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.
Sounds like all she needs is a dirt cheap chromebook then
That’s what she has
Then her situation isn’t applicable to this topic
This comment chain made me chuckle. It’s such an “internet comment section” …trope? I don’t know the right word.
It’s a straw man argument that doesn’t address the main point the comment or was making.
The whole thread is just nonsense though. People went from “Apple restricts local LLM inference in Xcode development to 16GB” to “Apple admits 8GB is useless” and a lot of people who never researched anything about the problems of the traditional memory architecture criticizing the unified memory model without understanding it.
That all depends on how much work they want to put into troubleshooting it for her. I got my mom a Mac Mini when her PC needed to be replaced. It’s way less responsibility on my part. I mostly just answer the occasional how-to.
Mac is easier than Windows, sure, but not easier than a chromebook. Nothing is simpler than a Chromebook. You can do much more with a Mac, but a chromebook is much easier.