I looked at a few Lenovo and MS laptops to see what they are charging to jumps from 8 to 16 GB.
They are very close to what Apple charges.
So, they are ALL ripping us off!I just got a laptop with 64GB of DDR5 ram for $870 or so from HP, so I wouldn’t take these specific examples you found as gospel.
deleted by creator
I think the history is such that a “PC” is a computer compatible with the “IBM PC” which Macs were historically not and modern ones aren’t either.
But I still like “Windows computer”, we can abbreviate that to “WC”.
Another complication was that DOS-using machines weren’t always running Windows at one point in time.
I agree with you, but you know how Apple operates, slapping a shiny new name on an already existing concept and making it sound premium.
You can install your own software on a personal computer, there is a freedom of choice. Apple tells you what you can install on a Mac. https://archive.ph/ks4uO
deleted by creator
Can you run that outside of a virtual box?
Will this make Apple Silicon Macs a fully open platform?
No, Apple still controls the boot process and, for example, the firmware that runs on the Secure Enclave Processor. However, no modern device is “fully open” - no usable computer exists today with completely open software and hardware (as much as some companies want to market themselves as such). What ends up changing is where you draw the line between closed parts and open parts. The line on Apple Silicon Macs is when the alternate kernel image is booted, while SEP firmware remains closed - which is quite similar to the line on standard PCs, where the UEFI firmware boots the OS loader, while the ME/PSP firmware remains closed. In fact, mainstream x86 platforms are arguably more intrusive because the proprietary UEFI firmware is allowed to steal the main CPU from the OS at any time via SMM interrupts, which is not the case on Apple Silicon Macs. This has real performance/stability implications; it’s not just a philosophical issue.
And wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper to just build your own PC rather than pay the premium for the apple logo?
deleted by creator
But you still cannot do it outside of a virtual box right?
So you will still be at the behest of the AppleOS.
Can you run that outside of a virtual box?
It’s not virtualization. It’s actually booted and runs on bare metal, same as the way Windows runs on a normal Windows computer: a proprietary closed UEFI firmware handles the boot process but boots an OS from the “hard drive” portion of non-volatile storage (usually an SSD on Windows machines). Whether you run Linux or Windows, that boot process starts the same.
Asahi Linux is configured so that Apple’s firmware loads a Linux bootloader instead of booting MacOS.
And wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper to just build your own PC rather than pay the premium for the apple logo?
Apple’s base configurations are generally cheaper than similarly specced competitors, because their CPU/GPUs are so much cheaper than similar Intel/AMD/Nvidia chips. The expense comes from exorbitant prices for additional memory or storage, and the fact that they simply refuse to use cheaper display tech even in their cheapest laptops. The entry level laptop has a 13 inch 2560x1600 screen, which compares favorably to the highest end displays available on Thinkpads and Dells.
If you’re already going to buy a laptop with a high quality HiDPI display, and are looking for high performance from your CPU/GPU, it takes a decent amount of storage/memory for a Macbook to overtake a similarly specced competitor in price.
It’s not virtualization. It’s actually booted and runs on bare metal, same as the way Windows runs on a normal Windows computer: a proprietary closed UEFI firmware handles the boot process but boots an OS from the “hard drive” portion of non-volatile storage (usually an SSD on Windows machines). Whether you run Linux or Windows, that boot process starts the same.
Except the boot process on a non apple PC is open software. You can create custom a bios revision. The firmware on an apple computer is not open source. AFAIK you cannot create a custom bios on an apple computer.
Apple’s base configurations are generally cheaper than similarly specced competitors, because their CPU/GPUs are so much cheaper than similar Intel/AMD/Nvidia chips.
No idea what you mean by this. You cannot buy Apple’s hardware due the restrictions Apple places on any purchases. Any hardware you can buy from Apple has a premium.
Apple leans heavily on the display being good on an Apple but imo it does not make up for the pricing. There is a good guide on better alternatives here.
If you’re already going to buy a laptop with a high quality HiDPI display, and are looking for high performance from your CPU/GPU, it takes a decent amount of storage/memory for a Macbook to overtake a similarly specced competitor in price.
I think you mean that Apple uses its own memory more effectively then a windows PC does. Yes it does, but memory is not that expensive to make. To increase the storage space from 256GB to 512 is £200. I can buy a 2TB drive for that. More importantly, it can be replaced when it wears out. Apple give you a replacement price that means you need a new computer.
Apple computers are designed to make repairs expensive. They may have pseudo adopted the right to repair, but let us see how that goes before believing the hype.
Except the boot process on a non apple PC is open software.
