Apple says 8GB of RAM on a Mac is equivalent to 16GB on a PC

I still think that shipping some Macs (such as the new 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro and M3 iMac) with only 8GB of memory is chintzy on Apple’s part (I think 16GB should be the baseline of memory), but Apple claims that 8GB of RAM on a Mac compared to 16GB of RAM on a PC.

In an interview with Chinese ML engineer and content creator Lin YilYi, Bob Borchers, Apple’s vice president of worldwide product marketing, had this to say:

Comparing our memory to other system’s memory actually isn’t equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture.

Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently. And so what I would say is I would have people come in and try what they want to do on their systems, and they will I think see incredible performance. If you look at the raw data and capabilities of these systems, it really is phenomenal. And this is the place where I think people need to see beyond the specs, and actually go and look beyond the capabilities, and listen to trusted people like you who have actually used the systems.

People need to look beyond the specifications and actually go and understand how that technology is being used. That’s the true test.