I think since it’s internal that 16g isn’t comparable to 16g.

Talking about speed, I'm sure it is faster with internal RAM. And it may feel like more than the same amount arranged externally. From a storage standpoint, it will be the same whether it's internal or external. You have 16GB to store your open applications and files. Once that space is filled up, the OS has to start swapping pages out of the RAM and into more permanent storage (HD or SSD) to make room for other files or applications you want to load. All those CPU cycles are essentially wasted, because no real work is getting done. It's not as common anymore, but if memory is too limited for what you're trying to do, you end up thrashing, which is where the CPU spends all available clock cycles on swapping. So if 16GB isn't enough for a user now, moving it onto the chip probably won't make a huge difference. I'm sure it will speed up swapping, but it's better to simply avoid it in the first place because all you're doing is slowing down the computer.

Your words “it’ll speed up swapping” may be key here. There’s also likely to be some other tricks Apple has come up with as well but we’ll have to see how that works out. I’m not sure there’s many people who need that much ram and this could be a direction the iMac Pro or Mac Pro take. It’s very interesting to consider. Apple is on to something and I’m also curious if anyone else is going to try the same approach. It’s just seems it’ll be much more effective in a one company does it all environment.

I guess the higher tier mac mini can still be purchased with the Intel i7 chip and expandable up to 64G of ram. I wonder if Apple is planning on releasing a higher tier mac mini anytime soon.

see my comment above on the availability of a top tier Mac mini and wonders about the future offerings.

When I looked earlier, I noticed that the Intel processors were still an option - the only option - if you want more than 8 GB of RAM right now. In their footnotes they say testing was done with 16 GB. I didn't bother watching the announcement, so I don't know if they mentioned anything about higher capacities becoming available soon. But I'm sure they will phase out the Intel versions once they can fit more RAM into the M1 chips.

It will be interesting to see what they do for people that need tons of RAM. I could see them adding external RAM to the motherboard for systems like the Mac Pro. Then swap to the external memory with the SSD as a secondary swap space.

They made no announcements about the future releases. Hard to say what their plans are but the iMac, Mac mini high end and iMac Pro have to do more than the 13”MacBook pro. Even the 16” mbp has to step it up. They already know what they’re doing but nobody else knows. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Using my 2008 Mac Pro still and I’m getting impatient lol.

The 2008 MacPro tower was a great machine - I used mine until last year, although I had upgraded the RAM to its maximum, upgraded the video card, and replaced the hard drive with a nice 256GB SSD along the way. When High Sierra came out I finally let it go to someone willing to pay for it...

So almost a decade of use - I wish all computers were so able to be upgraded.

I am interested to watch the development of the M1 chip - the 5 nanometer path structure which allows the low battery draw, and hopefully will allow significantly higher RAM amounts than the present 8 or 16 Gb - so the future looks bright. The iPad Pro certainly seems to run some programs very well, and fast indeed.

We might also be seeing what would essentially be a mobile version of the processor, similar to what Intel is doing by producing a mobile version and a desktop version of the processors. The desktop version would allow a physically larger space for the chip, so they could dedicate a larger portion to the memory and probably graphics, if necessary.

Because it runs at such low temperatures I’m guessing even without changes they could add better cooling and clock it up. Stack it up. It really only has 4 high speed cores right now and much much more amenable to adding cores like Intel has been doing. Even two years from now it’ll be incredible in my mind. Anxious to see what the iMac gets.

I upgraded my graphics card but still just have 8G of ram because it’s plenty fast enough. I want a new version of my Mac Pro that doesn’t cost $8000.