For the most part, it isn’t. The typical laptop you buy from the major manufacturers (Lenovo, HP, Dell) have closed-source firmware. They all end up supporting the open UEFI standard, but the implementation is usually closed source. Having the ability to flash new firmware that is mostly open source but with closed source binary blobs (like coreboot) or fully open source (like libreboot) gets closer to the hardware at startup, but still sits on proprietary implementations.
There’s some movement to open source more and more of this process, but it’s not quite there yet. AMD has the OpenSIL project and has publicly committed to open sourcing a functional firmware for those chips by 2026.
Asahi uses the open source m1n1 bootloader to load a U-boot to load desktop Linux bootloaders like GRUB (which generally expect UEFI compatibility), as described here:
- The SecureROM inside the M1 SoC starts up on cold boot, and loads iBoot1 from NOR flash
- iBoot1 reads the boot configuration in the internal SSD, validates the system boot policy, and chooses an “OS” to boot – for us, Asahi Linux / m1n1 will look like an OS partition to iBoot1.
- iBoot2, which is the “OS loader” and needs to reside in the OS partition being booted to, loads firmware for internal devices, sets up the Apple Device Tree, and boots a Mach-O kernel (or in our case, m1n1).
- m1n1 parses the ADT, sets up more devices and makes things Linux-like, sets up an FDT (Flattened Device Tree, the binary devicetree format), then boots U-Boot.
- U-Boot, which will have drivers for the internal SSD, reads its configuration and the next stage, and provides UEFI services – including forwarding the devicetree from m1n1.
- GRUB, booting as a standard UEFI application from a disk partition, works like GRUB on any PC. This is what allows distributions to manage kernels the way we are used to, with grub-mkconfig and /etc/default/grub and friends.
- Finally, the Linux kernel is booted, with the devicetree that was passed all the way from m1n1 providing it with the information it needs to work.
If you compare the role of iBoot (proprietary Apple code) to the closed source firmware in the typical Dell/HP/Acer/Asus/Lenovo booting Linux, you’ll see that it’s basically just line drawing at a slightly later stage, where closed-source code hands off to open-source code. No matter how you slice it, it’s not virtualization, unless you want to take the position that most laptops can only run virtualized OSes.
I think you mean that Apple uses its own memory more effectively then a windows PC does.
No, I mean that when you spec out a base model Macbook Air at $1,199 and compare to similarly specced Windows laptops, whose CPUs/GPUs can deliver comparable performance on benchmarks, and a similar quality display built into the laptop, the Macbook Air is usually cheaper. The Windows laptops tend to become cheaper when you’re comparing Apple to non-Apple at higher memory and storage (roughly 16GB/1TB), but the base model Macbooks do compare favorably on price.
The typical laptop you buy from the major manufacturers (Lenovo, HP, Dell) have closed-source firmware.
FTFY: The typical laptop MOST buy from the major manufacturers (Lenovo, HP, Dell) have closed-source firmware. Though, I totally agree there are some PC suppliers with shitty practises. Where we disagree is that is if the firmware is fixed by the hardware manufacturer, then you have control over everything on the system. It is only when you have control of the base functionality of the system that you can say you are in charge. This may be too literal for you, but I just see that as a trust level you have in the manufacturer not to abuse that control.
As for the comparison I disagree.
This is a £1400 laptop from scan V’s £1500 macbook air currently.
17 inch screen (2560X1440) over the 15.3 inch (2880X1864)
16gb memory - 8GB upgrade to 16gb=+£200
1TB SSD over 256GB (upgrade to 1Tb=+£400)
8 full core/16t CPU (AMD5900hx) over an 8 core non hyperx cpu, 4 cores are cheaper variants.
All of the PC components can be upgraded at the cost of the part + labour. Everything on the Apple will cost the same price as a new computer to replace. Mainly because it is all soldered onto the board to make it harder to replace.
poop. it’s poop.
I doubt it’s the last time. also while “PC” means personal computer, it was a very specific brand name by IBM, not a general purpose term. their computers (and clones later) became synonymous with x86-windows machines.
Even apple themselves have always distanced themselves from the term (I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC…).
True by the letter but not really by practice. PC is synonymous with a computer running Windows, or Linux at a push. I don’t know whether that’s because of Microsoft’s early market dominance or because Apple enjoys marketing itself as a totally different entity, or some combination of the two. But yeah, usage determines meaning more than what the individual words mean in a more literal sense.
deleted by creator
Originally “PC” was IBMPC or PC Compatible (as in compatible with IBM without using their trademark). An IBMPC could have run DOS, Windows or even OS/2
16gb is always better, and I usually recommend it to people looking to buy a Mac, but they aren’t wrong about Macs handling RAM more efficiently. They still sound arrogant af when using that as their excuse, though.
they aren’t wrong about Macs handling RAM more efficiently.
