In 2011 I bought a laptop with 16GB ram for $2000 (Lenovo W520).

2015, MBP13, 8GB ram I bought for $1900.

2018, MBP13, 16GB, $2200.

2020, MBP13, 32GB, $2500.

Pretty sad improvements for 9 years. But the form factor did improve...

Wow those W520 were heavy. I got a few dumped on me at an old job. They were going to throw them away. I put a few together that I sold for 400 each in 2018, great returns. I didn’t even think they would bring 200

I mean. You're correct, in an off color way. I'm typing this from a Thinkpad with 128Gb of RAM that I bought for <2k (total machine+aftermarket RAM).

So it sounds like Apple has made very little progress in arena.

I'm typing this comment on a 2011 MBA with 4GB's of RAM.

Running Linux on it. Native apps are okay. Firefox is okay unless I over do it with tabs. Forget about electron apps.

RAM prices have come down significantly. I just helped a friend get 16GB of memory for ~$50. It wasn't super nice fancy RGB LED RAM, but it works.

You can still get by on 8GB if you're a lighter user. It's unpleasant for me, but my grandma literally only uses a browser so it works for her.

An Acer laptop from 2010 has 8GB (2cores/4threads, 3.2GHz), still in use but it's just office applications. That's all (an no swap of course).

For laptops, it's power, isn't it? Not to mention initializing so much ram takes a long time.

Maybe, but now we've got phones with 12 GB. It doesn't seem like the difference can be particularly significant.