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.

(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 ...

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 ...

This means that instead of 8GB of RAM on MacBook Air, it will come with 16GB, without the price going up. The affected models are the 13-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip, 13-inch MacBook Air with M3 ...