price as new

@@xAnonymousComedia they don't have the listing anymore but I got a m3 macbook pro 16gb ram 512gb storage for $1520 which is basically $300 off retail.

some real competition coming? maybe

Just buy an x86 chip.

Snapdragon elite with Linux wouid fly. My 16GB RAM AMD Ryzen 7 laptop uses just 4GB in Ubuntu but about 10GB in Windows just doing office tasks and cloud devops. Huge difference. Ok not for everyone but my experience in Linux has been very positive and yes I even play games in Linux.

Dammmmitnibkust bought m3 MacBook Air but really wishing rn I got copilot or some new idk

well said

Very well said. I'm still on a laptop that's over 7 years old. It has 64 GB of RAM because that's how I wanted it to have when I bought it and I knew I'll use them. This did help me greatly in being able to have many things opened at once and even using RAMDisks, which I love. Now I'm bitter that 128 GB laptops are still not really a thing. They're rare and the RAM is at terrible speeds (even on desktops). While right now I don't reallly need 128 GBs, since I want my next laptop to also last for 7 years (preferably 10), I know I will eventually use 128 GB of RAM. Hopefully with Arrow Lake I might be lucky (or Zen 5, but I kinda want Intel)

True, i had top 2017 PC with 32 at 3200mhz, i used to use 20 daily, better to have more than less and more important on apple equipment which sucks for upgrading something: you can’t

I would have to disagree slightly: for development in a compiled language (C++,Rust and so on) having a good CPU can be life changing when dealing with large projects, more so than RAM. And for gaming Vulkan compatibility is becoming more and more a requirement, which most old pc's don't meet. For everything else, 100% agree, RAM and repairability are the most important factors if you want a long lasting device. (To drive the point a bit, my Samsung Tab from two years ago, a tablet running android, compiles at times thrice as fast as my windows professional grade i5 laptop from 2013)

Not everyone can afford the luxury. I earn below $150 a month

don't stop the rambling..

Wow, thank you!

All Core Ultra 7 laptops from Intel have soldered RAM, and 100% Snapdragon X Elite will be soldered RAM. And remember all tablets and phones have soldered RAM.

​​@@andyH_Englandyea it's a plague, if manufacturers are too greedy to put another $20 into their $1000+ devices, then at least make it upgradable (for laptops, I understand that it would be hard for phones), otherwise it's just manufactured garbage and in case Snapdragon X Elite will have AI branding, guess what you'll need a lot of? that's right, RAM! (as the video stated, you'll probably need 32 GB at least if you want to do something kinda decent

It is not even that. Non upgradable is the result of extreme thin chassis and better performance. It is the upgrade price that is outrageous as RAM price has gone down significantly.

@@AaronFigFront the surface Laptop 6 and Dell XPS 14 all start at 8GB and have the same upgrade costs. Both are premium ultrabooks. I'm not sure why you pick Apple out and let Microsoft and Dell get a free pass. Maybe it is a lack of understanding of how demand side economics works.

@@andyH_EnglandI am not. Not mentioning them doesn’t mean I am giving Dell and Microsoft a pass. Their stuff is even worse.

SSD sure, but the RAM is also used as video memory so the soldering right next to CPU/GPU makes sense.

@@Thezftw Saw some test. It doesent make sense. 0 difference

storage and RAM are on the SOC die. this is part of the reason they are so fast. They don't work like windows machine. It's no different to buying a smartphone, you can't upgrade ram afterwards. It's not like apple have a gun to your head and say buy their stuff. You know before hand what you are paying for. If you don't like it, don't pay. and if you want to upgrade them do so at time of purchase. They've never argued environment for upgrades LOL. they are charging more because you are getting more.

You’re free to do whatever you want to your machine or buy something else. Apple’s free to design and sell what they want. It’s a great thing

​@@percy9228 Wrong. Storage is very much not on the SoC die. Only the storage controller. The storage chips, which determine the actual performance, are soldered down but not located on the die. And they are the same exact storage chips you would find on an NVMe drive from major manufacturers. RAM - fine. But storage - no.

If you are working or have a business buy what you need and write it up.

Are u using an emulator or a physical device ?

Glad it was helpful!

How's your experience with m1 macbook air so far. Can you tell little bit more about your workflows. I'm planning to get m3 macbook air for my university and I'm kinda confused between all of these. I do full stack web dev, ios dev, some radio astronomy from sdr as a hobby

They will have no resell value because they're most likely dead in a few years when the SSD reached its TBW threshold (from the constant swap attacks) and the thing transformed into e-waste...

