> Is this the year where Apple increases the memory on the base model above 8GB
Nope, the opposite. They're doubling down.
> In an interview with IT Home, Mac marketing executive Evan Buyze spoke in favor of Macs equipped with 8GB of RAM. According to Buyze, the 8GB of RAM in entry-level Macs is enough for most of the tasks that most users do with these computers. He used web browsing, media playback, light photo and video editing, and casual gaming as examples.
I was in the same department but changed my opinion - when my 32GB 2019 Macbook Pro 16" died of sudden heat death, I bought a base-model 8GB M2 MacMini (retail price 650€) and was amazed that it actually is faster for all my day-to-day tasks - this includes software development (C#/ASP.NETcore, TypeScript/React both using VSCode) plus running some (smaller) docker containers. Originally intended as an interims solution, I am still on the MacMini with no intention to upgrade - there is no way I could tell it has only 8GB RAMs and never run into any problems - it is in all matters of regular daily use faster than my ~3000€ 32GB MBP16.
If you're using any Jetbrains IDE and want to also run your app/nodejs/etc. you mac will start freezing and and input lagging. Of course it's a pretty bloated Java app that could be optimized a bit more but I can't really blame them, RAM is so cheap nowadays that there is no reason why you'd have less than 16GB or even 32...
Also having any mildly memory intense app + Chrome (with > 10-20 tabs opened) is a no go etc.
I used Webstorm and IntelliJ over the years, and the statement that their IDEs are super slow was true every day in the past 12 years and on every machine I had ever used them :D
I can't wait until 2 years from now they're touting how amazing and groundbreaking 32Gb is and how much better it is than those 2024 laptops with only 8Gb.
For today, sure. For 5 years down the line, probably would be a different story...
Also note that he's probably not using a Chromium-based browser for his "web browsing" experience... base Safari does fine with 8GB, even with a large amount of open tabs.
I also think we should progress past 8GB baselines but an interesting point: I said this “5 years down the line” back when the M1 first came out, in 2020. Maybe memory requirement inflation is truly starting to slow down.
There is still no reason not to have >= 16 GB besides Apple wanting to upcharge its customers since they have no choice. Also no, it's hardly enough unless you're using you Mac the same way you'd use an iPad..
Ooh, relying on swap to your limited write cycle irreplaceable mass storage seems like a bridge too far to me. I know they do it, but I worry it will shorten the device lifespan if it’s relied on too much.
I am not a fan of the idea that we’d engineer a device to consume a limited resource like that in normal operation.
But yes, if I were to recommend something, it'd be Zola given that there's just one executable that you need to run and there's absolutely no setup required.
Really it's just social media that's terrible. If all the social media apps go away, you still get left with all the above and can contact people you know. Algorithmic recommendations and flame wars with strangers are the worst things about smartphones — and they're not limited to them either.
Yep. It's kind of annoying to see people be so fatalistic about their self control that they think the only solution is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I carry my smartphone everywhere for the useful functions detailed above, but the closest I get to social media is some idle HN commenting if I'm unexpectedly waiting around somewhere. It's really not hard to just not spend all day on Twitter of whatever. The device is just a scapegoat. It's like blaming a microwave for a poor diet, ignoring the usefulness of on-demand heating for better uses
I do resent things that require smartphone though. E.g. parking or ordering in some places. And especially if they require your device to be certified as locked down by the Google-Apple duopoly
Once you've gotten rid of a lot of the more aggressive functions of a smartphone, I don't find the tradeoffs of carrying a large, fragile glass screen worth it.
My current flip device (Sonim XP3+) is mil-spec tough (in the sense of "Is tested to a range of military standards and passes"), lasts a casual week on battery (or two, if I shut it down at night, which I frequently do), and I can use it just fine with gloves on - which isn't a problem because the usable temperature range is radically wider than smartphones too. It also has a far louder ringer and speaker than almost any smartphone out there.
But more importantly, to your second point:
> I do resent things that require smartphone though.
