| its not about preferences really. as a developer myself I can justify the extra cost of RAM, I can make use of it (IDEs for example need a lot of RAM) but the company I work for should really pay for this. With that in mind: $200 is almost nothing. Overall, I think we agree, mostly I’m absolutely pissed off about runaway hardware requirements for running basic software, leaving no room for me to run my specialist tools; even with top of the line laptops. (leading to me buying an absolutely overjacked desktop, which apparently is not enough soon?) As mentioned, most of the 2010s I ran with the most RAM you could reasonably get in a laptop, but still felt the slowness because of these “productivity” programs which are often completely proprietary. My main argument here is that I don't think we should all be running 256GiB of RAM, but it feels like the consensus is that “we need more RAM” and that continues to be an argument, because “we cant do much with 16G”. I say we agree, because as you say “why is 4GB enough” I am saying “when is it ever enough?” |
What I'm trying to say is that even with decent margins extra 8GB does not cost anywhere near $200. Apple is just price gouging their customers cause they are a monopoly in the macOS market.
> I am saying “when is it ever enough?”
I'd say as long as it's relatively cheap. Most people buying $700-1000 machine would be willing to spend $50 for 8GB of RAM. That's pretty reasonable. So the "minimum" amount should be based on what's generally affordable to 80-90% of consumers buying new hardware. Anyone buying a laptop (or a screen less device based on laptop components like the mini) in the price range I mentioned would afford 16GB of memory if they could install it themselves or if Apple sold upgrades at with margin similar to that it puts on the the base device (and not 200% they charge now).
Anyone who is using an old device should be able to upgrade it's memory without having to buy a new one. The fact that Apple is selling computers that could be obsolete in a couple of years is deplorable from the perspective of the environment (obviously great for Apple's shareholders).
That developers are writing inefficient software doesn't really justify this in any way.