From my experience as an iOS developer I think that 16 GB should be good for most projects. If you're using iPhone and iPad simulators in parallel and/or are messy with your browser tabs (Chrome!) and you may consider 24 GB. But 16 GB should be enough. I use an Intel iMac 27" with 32 GB as my main development machine and a MacBook Air M1 with 16 GB for onsite or mobile working - I've never had any problems.

very good; finally someone who realised that getting the latest CPU with 8 GB RAM may be a worse choice than some CPU that's a bit slower but that doesn't run into that hard memory bottleneck

here we go. another commenter who didn’t watch the video

If you are soppy enough to base a laptop on what the marketing term is, then you really shouldn't; I suspect you will be buying an AI PC because you think it is an AI machine! Ignore the marketing and names, do your research and base a purchase on your own sense. Really! Thinking a "pro" label makes it a pro machine is nuts! The iPhone Pro is not a pro iPhone. Apple uses "Pro" to define their most feature-packed device within a line! Come on...common sense needed...

I see the M3 MacBook Pro as a pro machine for business users/office professionals who are not usually going to be power users. It's Pro as in Professional. I could see this being a perfect laptop for someone who works in marketing, real estate, sales, etc that need the long battery life, HDMI output, SD card input, more-durable-than-the-air but still portable chassis, and so on, but not necessarily need the higher RAM and performance that the M3Pro and the M3Max offers. I think so many people get hung up on the word 'Pro' and confuse it for power user. These pro machines are not for power users, but they are every bit professional devices for those that make their living with them.

@@AZisk I watched the video. That doesn't keep me from having a problem with Apple calling a laptop with 8GB of RAM in 2024 a Pro model. I got the impression you agree. Or you wouldn't have to go back to 2007 in your own history for a computer with just 8GB. Apple's upgrade costs keep them from selling more units. It's their choice but I'd have 3x as many Apple products in my home if they had more realistic pricing on RAM and storage. Anything other than a base model isn't worth buying unless it comes with ample storage and RAM. Upgraded models don't hold value the way base models do.

@@martyk656 I''m with Andy here - just because Apple calls it Pro doesn't mean it's going to match some people's opinion of Pro. However, as I've mentioned in prior videos, THIS machine (the M3 MacBook Pro) is the least Pro MacBook Pro that Apple has released since I've been using them (2013). I'm ok with that, just look at specs, not the name.

The Air with 8GB is fine for middle school kids or blue-collar workers that use it for general web browsing and light photo editing. Maybe even light video editing if someone stops using browser tabs. Past that, get 16GB of RAM.

​@@akin242002in my opinion, 8 GB memory are completely acceptable, but in any situation, where the advantages of a MacBook would actually matter (like video editing), your RAM would really limit you. All the use cases you described can probably be done with an old MacBook/normal laptop for way cheaper without any real perceived performance hit

😆 you’ll need a lot more than that to be comfortable

@@AZisk My business laptop is M1 Pro 16gb, which runs ok doing that. But I realise now that its not that much different from an M3 on a MB Air.

For legacy.NET stuff i have a PC. For newer stuff, I use my Mac

yes, when the X series comes out i will

@@AZiskcool Alex, because i need a good machine for the go, and im between a MacBook air or snapdragon. Any idea when is this gonna happen?

@@psydude21​​⁠not till later this year, but i don’t have any specific info

I don't have too much hope for the Snapdragon X Elite, it seems that they carefully curate the benchmark results to make it look better.

friend, based on your experience, you continue to recommend the MacBook air m1, because I want to learn python from scratch but I want a computer that will last for years without changing equipment all the time and I want to learn to program and use databases, I hope you can help me, thank you

You've been looking for m3 benchmarks for "years" ?

@@Nemesis-db8fl Real world usage is not the same as benchmarks

Its more than enough doc, dev's need high memory to work with but most people would be completely fine with the base variant. For eg. I am a designer currently using the base variant, I have 10 chrome tabs open at all times and a software that I work on and its a breeze. For your work a base variant is enough, you can get the 512 gb ssd or use an external ssd like me.

Yes! 24 GB RAM is really good and 256 GB SSD is enough for macOS, Xcode, Android Studio and some other tools. But you may end with ~200 GB usage for the SSD.

I always recommend more RAM if you can afford it

No, Max tech did a test with about 20 tabs, and a single benchmark, and the scores were dramatically lower... Atleast go for 16GB

Yes, great point. I'd like to be squeezed up to that M3 Pro with 18GB if I can

i haven’t done it yet, but planning to. I don’t recommend the one on my desk though

@AZisk Thanks Alex, I got similar feedback outside yr channel, but as u knkw everyone test for gaming or video editing, I'm waiting for yr developer prespective review.