The main difference is price, and that's about it. A comparison illustrates the point clearly. For a Summer 2012 model MacBook Pro, buying 8GB of RAM from Apple will set you back $200 as of July 2013.

Apple's high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models from 2021 offer the M1 Pro chip with 16GB of RAM as standard, but you can upgrade to 32GB of RAM for $400. When choosing your ‌M1 Pro ...

(Traditionally, “RAM” referred to the memory used by the CPU only, and the GPU used video RAM or VRAM). Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro (M4 Pro, 2024) Price When Reviewed: $1,999 | $2,399 ...