The reason why I write these responses is that I value merit-based discussions. Far too much cheerleading goes on in HN. I've said it numerously: It's very difficult to hold Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. accountable for actual transgressions when naysayers are just boys that cry wolf. These lot are self-defeating, no one worthwhile can take their opinions seriously because they don't apply them consistently and clearly have an agenda.

>No one is saying that the mere existence of the 8GB Macbook is a "problem".

This very thread is saying it ad nauseam - their issues being that (i) an 8gb computer shouldn't be labelled "pro", and (ii) that the 8gb models are irrelevant for serious work.

But onto the meat of the discussion:

While 8 is clearly not 16, Apple are obviously aware that the two numbers are not equal. Instead, what we have here in HN today is a disturbing number of disingenuous commenters who want to take that most absurd position on the statement.

The claim is evidently about how the user would perceive the performance and memory usage of the newer 8gb M-series macs versus apple's earlier 16gb intel models. It's not an unfair comparison and the article made numerous direct quotes about how apple make this claim; those points are being discussed by exactly zero people in this thread. It's also trivial to prove such a claim, so I doubt the majority of the commenters submitting their thoughts even clicked the article.

On a related topic:

A common speed test for smartphones is to simply run many 3rd party apps and multitask between them. These tests aim to demonstrate the real world performance of the device. Now despite having less ram that comparable flagships iPhones perform fluidly and outpace their Android counterparts, often significantly so.

What this underlines is that the performance of a device is not a mere sum of its basic parts. One can't look at a ram figure across different architectures and have an idea about the memory management of the device, or even its performance. A generation of computer users have grown up in a PC-monopoly and fail to grasp that different architectures lend to different efficiencies. Apple's approach here is enough to revisit that thinking.

> This very thread is saying it ad nauseam - their issues being that (i) an 8gb computer shouldn't be labelled "pro", and (ii) that the 8gb models are irrelevant for serious work.

First of all, there are exactly zero comments under the root comment of this thread that discuss the "pro" naming convention. There are comments discussing this in an adjacent thread but they account for only 10% of the total comments on this post.

Nor are there many comments regarding "8gb models are irrelevant for serious work". They exist, but make up only a small percentage of the comments on this post.

HN is really not as harsh on Apple as you think.

> While 8 is clearly not 16, Apple are obviously aware that the two numbers are not equal. Instead, what we have here in HN today is a disturbing number of disingenuous commenters who want to take that most absurd position on the statement.

Honestly, these people frustrate me too, but luckily as mentioned previously, they are really not all that common.

> The claim is evidently about how the user would perceive the performance and memory usage of the newer 8gb M-series macs versus apple's earlier 16gb intel models. It's not an unfair comparison and the article made numerous direct quotes about how apple make this claim; those points are being discussed by exactly zero people in this thread. It's also trivial to prove such a claim, so I doubt the majority of the commenters submitting their thoughts even clicked the article.

Nobody is discussing this because as you mentioned, the claim is trivial to prove. There is nothing to discuss, we all know the M1/2/3 is amazing!

> A common speed test for smartphones is to simply run many 3rd party apps and multitask between them. These tests aim to demonstrate the real world performance of the device. Now despite having less ram that comparable flagships iPhones perform fluidly and outpace their Android counterparts, often significantly so. > > What this underlines is that the performance of a device is not a mere sum of its basic parts. One can't look at a ram figure across different architectures and have an idea about the memory management of the device, or even its performance. A generation of computer users have grown up in a PC-monopoly and fail to grasp that different architectures lend to different efficiencies.

This is all very true, but it still doesn't mean 8GB == 16GB. Look, if you want to say "my device performs better than the other device even though it has less RAM", just say that, because it's true!