For the 40th Anniversary of the Mac... here are 40 years of All-In-One Macs' base SKU memory capacities.
It's sometimes tricky to tell which SKUs were still on sale at what time, so this is just based on "entry level" product introductions.
Memory increased quickly until the Mac Plus. 1986 to 1990 were all about decreasing the entry Mac price. Then we get a pretty straight logarithmic line until Tim Cook became CEO and there has only been a single increase since.
@sdjmchattie @dschaub @atpfm @siracusa Shame it’s not at least gone past 8GB. Some Android phones come with 12GB or 24GB. No Mac should start with less than an Android phone!
“All of our Macs now start with 32GB of RAM. Only Apple can do this.” -Tim, in some parallel universe or something
@JoshHrach perhaps my previously reply came across a bit condescending. You are right to make comparisons. If an Android can make use of that much RAM, surely a Mac could as well!
There is an overhead in terms of power draw with more RAM, so perhaps the availability of very fast SSDs for swapping plus the desire to make the battery last a very long time means that, for most “normal” users, 8GB is adequate. Their Pro machines should never come with 8GB in my opinion.
@sdjmchattie Adequate is a good word. My day job gives us iOS devs 8GB M1 machines and it’s adequate. We all wish it was more.
Pro machines definitely should base at 16 minimum.
DavidSchaub
Josh Hrach
Stuart McHattie 👨🏼💻
Big Kumera Energy