It is criminal for Apple to sell a macbook with 8GB of RAM in 2023 with soldered unupgradable RAM.

@nirbheek Made me pour almost 3k to my 32 GB RAM Mac Mini M2 Pro early this year so I guess it is still a working business model :------) Ya, I'm a bitch. It has been useful tho for native ARM64 (or at least "real" VM instead of emulation) kernel testing and music production.

@nirbheek Actually also great for baremetal ARM testing since I can compile kernel images for RPi 3B+ without cross-compiler...

@nirbheek And it's even more criminal that people buy them!

@purpleidea most people have no idea that 16GB RAM is worth spending that outrageous $200 price increase.

Apple's whole schtick is that they make things simple for people—that's why you pay the luxury tax—so the fault lies completely with Apple.

@nirbheek Indeed I'm not blaming the consumer for purchasing a bad product. Accidentally a word "can". I'm saying it's horrible that Apple is allowed to legally make such a locked-down product in the first place. See right-to-repair, drm, proprietary/spyware, etc...

@purpleidea ah, okay :)

I don't mind that Apple has made RAM part of the SoC at all. It has real performance benefits in general and especially because the memory is unified between the GPU and CPU. The unified memory actually makes it even more egregious that the base model isn't 16GB.

I do object to Apple not putting a bloody NVMe slot on the motherboard. That's just a straight asshole move.

@nirbheek One good thing to say about Apple (and actually also Amazon if you do the research but even more Apple): they don't cash you with your privacy nearly as much as other companies do.

That's why I use e.g. iPhone, I feel that I pay with money the whole device, rather than paying part of the device with euros and part with privacy. Also, all infosec researchers I've learned to know use iPhone for this exact reason. For better or worse, iOS-ecosystem is a castle.

If you compare prices of the early 00's GSM phones, the cheapest model iPhone SE is in the price range of phones such as Nokia 3210 when it was released. People often complain why iPhones are so expensive. IMHO, the more appropriate question why Android phones are dirt cheap...

@jarkko is the implication that iPhones are more expensive because they don't monetize?

Apple monetizes the heck out of your data. They didn't reach 3 trillion market cap by just selling hardware.

They just make it super hard for third parties. They want to be the only source for your anonymized analytics profile so they can take a cut from everyone.

@jarkko A lot of things Apple does look a lot less cute when you realise they're just trying to monopolize and expand their walled garden.

Same with their recent support for Right to Repair. They are fully on board now because they are allowed to require that they be the sole source for replacement parts. They DRM the heck out of everything to the point where you can't even cannibalize a dead iPhone for parts.

@nirbheek I use my phone to make call or share wifi mainly so with those applications it is sort of still in the sweet spot. I try to use phose as less as possible. Still I need sometimes smart phone for scanning receipts, plane tickets and such so it is sort of best compromise from security perspective.