Apple to upgrade RAM in upcoming M4-powered Mac lineup

According to a fresh report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is gearing up to seriously boost the base RAM options across its new Mac lineup

The tech giant is currently testing out four new Mac models that run on the upcoming M4 Apple Silicon chips, with all the machines packing at least 16GB of unified memory. Some fancier versions might even sport 32GB of RAM.

This is a big change from what Apple has been up to recently, where their entry-level Macs have only had 8GB of RAM as default. They've caught a lot of flak over this, especially from users who feel like 8GB just doesn’t cut it anymore—especially for those in creative jobs.

Gurman’s sources say that the new M4 chips, available in either 10-core or 8-core variants, will be similar to the ones in the latest iPad Pro models. The higher-end variant will have a mix of 4 performance and 6 efficiency cores, while the more basic chip will keep things simple with a 4/4 setup

In addition to bumping up the RAM, it looks like Apple’s getting ready to refresh several Mac models with M4 chips, including the MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac. The mysterious model codenames “16,1,” “16,2,” “16,3,” and “16,10” are probably for these new releases.

Apple's switch to 16GB of RAM as the standard is a pretty big deal, especially since they’ve faced a lot of criticism over their memory choices. They used to claim that 8GB on an M-series Mac was like having 16GB elsewhere, but that didn’t really convince a lot of folks.

Now that the RAM is soldered onto the Apple Silicon chips, upgrading it after you buy a Mac is next to impossible. This also means that while users may not have to pay extra for memory, Apple could still increase the base prices of the models.

However, until Apple officially confirms these changes, it’s wise to take this information with a grain of salt.