More efficiently than what other system? How did you come to that conclusion? If you open tabs in your browser, do you think MacOS will allow you to open more tabs than other operating systems?
Just from my observations from owning a 2015 MBP with 8GB of memory, it is easy to be fooled into thinking memory management is much better on macOS because you can effectively have more open than you would on an equivalent Windows laptop with 8GB memory.
From what I understand though, the SSD is used to compensate as swap a lot more than Windows, and I believe this is causing a lot of ewaste with the M1 Macs in particular being effectively binned because the SSDs are worn out on them from swapping and they’re soldered.
Scammers!
My 16GB XPS running Linux almost fills up entirely when running several docker containers, IDEA, Firefox, Teams, Postman and a few other, smaller apps, but it fits still, and I can work with it (tho I can’t wait to get my 32GB framework laptop)
Now gimme a 8GB MBP and I’ll show you that I wouldn’t get shit done on that configuration. And at 1600 it’s just crazy.
11 gigabytes of that is probably being used up by Teams, it’s a memory hog.
Teams it’s the absolute worst and it’s the only app that can sometimes crash my Linux machine
It crashes on Apple too.
It sucks that better alternatives like slack went from the big player to a small player only because of Microsofts power over businesses. If teams would win because it was actually a better product I’d be fine with that. But teams is just a pile of shit we are forced to use.
Lol. My personal iMac has 32GB, and I’m happy with it. My POS work MBP has only 8GB, and I wanna frisbee the fucken thing out the window pretty much every day.
My research disproves this clown’s hypothesis.
If I wasn’t so broke, my 8GB MBP would enter the frisbee competition…
16 gb optiplexes on sale for 85 dollars on eBay. Dont come with windows, but neither do macs :P
Install Linux and this is the way.
Yeah yeah, I do think even like windows 11 these days. I’m a debian with KDE guy.
Ridiculous.
deleted by creator
In my entirely anecdotal experience, MacOS is significantly better at RAM management than Windows. But it’s still a $1,600 USD computer, and 16GB of RAM costs nearly nothing, it’s just classic Apple greed.
How did you measure this?
Sounds like “feelz” measuring to me
The main metric has been with Adobe apps. 2017 Macs with 8GB of RAM are still able to run Premiere and a few others things smoothly simultaneously. Windows machines with the same config were crashing constantly and kept going.
But I’m still not defending Apple here. It’s been 6 years, and their base level MacBook still ships with the same amount of RAM.
It’s not anecdotal in the least. It’s been widely tested. There’s a reason an M1 Mac mini with 8GB of RAM can load and fully support over 100 tracks in Logic Pro. The previous Intel machines would buckle with just a few.
ARM is not comparable to x86-64. The former is totally unified, the latter totally modular.
I can load even more tracks with 0 RAM on Windows.
Just one big page file.
I’m also under the impression the M powered books are much better at thermo management and battery usage over PC versions?
ARM chips are generally better at that.
Really hoping Snapdragon Oryon can be the same boon for Windows/Linux that Apple’s M CPUs were for Mac
Tell that to Google Chrome
Emulators disagree.
But it’s $1600 Apple. Not the cheapest Mac book air.
Seems fair, you pay 1000 for the logo and 600 for the hardware.
It’s a very nice logo. And it lights up. Hard to argue with their pricing, really.
It actually doesn’t light up anymore…
For $375 you can get an iFlashlight to point at the logo
Ordered the iFleshlight. Looking forward to seeing the jealous looks I get at the coffee shop.
It’s actually just the display backlight which is why I had to cover it with aluminium tape instead of just disconnecting the wire. Not only don’t I want an ad on my computer I especially don’t want an illuminated one.
Apple laptops and gaming headphones, keeping it classy
Instead I feel it’s the opposite because that memory is shared with the GPU. So if you’re gaming even with some old game, it’s like having 4gb for the system and 4gb to the GPU. They might claim that their scheduler is magic and can predict memory usage with perfect accuracy but still, it would be like 6+2 GB. If a game has heavy textures they will steal memory from the system. Maybe you want to have a browser for watching a tutorial on YouTube during gaming, or a chat. That’s another 1-2 gb stolen from the CPU and GPU.
Their pricing for the ram is ridiculous, they’re charging $300 for just 8gb of additional memory! We’re not in the 2010s anymore!
The most expensive 8GB DDR5 stick I can find on Amazon is about us$35. There are 64GB sets that are under us$200!
Apple should be ashamed.
Maybe you want to have a browser for watching a tutorial on YouTube during gaming, or a chat. That’s another 1-2 gb stolen from the CPU and GPU.
Or five times that amount if you’re running Chrome
My GeoTIFFs do not agree.
