Memory in apple silicon chips is in the unified chip. It's not just adding another stick of ram.

But yes, how Apple prices upgrades is a little irritating in light of other options.

Package not chip, ram is soldered on top of cpu. You know who else does that? The other king of performance and expensive computing - Raspberry pi.

Well, the point I was making is upgrading ram on a pc isn't really comparable.

But sure, the raspberry pi. 2gb for $45. 4gb for $55(22% increase). 8gb for $75(66% increase over base)

Both definitely price for higher margins for buyers who want more memory.

So 1gb of ram in the raspberry pi costs about $5. $200 would buy 40 gigs if they had that option. For $200 apple gives you 8gb.

I'm not sure this is a fair comparison. The M2 was manufactured using the considerably more expensive N5P technology node. The 28nm cpu in the rasperry pi 4 was designed using a value node specifically to drive down price / transistor. EUV lithography is extraordinarily expensive so paying a premium for it seems appropriate.

but you arent paying for more expensive M2, you are paying extra for ram.

Closer to $60 for top spec DDR5 5600MHz

Apple uses LPDDR5 6400MHz

They're definitely still making extravagant margins on their upgrades.

They do seem to be moving to multiples of twelve for their newer machines. M2 supports 8/16/24. M3 Pro is rumored to support up to 48GB.

My hope is that an M3 MacBook Air would start at 12GB with 24GB optional. M3 Pro could be 24/48, M3 Max 48/96, etc.

If they're using RAM like that, they're pouring money down the drain. RAM speed matters, but 8GB is such little RAM that most users will experience paging from just using their web browser. It's kind of like those guys that put modified exhausts and spoilers on a 2001 Honda Civic.

It's a big step up from their JEDEC days, that's for sure.