• floofloof
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      4 months ago

      It’s OK - for an extra $400 they’ll sell you one with an extra $50 worth of RAM.

        • ripcord@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I think they meant what the end user would NORMALLY pay, which is the better comparison.

          • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            But Apple isn’t buying consumer ram, they’re spending $8 to put on a different chip instead. If other laptop manufacturers are charging $50, it’s because they think they can get away with it, like apple.

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                  3 months ago

                  It’s really not. Other companies with socketed RAM also upsell, they are just limited in how much they can ask because the customer has the option to DIY adding more RAM. So the cost these companies charge is roughly the price to the customer of upgrading their own RAM, plus a bit extra for the convenience of not having to do that.

                  For example, Framework upcharges by something like 20-50% for RAM and SSDs when comparing to equivalent parts. It’s not just Apple, all OEMs do it, but Apple can charge much more because the user can’t easily replace either on their own.

      • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 months ago

        It does make some things better, but there are a number of downsides too. The biggest downside is that it’s not practical to make the memory socketed because of the speed that’s required.

  • forgotaboutlaye@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I know it’s not a like for like comparison, but the Pixel 9 Pro that launched this month has 16gb of RAM.

    • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Yup, while the current iPhone 15 Pro is the only model which has 8 GB of RAM, with the regular iPhone 15 having 6 GB. All iPhone 16 models (launching next month) will still only have 8 GB according to rumors, which happens to be the bare minimum required to run Apple Intelligence.

      Giving the new models only 8 GB seems a bit shortsighted and will likely mean that more complex AI models in future iOS versions won’t run on these devices. It could also mean that these devices won’t be able to keep a lot of apps ready in the background if running an AI model in-between.

      16 GB is proper future-proofing on Google’s part (unless they lock new software features behind newer models anyway down the road), and Apple will likely only gradually increase memory on their devices.

      • filister@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Pretty much what NVIDIA is doing with their GPUs. Refusing to provide adequate future proof amount of VRAM on their cards. That’s planned obsolescence in action.

        • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          And like Apple, Nvidia has no shortage of fanboys that insist the pitiful amounts of (V)RAM is enough. The marketing sway those two companies have is incredible.

          It’s a complete joke that Sapphire had an 8GB version of the R9 290X, what, 11 years ago or something? And yet Nvidia is still selling 8GB cards now, for exorbitant prices, and people lap it up.

          • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            The current GPU situation actually has me curious about AMDs upcoming Halo APU chips. They’re likely going to be pretty expensive relative to their potential GPU equivelent performance but if they work out similar to the combined price of a CPU and GPU then it might be worthwhile as they use onboard RAM as their VRAM. Probably a crazy idea but one I look forward to theory-building in spring when they release.

          • Petter1@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            This happens if you sell your hardware as DRM key to use their software (i(Pad)OS, macOS etc. and Cuda)

      • tankplanker@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        If you were being cynical, you could say it was planned obsolescence and that when the new ai feature set rolls out that you have to get the new phone for them.

        • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          I think they got caught with their pants down when everybody started doing AI and they were like “hey, we have this cool VR headset”. Otherwise they would’ve at least prepared the regular iPhone 15 (6 GB) to be ready for Apple Intelligence. Every (Apple Silicon) device with 8 GB or more get Apple Intelligence, so M1 iPads from 2021 get it as well for example, even though the M1’s NPU is much weaker than some of the NPUs in unsupported devices with less RAM.

          They are launching their AI (or at least everything under the “Apple Intelligence” umbrella) with iOS 18.1 which won’t even release with the launch of the new iPhones, and it’ll be US only (or at least English only) with several of the features announced at WWDC still missing/coming later and it’s unclear how they proceed in the EU.

          • tankplanker@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            With how polished Apples AI on mobile was at launch compared to Gemini on Android at launch were it could not even do basics like timers I suspect Apple had it in the works for far longer and it would not have been a total surprise.

            Also you are describing the situation at launch for new hardware, the software will evolve every year going forward and the requirements will likely increase every year. If I am buying a flagship phone right now I want it to last at least 3 years of updates, if not 5 years. The phone has to be able to cope with what is a very basic requirement that is enough RAM.

            This isn’t some NPU thing, this is just basic common sense that more RAM is better for this, something the flagship iPhones could have benefited from for a while now.

            • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              I’m not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me here. Either way, hardware has a substantially longer turnaround time compared to software. The iPhone 15 would’ve been in development years before release (I’m assuming they’re developing multiple generations in parallel, which is very likely the case) and keep in mind that the internals are basically identical to the iPhone 14 Pro, featuring the same SoC.