This week, Apple saw present three new MacBook Pro models, powered by the latest M4 silicon. Tim Cook and his team continued to promote their new generative AI efforts with this launch, proclaiming that “Apple Intelligence harnesses the power of Apple Silicon and the Neural Engine to unlock new ways for users to work, communicate, and learn.” express yourself on Mac. »

The announcement contains a change to the MacBook Air specifications. The much-maligned entry-level version will no longer suffer from 8 GB of RAM. Apple has steadfastly stuck to 8GB as an acceptable option, while the community and competing laptop makers all point to a baseline of 16GB as a minimum.

Why did that change this week?

Apple knows what it wants in your MacBook

This isn’t the first time Apple has decided it knows better than the market as a whole.

Wireless charging debuted on the Nokia Lumia 820 in 2012 and the Google Nexus 7 in 2013. Apple’s first wireless charging iPhone didn’t arrive until 2017’s iPhone 8. Industry widely adopted USB-C after it first appeared on an Android phone in 2015. the first USB-C iPhone was released in 2023.

Ignoring some interesting e-ink options (like the YotaPhone), always-on screens arrived on Android in 2016 with the release of the Samsung Galaxy S7. We had to wait until the iPhone 14 in 2022 before Apple introduced an always-on display on its smartphone.

None of these features were difficult, nor were they particularly exclusive. They all proved useful when released by a single manufacturer, and the markets decided that they should become standard features across the entire smartphone ecosystem.

Well, almost the entire smartphone ecosystem.

Apple’s MacBook is a single point of failure

Apple has spent years not adding popular features and specifications to the iPhone. The walled garden of the iPhone meant there was no pressure on Apple to deliver what everyone accepted as table stakes in making a smartphone. The Apple community will have to wait until Tim Cook and his team leave their ivory tower to join the rest of the world.

This situation would not remain static in a competitive retail environment. A company making Windows laptops, hearing of a market for a desperately sought-after feature that the competition wasn’t offering, would go in and win over those customers by meeting their needs.

This is not something Apple customers can benefit from. Let’s say there’s a competitive feature, upgrade, or spec sheet they want to see on one of Apple’s operating systems. In this case, there is no option to turn to a laptop running macOS or a smartphone running iOS which would offer these options. The closed system created by Apple serves Apple much better than consumers. The final arbiter is not the market; It’s management.

If Tim Cook doesn’t want it, it won’t happen.

We thought 640 KB was enough RAM for everyone

The Apple Machine tried hard to convey the message that 8GB was more than enough because of the benefits of Apple Silicon. The mantra has been brought up with every new Mac released with 8GB of RAM. That was enough… until the rest of the digerati reaped the benefits of generative AI, and Apple was forced to accelerate its efforts.

Although they’re still behind the adoption curve, the first wave of Apple Intelligence Suite apps have launched…and they all need 16GB of RAM. Surprisingly, Apple’s management team decided that 16GB of RAM would be a really good idea across the board. Only now will the weak entry-level 8GB of RAM be removed from the portfolio.

Is your MacBook Apple’s priority?

This is why competition is good. It stimulates innovation; this removes inertia from the system and ensures that the market can decide what is best and what is desired. Ultimately, competition empowers consumers.

Apple says that by focusing on making “the world’s best products, it can enrich people’s lives.” Thanks to this orientation, it can offer the best to its customers. The problem with this approach is that, without outside pressure, it’s Apple alone that decides what’s best for its stranded customers. And if that customer isn’t you, you’ll have to wait until Apple decides that what it needs is what you want to buy.

The entry-level MacBook Air M3 with 16 GB of RAM is available today for $1099…the same price Apple charged last week for the M3 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM.

Now read the latest MacBook, iPhone and iMac headlines in Forbes’ weekly Apple Loop news roundup…