Apple has a memory problem and we’re all paying for it::Apple still sells expensive “Pro” computers with just 8GB of RAM and charges a fortune for more.
Apple has a memory problem and we’re all paying for it::Apple still sells expensive “Pro” computers with just 8GB of RAM and charges a fortune for more.
I absolutely love Apple Silicon—the performance to power ratio is wonderful, and the high-speed memory makes things like LLMs work great—but the RAM upcharge is insane, and shipping anything “Pro” with 8GB of RAM should be criminal in 2023.
I really hope that Qualcomm can make some noise with their new laptop/desktop processors. Anything to light a fire under Apple’s ass and make them stop skimping on RAM.
I cannot +1 this hard enough. There was once upon a time, back in the Darwin days, when I had my eyes on a Macbook as my next computer. Apple Silicon almost got me there again. I’m itching for a Snapdragon X Elite Oryon OMGLOLBBQ SBC, but I’m not holding my breath. I bet laptop makers snap up all the chips for 2024, and then I get one in 2025.
Which LLM are you running on your macbook?
Not an LLM, but stable diffusion runs on them… Very slowly due to extreme swap usage.
I’ve been using an iPad with m1 for a while, can’t wait to get this power on a regular machine… but the ram price makes me want to wait another gen at least.
Microsoft’s exclusivity deal with Qualcomm expires soon, so there should be more options coming around. After all this time, RISC will finally change everything (without getting into the technical details of how it did already).