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Apple’s MacBook Pro memory problem is worse than ever
(www.macworld.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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I mean, I get why people don’t like it but at the same time, no one forces you to buy one. I like Macs, I enjoy using OS X and would use it as my primary OS. I don’t because I don’t find the value proposition of their hardware worth it.
Their loss, they have a market, they just aren’t interested in it.
They are very interested in your money and parting your money from you.
Capitalism is as capitalism does
Life is like an overpriced box of chocolates
I'm kinda of in the same boat.
My "main" computer is a M1 iPad at this point. It's fast, and I can do all my day to day things on it. If I want to play games I do have a PC for that, but Windows isn't that "pleasant" to use so I don't spend much time with it beyond games.
I was reminded how much MacOS is just a pleasant experience a couple months ago when I found a sale for old mac minis. They had a 2014 model for $60. I put a new SSD in it, and I'm typing on that machine right now. It can get Monterey, but nothing newer. But that still lets me send texts, and the machine unlocks with my watch when I wake it up.
All that to say is: I've now been looking at buying a brand new Mac Mini, but the memory and hard drive charges are insane. They always have been, but it's just ridiculous at this point.
You can look into this if you want to upgrade to a newer macOS.
https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/
Thanks!
I feel like I remember seeing this project right when I got this computer, but I didn't look too far into it. I'll have to check it out.
I do have a little worry that running the newest MacOS would make this little, old mini run pretty slow. I need to do some research.
No if anything newer OS is faster. Apple works extremely hard to improve battery life and has been gradually reducing the size of the batteries in their laptops to get the weight down. My latest Mac has a 50Wh battery that lasts 18 hours in real world use. Years ago I used to get 5 hours from a 100Wh battery.
Those battery improvements aren’t just from efficient hardware - it also comes from more efficient software.
If you still had a HDD that’d be a problem, the software assumes a fast drive now and leaves memory on the disk that, years ago, would have been pulled into RAM, but you won’t have that problem since you have an SSD (also… that’s a big part of why Macs don’t need much RAM compared to Linux or Windows).
Apple drops support for old Macs when the cheapest configuration of that Mac is no-longer fast enough. With upgrades, like yours has, it’s often fine.
… but seriously when you can afford it an M1 processor will be an order of magnitude faster. I’ve got a 2014 Mac Mini at home and also an M1 laptop. The speed difference is astronomical. Mostly I just keep the Mac Mini around for backups/etc since connecting a laptop into an external backup drive is annoying.
I may have already bought a new Mac mini if it didn’t cost $400 to upgrade the ram and hard drive space to something respectable.
I’ve used my M1 iPad with stage manager with my external monitor quite a bit, and it smashes this old Mac mini on opening and closing apps and whatnot.
I have the same mini which runs Sonoma like a champ. OCLP is a wonderful tool.
That’s good to know. I may try and see if I can get it up and running.
Yeah. I use a MacBook for its build quality and being UNIX (cough Windows cough), plus some niceties like iCloud, but the RAM cost is insane.
The whole thing boggles my mind. Keep in mind that a good number of “Pro” users are corporate types running PowerPoint and Excel but certainly wouldn’t stoop to using a consumer model.
Not everyone is in that boat - for example in our theatre we have Mac’s with QLab installed and nothing else. They’re not even connected to the internet.
QLab needs about 250MB of RAM.
Oh, and because reliability is critical (it controls large robots that operate heavy fast moving objects in close proximity to humans) we need two of them. They run next to each other with a big red button you can smash with your fist at any time to seamlessly disconnect one and connect the backup.
A bit of money saved by having less RAM is fine with me. We could afford 16GB (or a lot more) but why waste money on that? Especially when one of the Macs will hopefully never be used except for routine testing to check if it works.
QLab doesn’t run on other operating systems and doesn’t really have any viable alternative either. There’s plenty of professional software that doesn’t need a bunch of memory. This one is essentially just a graphical programming tool that allows artistically talented people to do things that would normally require a software engineer.
But seriously - the MacBook Pro has a HDMI port. Apple’s cheaper laptops are too thin for HDMI, so they obviously don’t have one. If all you do is email and meetings - then HDMI is totally worth it and 8GB is fine. It would be nice if protectors around the world switched to DisplayPort (which can run over USB-C) but that’s not the world we live in.
USB-C to HDMI cables are unreliable in my experience. They might work, but sometimes you get weird issues around areas like detecting the supported list of resolutions/aspect ratios and so on.
I really do one want but can’t justify €1800-2000 for one or even €3500 if I actually get the one, I want (14 inch screen).
I can get probably a better laptop or PC with lower costs. Plus I have been told that unfortunately MacBooks don’t do well with Excel (still sad about this).
I'm curious about this. My past experience with Office 365 is that the apps works better on MacOS, but maybe it's short on more advanced features, like complex macros?
So I’m studying Finance with a mix of Accounting and I have been told that MacBooks don’t have the “ALT” key which is a key button for Excel in terms of shortcuts.
As well as what you said probably certain advanced features might not be available. But I’m not certain about this because never had a MacBook.
As well as a software called Power Bi doesn’t work well on MacBooks (slow, freezing or straight up not working). My friend had this issue in university and was forced to use my laptop to do the models.
Macs have an alt key, it's just called option. https://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/option-alt-keys-apple-us-keyboard.jpg
Most key combos are slightly different on mac though. Windows has a lot of ctrl or alt + key combos, Mac largely just has them all done with the command key. But that's obviously down to the developer, they could do whatever they want.
Correct. Almost all apps use the "option" key on a Mac, which is not a key on Windows keyboards. It more or less is just a change in the key name for most apps. I just tried using it in Excel to create a new line in a cell, and it has the same behavior as the ALT key on a Windows device.
Third-party software compatibility is obviously going to be an issue for some software on MacOS.