Heh, and then I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum: I can happily get by with the CPU power offered by Skylake (or maybe even older) devices, but need 32GB RAM to be "mostly comfortable, usually" in my developer workflows. I could easily make use of 64GB. I'm considering putting 96-128GB in my next desktop build for some future-proofing.
And yet laptop manufacturers seem hellbent on insisting 4GB is still acceptable to ship at all, and even still market 8GB machines to professionals. Folks, "professional software" like Slack takes hundreds of MB of RAM to even render the splash screen these days, it should be nearly criminal to ship a consumer device with less than 16GB now (alternatively, we should be taxing software companies for the negative externalities their waste produces, but that's a messy political fight)
> Folks, "professional software" like Slack takes hundreds of MB of RAM to even render the splash screen these days, it should be nearly criminal to ship a consumer device with less than 16GB now
Maybe the problem is slack (and every other program hogging your RAM). Just because we can doesn't mean we should. I get that some workloads need RAM but consumers and not even every professional needs it. There are still jobs where you mainly work with an e-mail client, normal sized documents and a browser.
Blame bad developers for developing terrible software, not the companies providing cheap computing for the masses. There can even be an environmental argument against it. I don't even bother downloading the Slack app, I use it on the web for work, but I refuse to install it. Not going to happen, why would I? You shouldn't either.
I don't use the app, I use a tab in Firefox. I even alluded to "alternatively, we could tax software companies for their waste". We're on the same team, bud, I just also have to accept the reality I currently live in: to pay the bills, I need a job (I'm not an indie developer yet, though one day I might like to be, and work on patronage or something!), and to do that job I have to use whatever the corporate chat app du jour is. Sadly, I will likely never be in a position to pitch anything for that; these decisions are made by non-tech-geeks for the most part, and so I'll rarely, if ever, get to use eg. Zulip or IRC in a corporate setting again. It's Slack, or Teams, or some other heavyweight mess, all the way down. And so I need the RAM to render it, and thus I need laptop manufacturers, and mini PC manufacturers, and etc., to get their shit together and either: (a) stop soldering RAM down, or (b) provide $LUDICROUS_NUMBER amount of it, and to stop pretending pittances of RAM are acceptable for professionals in nearly-2024.
> it should be nearly criminal to ship a consumer device with less than 16GB now
I assume you were just being hyperbole because now you're talking strictly professional devices. You can and should give your expertise when non techies have opinions, one could even argue it's in our job description. You seem to have just caved and buy more RAM. I took the other more painful route, scrapped every electron app, learned vim, and am very vocal about the issues at $DAY_JOB. If more people did the same would we be in this situation today?
If you're compiling huge programs I get the need for ridiculous amounts of RAM, but consumers should absolutely be fine with 8GB, many even with 4GB. I work in VMs with 4GB daily and it's no problem using my normal stack, a few terminals, a browser window with a couple of tabs. It doesn't break a sweat so it's difficult to relate.
I'm not a big fan of any SoCs which have soldered-on RAM or storage, but I find it an odd point to argue that I'm supporting Apple's ecosystem overall when all I did was buy their hardware on sale. Their App Store is by far their biggest money-maker.
I would say it doesn't count because they're all "evil". Apple, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Microsoft... The only stuff that's close to being truly open like Freescale and Talos is completely obsolete and overpriced.
Having used GNU/Linux since kernel 1.0.9 and subscribed all Linux User Journal issues since the 5th issue until their insolvency, I am quite aware of I am talking about.
What FUD, when the Framework themselves admit none of the provided Linux distributions support 100% of the hardware features they are selling?
We already had white brands doing the same 20 years ago during the dot-com wave.
No it's not. They've changed their policies retroactively multiple times. When people originally ordered the Purism 5, they could get a refund at any time. Then they changed it multiple times, and now you can't get a refund at all.
Soldered CPU/memory makes sense for performance. Part of why Apple's M SoCs blow Intel/AMD away so hard is that the physical signal paths are incredibly short and don't have physical sockets in their way, so way better signal integrity and less worrying about EMI.
