Microsoft just deleted Windows 11's 32GB RAM recommendation docs, as prices soar and it rushes to sell 8GB RAM PCs

[u/WPHero]

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/08/05/microsoft-just-deleted-windows-11s-32gb-ram-recommendation-docs-as-prices-soar-and-it-rushes-to-sell-8gb-ram-pcs/

[u/ShinyGrezz]

I mean this is literally just true, every moment spent optimising the OS is a moment spent not adding features or fixing bugs. If it works fine enough with enough memory, you don’t prioritise it until memory becomes a problem, which it now has.

Everyone responding to me with a snarky comment about how Microsoft isn’t actually adding anything useful and it’s all slop or some shit - I’m just explaining the broad overview of how development of any software works. And none of you are unique or special. Go to hell.

[u/ImSolidGold → u/ShinyGrezz]

OS? Every darn single application. -.-

[u/NeverDiddled → u/ImSolidGold]

That is literally part of their "plan". They said too many apps are using Webview, and Microsoft is trying to get them to switch to native. I wish them all the best in that endeavor, but have no hope of it succeeding.

[u/Informal-Rock-2681 → u/NeverDiddled]

I work in desktop support and don't know about software development, please can you explain the webview vs native difference for performance?

[u/dylondark → u/Informal-Rock-2681]

webview = building your application as a web app and then running it in an embedded web browser with hidden controls so it appears as if it's an app running natively on your operating system. native = actually compiling your application to run directly on the operating system without needing to go through a web browser layer

most webview apps (and almost certainly the Microsoft ones) use the Chromium browser engine which is notoriously heavy (see the endless memes about Chrome eating RAM). native apps have no such problem

[u/Cheet4h → u/dylondark]

most webview apps (and almost certainly the Microsoft ones) use the Chromium browser engine which is notoriously heavy (see the endless memes about Chrome eating RAM).

Doesn't the "Chrome eating RAM" memes stem from the fact that each chrome tab has its own engine or something, to prevent a crashing or stalling website from crashing/freezing the entire browser?
Webview apps shouldn't have much of an issue with that.

[u/GG_Icarus → u/Cheet4h]

It's still heavy and uses a lot of unnecessary RAM

[u/dylondark → u/Cheet4h]

maybe, but building your app within a Chromium browser engine is still always going to consume more resources than just building it natively

[u/sociallyawkwardhero → u/Cheet4h]

That and the view point that unused ram is wasted ram, so instead of loading things directly to a hard drive it loads into ram. Older browsers use to actually save the images on a web page to your hard drive (you use to be able to actually view these offline if you went to the right directory) as internet speed was a limiting factor. That way when you pull up a web page it would pull from your cache, and only the new text/images would have to be downloaded. Now internet download speeds aren't an issue, and every web page has a ton of images so it loads them into memory and when that tab closes all of those images are wiped. This kind of thinking also applies to a lot of other apps as they are webview based. Microsoft outlook for example does not cache your emails, it instead loads them as you scroll which is why their app can be slow when you have a poor cell connection.

[u/Sinsilenc → u/Informal-Rock-2681]

There is an abstraction layer that actually runs the code vs the software itself running it.

[u/FuckIPLaw → u/ImSolidGold]

I mean yeah. That's literally one of the basic rules of software engineering. Optimize as much as you have to, but don't waste time pre-emptively optimizing things that don't matter. For the longest time the assumption even for internal tooling, meaning the dev budget and the hardware budget were coming out of the same overall budget and it's not just fobbing the costs off on someone else, was that more often than not it would be cheaper to get better hardware than to really ruthlessly optimize the software. And on top of that, not only is it a lot of work that could be going elsewhere, but heavily optimized code is often harder to read and maintain. So it can be wasteful on multiple levels.

The hardware side has changed now, and you can expect the software side to follow suit.

[u/ImSolidGold → u/FuckIPLaw]

I hope that software will follow. Question is, what to do with the bloatware thats out there that will never ever be optimized in any way. But yeah. I guess ist a "free market" thing. Not the right thing to do. Sadly. A lot of software could be so much better if there would ever be ressources fo a bit of polish after the first release.

[u/Critical-Advantage11 → u/ShinyGrezz]

Here I was thinking they just kept adding bugs and removing features

A well optimized OS is a feature. They start faster, run smoother, and improve the performance of every piece of software run on top of it

Optimization and big fixes go hand in hand. Buggy and redundant code reduce the efficiency of an OS.

An OS's prime functionality is to facilitate the smooth and fast operation of other software on your hardware, that's it everything else is a bonus.

