Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's like 16GB on a PC

Re:Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's li... by cjk on Thursday November 09, 2023 @08:07AM (#38204498)

macOS has been doing memory compression for years. Basically, apps and background processes that are idle have their memory compressed, and then upon exiting idle (due to user interaction, a timer firing, etc.), the memory is decompressed. The compressed memory doesn’t touch swap.

It’s possible that Apple Silicon has some hardware acceleration for doing this in-place memory compression, but otherwise it’s pretty old news, which makes this marketing shtick even more frustrating. 8GB was borderline not enough even back when memory compression was added to macOS (maybe ~10 years ago?).

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Re:Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's li... by TerrifiedMouse on Thursday November 09, 2023 @08:30AM (#38204743)

> macOS has been doing memory compression for years

So has Windows.

With multi-core CPUs, it’s easy to do so without impacting performance in most cases.

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Re:Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's li... by spacechild1 on Thursday November 09, 2023 @09:19AM (#38205287)

And Linux (although not enabled by default on some distros).

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Re:Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's li... by RetroTechie on Thursday November 09, 2023 @09:17AM (#38205257)

So any working set that fits into 16 GB but exceeds 8 GB, eats into cpu performance and/or SSD longevity.

That's fine for a low-end laptop in 2023, and if you're upfront about that tradeoff.

For a ~$1500 laptop, that's just marketing bs.

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Re:Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's li... by PhilipRoman on Thursday November 09, 2023 @09:39AM (#38205539)

Sounds like zswap for Linux. The "swap" part of it is poorly named as it also doesn't involve a physical disk, at least not directly.

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Re:Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's li... by 7e on Thursday November 09, 2023 @09:47AM (#38205664)

zswap was implemented after Apple showcased their own memory compression. It's a copy of what macOS did first.

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Re:Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's li... by angoragoats on Thursday November 09, 2023 @10:04AM (#38205897)

Does that make it "not count" or somehow less effective?

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Re:Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's li... by cwillu on Thursday November 09, 2023 @11:10AM (#38206840)

OSX Mavericks was released in 2013, while Compcache was initially developed in 2008.

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