This week’s new Macs all had one factor in widespread: a minimal of 16GB of RAM. That was true of the brand new Mac Mini, MacBook Professional, and iMac, which have been all refreshed with M4 processors this week. The MacBook Air was refreshed to start out at 16GB of RAM, too, regardless that it didn’t get a bump as much as the M4 chip. The change brings an finish to the long-running period of 8GB of RAM because the default on consumer-grade Macs.
Apple had transitioned most of its Macs to 8GB of RAM by 2016. However now, after eight years, that amount feels more and more inadequate. Reviewers have criticized the entry-level RAM as restricted since a minimum of 2022. Native AI options like Apple Intelligence, which want fixed RAM to work, have solely accentuated the necessity to change issues.
That mentioned, Apple isn’t getting beneficiant with RAM all over the place. If you would like extra, it’ll nonetheless value you a fairly penny. Apple prices $200 for further reminiscence — for instance, bumping the iMac from 16GB to 24GB is $200, whereas it prices $400 to go all the best way to 32GB.
The RAM improve seemingly has to do with the launch of Apple Intelligence. As I wrote in September, the overall strategy to operating on-device AI fashions is to maintain them persistently loaded in RAM. 8GB already felt like a pittance (even when Apple itself thought it was simply pretty much as good as 16GB), and that might’ve been felt a lot more durable if customers needed to give a few of that as much as run AI.
