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The first true MacBook Neo rivals are here, packing double the RAM and storage of Apple's budget laptop
(www.windowscentral.com)
this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
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A $600 laptop with only 8GB of RAM was never an amazing deal by normal laptop standards.
Fucking thank you LOL. It's an otherwise very powerful and high quality laptop that's absolutely kneecapped with 8GB of unupgradeable RAM. Its insufficient for even the most basic of tasks, and has been for years. Give it 16GB and the Air is a dead product.
The next generation is supposed to have 12GB which will be a significant improvement, but most likely at a higher price, given the overwhelming demand.
It's like you've never used an ARM Mac.
8GB M1 MacBook Air (an equivalent spec) can do all kinds of crazy things you wouldn't expect it to.
It's not "absolutely kneecapped" unless you're doing pro stuff. It's fine for home movie HD video editing or audio production that isn't tons of tracks or any kind of basic administrative task you need. Even chrome with 20 tabs, if you must.
I have used them. That's how I know. Despite what Apple will tell you, they're not magic. 8GB is 8GB, regardless of what processor it runs on.
I’m forced to use one for work. It handles Xcode, simulator, Safari, teams, word and crappy corporate security suite simultaneously surprisingly well. Having only a 256GB SSD is far more annoying for development work than 8GB ram.
Would still get a minimum of 32gb for my personal machine, but it’s fine for normal users.
Fast nvme also makes some difference. Using an old computer with only 8GB of ram can be more painful because any swapping is doubly bad.
They really aren't that great unless the only thing you rate it on is battery life.
You act like there isn't this absolutely overwhelming market of people currently doing their computing on an iPad, maybe with a keyboard folio. For them, a real laptop with 8GB of ram is a really good upgrade.
Those people are doing everything in a web browser, and they are pretty good at unloading tabs when unused, so they don't run out of ram. The people just get used to having to wait for a page to reload when they switch tabs. That's just the "Chromebook" experience.
LOL the vast majority of people don't even know what RAM is, or why its important...
Yeah, that's what you call a bad experience. Which is fine when you're buying a $200 laptop, not $600 or $1k for an iPad. People just don't know they're having a bad experience or don't understand why.
At least if there were two upgradable RAM slots the end user would have the choice to add a second 8GB card at a later point (or even just one slot for compactness), but that of course isn't the way Apple does things.