I’ve been critical of Apple’s new base-model 14-inch MacBook Pro, which comes with just 8GB of RAM for a starting price of $1,599. Despite Apple Silicon’s excellent performance and the fact that Apple’s unified memory is faster than traditional RAM, working memory is still working memory and more is better, especially if you use a lot of apps or browser tabs.

Jason Koebler at 404 Media agrees and points out that relying on swap, which shifts data to the SSD when RAM is full, also shortens the life span of your computer, making it an environmental issue on top of a bad user experience. We should expect more from our expensive laptops.