Base-model Macs won't be able to take advantage of Apple's flagship Xcode 16 feature: Predictive Code Completion.

There were a number of exciting announcements from Apple at WWDC 2024, from macOS Sequoia to Apple Intelligence. However, a subtle addition to Xcode 16 — the development environment for Apple platforms, like iOS and macOS — is a feature called Predictive Code Completion. Unfortunately, if you bought into Apple’s claim that 8GB of unified memory was enough for base-model Apple silicon Macs, you won’t be able to use it. There’s a memory requirement for Predictive Code Completion in Xcode 16, and it’s the closest thing we’ll get from Apple to an admission that 8GB of memory isn’t really enough for a new Mac in 2024.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Yeah but if you’re only putting 8 GB of RAM on then you’re also going to be constantly querying the hard drive. So any performance gain you get from soldering, is lost by going all the way to the hard drive every 3 microseconds.

      It’s only better performance on paper in reality there’s no real benefit. If you can run an application entirely entirely within the 8 GB of RAM, and assuming you’re not running anything else, then maybe you get better performance.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        And that’s the idea. Soldering memory is an engineering decision. How much to solder is a marketing decision. Since users can’t easily add more, marketing can upsell on more RAM.

        It’s not “on paper,” the RAM itself is performing better vs socketed RAM. Whether the system runs better depends on the configuration, as in, did you order enough RAM.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          I can’t tell if you’re a stooge or if you really think that. I hope you are stooge, because otherwise that’s a really stupid position you’ve decided to take and you clearly don’t actually understand the issue.