1GB : the new 256MB

I was just thinking about the new Mac Pro machines, and I was happy to see that they came standard with 1GB of RAM. For any kind of Pro work, 1 GB is kind of the minimum, so it's nice to see Apple acknowledge that.

For the longest time, Apple would only stick in the bare minimum, just enough to run the OS and one or two apps. The iMac prior to May 2005 came with only 256MB of RAM.

The previous, just replaced, Quad PowerMac G5 came with a paltry 512MB.

So what? We've come a long way from 64k, 128k machines of the 80's. But in the middle of this unstoppable march of progress, Moore's law, and incredible technological advancement, we come crashing up against this amazing thing called human adaptability. We adapt to whatever we're given, whether it's processor speed or hard drive size or memory, and we get used to it. And once we get used to it, then we want more. No matter how big your hard drive is, you always fill it. No matter how fast your processor(s), you find things to do that push it to the max.

So 1GB is the new 256MB. I can hear it now... "What? Your Mac only came with 1GB? what a rip... how can you even do anything with just 1GB?"

I guess I better get used to it.