Something is causing quite a stir in the land of the Macintosh: Apple’s recent admission that there is a feature that requires more than the 8GB of shared memory found on some Macs – which the company says has been sufficient system RAM so far.
In fact, the entry-level MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, as well as the Mac mini and iMac, still have a base memory configuration of 8GB. So that obviously has to be enough – otherwise Apple would look a little silly if it offered these devices in the aforementioned base configurations.
However, XDA Developers has made a finding that amounts to an admission that 8GB is not enough, at least not in one scenario. However, the functionality it brings comes with a caveat: it will never bother the average computer user.
In fact, it is a feature called “Predictive Code Completion,” which – as the name suggests – is for coding and is a new feature in the beta of Xcode 16, Apple’s app development platform.
Apple tells us: “Xcode 16 includes predictive code completion powered by a machine learning model specifically trained on Swift and Apple SDKs. Predictive code completion requires a Mac with Apple silicon and 16GB of unified memory running macOS 15.”
It is an AI feature (for macOS Sequoia, which is not yet released but is being tested by developers) that essentially enables auto-completion of code suggestions and is aimed at developers and programmers (requires an M-series chip and 16 GB).
Why should you, the average Mac user (or potential user), care? Well, it shouldn’t, at least not when it comes to a coding feature, but the problem lies in where this is going in the future. Let’s dig deeper into it…
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OK, so right now 16GB is only needed for the coding feature and that’s just an added benefit for Xcode 16 – we should stress that the platform doesn’t need 8GB to run. It will work fine with 8GB as always, just that developers won’t get this new predictive coding feature (although those who bought an entry-level 8GB Mac might be pretty upset about that).
However, in the future there might be other features outside of Xcode 16 that 8GB of unified RAM isn’t enough for, and that’s the concern. Remember, this is an AI feature, and what about macOS Sequoia in the pipeline for everyone, not just developers? Yes, Apple Intelligence.
While Apple’s AI tricks may not immediately require 16GB for any functionality in the near future – well, at least we assume so – it’s possible that it will come to that point. At least this requirement for Xcode suggests that it will for on-device AI tasks (and that’s exactly what predictive code completion is).
What about in a few years? What about AI workloads then, when features are likely to become much more advanced (the pace of development is already breakneck). Don’t we really want our Macs to last longer than a few years — while still being able to access all the benefits of Apple Intelligence? (If it turns out to be as big as Apple is pushing the concept, and we wouldn’t bet against it).
The problem with 8GB as the starting configuration on so many Macs is further complicated by the fact that, given the cost of upgrading to 16GB, it feels like this is just another way for Apple to squeeze more money out of Mac buyers. A lot more money, in fact. Take the MacBook Air 13-inch as an example: upgrading the base 8GB model to 16GB RAM costs $200 in the US (£200 in the UK or AU$300 in Australia).
This system memory represents a price increase of almost 20%. Cynics might argue that this is why Apple is sticking with the 8GB base RAM amount and brushing aside potential performance issues and future-proofing concerns.
Oh, and as for the MacBook Pro still coming with 8GB of RAM – a laptop designed for more demanding computing tasks and, as the name suggests, aimed at developers and professionals – that honestly seems to back up the cynic’s arguments. The kicker is that you can’t upgrade the shared memory at a later date either (of course, upgradeable RAM isn’t common in the world of laptops – but it should be, and some models still do).
The truth is that there have long been doubts about whether 8GB is enough, and in 2024 it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see the argument that this is still enough in terms of any kind of meaningful future-proofing.