By Jason Snell

October 30, 2024 8:00 AM PT

16GB for everyone: MacBook Air joins the RAM upgrade party

This week, all of Apple’s Mac announcements have featured one trend beyond the arrival of the M4 processor family on macOS: The lifting of base RAM configurations from 8GB to 16GB across the board on new models.

But it’s actually not just new models that are getting this boost. On Wednesday Apple also reconfigured its most popular laptop, the MacBook Air, to feature 16GB of RAM across all configurations at the same starting prices: $999 for the M2 model, $1099 for the M3 model.

With this move, there’s not a single new Mac being sold directly by Apple with less than 16GB of RAM. This is a big deal, because Apple doesn’t change base RAM that often—it’s a source of lucrative upgrade revenue.

As pointed out by Friend of the Site David Schaub, Apple’s base RAM figures tend to stick around for a long time. On consumer Mac laptops, since 2011 the base has only increased once—to 8GB, back in 2017.

Based on Schaub’s charts and the prevailing conversation in my own circles, these changes certainly feel long overdue. But let’s not be too quick to applaud Apple for its largesse here. Remember, Apple Intelligence (and AI models in general) tend to require a whole lot of memory to run well. The advent of Apple Intelligence seems likely to be the real motivator in giving even the cheapest Macs—a $599 Mac mini and a $999 M2 Macbook Air—a full load of 16GB of memory.

Whatever the reason, I’ll take it.

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