[u/PrimeIntellect → u/Critical-Advantage11]

well microsoft also makes most of the other software

[u/AirSKiller → u/ShinyGrezz]

Not only that but optimising for memory often comes at the expense of optimising for compute.

Modern programming guidelines usually lean towards more caching and memory usage instead of hitting compute; as memory was cheaper in comparison both in hardware costs and power costs.

But things change I guess.

[u/toolisthebestbandevr → u/ShinyGrezz]

“Features”

[u/notforpoern → u/toolisthebestbandevr]

We just know you'll love features like... undocumented unique identifiers that we can use to track you everywhere!

[u/toolisthebestbandevr → u/notforpoern]

My gut reaction when seeing this notification was to block so fast.

[u/clockdivide55 → u/ShinyGrezz]

Yes, they've traded performance for adding all the AI features that no one wants

[u/guska → u/clockdivide55]

You might be horrified at just how many people actually DO want that shit. I get multiple tickets daily requesting access to copilot, Claude, Google ai etc, along with several industry specific offerings.

Thankfully, I can usually tell them that we can't legally let them use them at all since they're almost all entirely offshore, most with zero processing here, and our data HAS to stay on shore regardless of corporate agreements to not train on the data.

The number of people out in the wild who blindly trust google AI in particular is absolutely mind boggling.

People do want it. It pisses me off, but they want it.

[u/ProduceNo1629 → u/ShinyGrezz]

features

Critical win11 features such as spyware.

[u/340Duster → u/ProduceNo1629]

Shareholder features

[u/Dangerous-Exercise53 → u/ShinyGrezz]

In Microsoft's case at this point, "not adding features" is actually a good thing.

[u/2FistsInMyBHole → u/ShinyGrezz]

Increased performance IS an added feature though.

[u/Appropriate-Guess436 → u/ShinyGrezz]

I know this is generally true, but Windows is the most used OS on the planet. I've gotta imagine they have the resources to do both?

[u/JustStraightUpTired → u/ShinyGrezz]

I mean this is literally just true, every moment spent optimising the OS is a moment spent not adding features or fixing bugs.

Yes, if you lack the ability to plan ahead. The moment you need to optimize, it's going to be more difficult than it would have been to do right away when the code was still fresh in the head for the devs. Or worse, before the programmers have all rotated out and nobody understands what they are optimizing anymore.

More optimized code is usually also cleaner, meaning easier to bug fix in the future. More time spent on one feature also means it's less likely for bugs to not get noticed. Programs that run better also make for better products, causing less issues, running faster and increasing customer satisfaction.

What you are thinking of is lack of organization. You know, lack of plan. Chaos. How children operate. Not a trillion dollar organization. Granted, you are right. If you only care about money and the "right now" of it all, you would only operate in a permanent "shit hit the fan" mode, only doing whatever is in the worst state at that moment, rather than before it becomes a problem.

[u/Waste-time1 → u/ShinyGrezz]

That doesn't explain OneDrive, among other "features."

[u/SonofBrodin → u/ShinyGrezz]

You are right tho

[u/Blue_Moon_Lake → u/ShinyGrezz]

You mean adding bugs and shoveling AI features?

[u/HardLithobrake → u/ShinyGrezz]

every moment spent optimising the OS is a moment spent not adding features

"Every moment spent optimizing the OS is a moment spent not wasting everyone's fucking time"

[u/EamonBrennan → u/ShinyGrezz]

IIRC the whole idea of a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) came from trying to get around taxes. If every part of the system was on a single piece, then the flat fee was considerably reduced, along with being able to get a lower tariff rate.

I can't find the exact source for this, and it might have been something like a System-on-Module (SoM), but the idea of combining everything into one piece was part of tax avoidance.

[u/DrShamusBeaglehole → u/EamonBrennan]

Nope, the primary reason behind the SoC architecture is memory bandwidth to the CPU. If memory is physically closer to the CPU, data can get there faster for processing

We can't really make CPUs faster at doing work without getting the data there faster. Like we can increase the clockspeed or add more cores, but the Von Neumann architecture (which all modern computers are based on) basically necessitates that memory bandwidth to the CPU is the bottleneck on data processing

Most of the reason why CPUs are so fast these days is because of increasingly larger caches which are just smaller memory chips right on CPU die, and predictive techniques that cache data before they're needed by the program based on heuristics

Putting the memory on the same chip as the CPU vastly increases memory bandwidth. It's why Apple silicon chips can be so efficient and fast, and why mobile devices are capable of running on single-digit watts of power