The way to fight this requires "not carrying a smartphone." If you obviously have a smartphone and refuse to install the apps to do [whatever], you're just being cantankerous and can be safely ignored. When you pull out a flip phone and act baffled, it really surprises people. I don't think a lot of people under the age of about 30 even realize there's anything that's not "Android" or "iOS" out there (or if they do, they're still shocked that anyone would use it). So because I object to "smartphones required," and I'm old enough/stubborn enough to help counter that world, carrying a flip phone is a way for me to help fight back against the "smartphone as default way of interacting with all reality" thing that's been creeping in for quite a few years now, accelerated with the touch-free stuff during Covid.
> I do resent things that require smartphone though.
I got trapped by this over the weekend. I had a date to a hot new restaurant in town. When we arrived, I discovered that not only do they not provide actual menus, requiring you to go to a website instead, they also don't let you order and pay except through that website (Toast).
I was livid. But I was on a date and so felt forced to smile and pretend everything was cool, and subject myself to what turned out to be a privacy policy and ToS that I would never have agreed to under any circumstances.
But lesson learned: now I need to call ahead to establishments to ask if they force their customers to use that sort of nonsense, so I won't get trapped again.
You're still stuck carrying around a device designed to collect as much of your personal data as possible. Any kind of cell phone will cause your location to be tracked (where you live, where you work, where you sleep, who you're with, etc) but smart phones are packed with more sensors and many non-social media apps are filled with ads and do everything they can to steal as much of your data as possible too
Not all smartphones are designed to collect as much of your personal data as possible. GNU/Linux phones aren't. And they have hardware kill switches to stop cell tower tracking whenever you need it.
Not for me. I don't use social media (I'm even one of those few people who spend less than an hour or two per day using my smartphone at all), but smartphones are still a real problem for me.
Right. New kids will deliver you 50k LOC React frontend app with additional 1GB of `node_modules`, where you may actually feel good with PHP website sprinkled with jQuery.
Yes, you are right. There are plenty of those too in that group sadly. But my point still stands - most of the smart, up to do date, experienced devs who have "seen it all" were probably writing god awful VB6 and PHP code when they were teenagers.
The "new kids on the block" were the ones I saw that decided that statically typed languages suck and dynamic is the way forward, only to discover how static types help and now they are bolting on static types to their dynamic stack.
I'll also say that I am not trying to generalize the newer generation as bad programmers; I have worked with plenty of very smart younger devs. It's just much more harder to come across them now in a sea of mediocre bootcamp devs.
That's where I feel like it's actually pretty nice to not have CI tied to your source code. It's probably more expensive to use Travis/Circle but at least you don't have a single point of failure for deploys.
Ideally you don't ever rely on CI specific automation tooling to actually accomplish anything and instead just use it as a dumb "not my dev machine" to execute workflows.
You should always engineer things so you can fall back to something akin to:
./scripts/deploy_the_things
Ideally backed by a real build system and task engine ala Bazel, Gradle, whatever else floats your boat.
It also means you are free to move between different runners/CI providers and just have to work out how to re-plumb secrets/whatever.
GH actions/friends really provide minimal value, the fact they have convinced everyone that encoding task graphs into franken-YAML-bash is somehow good is one of the more egregious lies sold to the development community at large.
Well, git ops might not be impacted on Github, usual Github outages tend to be through Actions/the site, not the actual git operations. Doesn't seem like you can use a local copy but you can use Gitbucket/Gitlab.
Social sharing in general isn’t really used I’ve found. Case-in-point: Spotify Wrapped. The vast of the majority of the users just screenshot their phones instead of simply clicking a button to share on a platform.
Granted, it’s harder to do that on the Playstation but the alternative is just … not sharing it at all which probably is the case for most gamers.
I would posit that _most_ apps are losing luster. People are wary about Silicon Valley's business models and promises to make their lives better. Take Airbnb: it was supposed to be cheapter/more convenient but now people are using traditional services like hotel because of how expensive/inconvenient VC-backed platforms are. Same thing with dating apps, it just doesn't deliver on its promises and makes things more inconvenient than going to a house party.
Nope, the opposite. They're doubling down.
> In an interview with IT Home, Mac marketing executive Evan Buyze spoke in favor of Macs equipped with 8GB of RAM. According to Buyze, the 8GB of RAM in entry-level Macs is enough for most of the tasks that most users do with these computers. He used web browsing, media playback, light photo and video editing, and casual gaming as examples.
Source: https://9to5mac.com/2024/04/12/apple-8gb-ram-mac/