Someone who is buying a MacBook with the minimum specs probably isn’t the same person that’s going to run out and buy another one to get one specific feature in Xcode. Not trying to defend Apple here, but if you were a developer who would care about this, you probably would have paid for the upgrade when you bought it in the first place (or couldn’t afford it then or now).

And why they solder the RAM, or even worse make it part of the SoC.

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’m not gonna stand up and declare that 8gb is absolutely fine, because in very short order it won’t be. But yeah, currently for an average use case, it is.

My work Mac mini has 8gb. It’s a 2014 so can’t be upgraded, but for the tasks I ask of it it’s ok. Sure, it gets sluggish if I’m using the Win11 VM I sometimes need, but generally I don’t really have any issues doing regular office tasks.

That said, I sometimes gets a bee in my bonnet about it, so open Activity Monitor to see what’s it’s doing, and am shocked by how much RAM some websites consume in open tabs in Safari.

8gb is generally ok on low end gear, but devs are working very hard to ensure that it’s not.

I still can't fully accept that 1GB is not normal, 2GB is not very good, and 4GB is not all you ever gonna need.

If only it got bloated for some good reasons.

I chalk it up to lazy rushed development. Good code is art.

I have a VPS that uses 1GB of RAM, it has 6-7 apps running in docker containers which isn't the most ram efficient method of running apps.

A light OS really helps, plus the most used app that uses a lot of RAM actually reduce their consumption if needed, but use more when memory is free, the web browser. On one computer I have chrome running with some hundreds of MB used, instead of the usual GBs because RAM is running out.

So it appears that memory is full,but you can actually have a bit more memory available that is "hidden"

buy a new one.

Buy a new SSD and swap out the old one?

...buy a new SSD, right??

💸💸💸

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.

At a $188 price point. An additional 4GB of memory would probably add ~$10 to the cost, which is over a 5% increase. However, that is not the only component they cheaped out on. The linked unit also only has 64GB of storage, which they should probably increase to have a usable system ...

And soon you find that you just reinvented a mid-market device instead of the low-market device you were trying to sell.

4GB of ram is still plenty to have a functioning computer. It will not be as capable of a more powerful computer, but that comes with the territory of buying the low cost version of a product.

8GB would be fine for basic use if it was upgradable. With soldered RAM the laptop becomes e-waste when 8GB is no longer enough.

If you allocate it right, you can add 200GB of swap space and then that 4GB of RAM will feel like 408GB!

Sounds like all she needs is a dirt cheap chromebook then