Unified memory architectures can offer significant performance benefits by reducing latency and increasing efficiency in data transfer between the CPU and GPU.
Eh. Memory bandwidth between CPU and GPU isn't generally an issue at all on PCIe4 systems with a dGPU. "Unified memory" is just Apple's way of marketing the lack of a separate pool of memory that the GPU has exclusive access to. It's not anything special in of itself. It's how every mobile device is set up, including Android based phones. Intel iGPUs do the same thing and there's no performance benefit to consuming system ram over giving a GPU its own pool. If anything, it's a performance limitation.
I'd much rather a dGPU have exclusive access to its own memory over pulling from a system that is already starved with 8GB.
However, I can’t really imagine anyone who knows they need more RAM, not buying more RAM.
Oh, but that's the fun part. All configurations of Apple hardware short of the Pro towers have fixed, soldered and non-upgradeable Ram and Storage.
So while Apple users get to enjoy being memory starved at 8GB... they can't increase the amount of ram for anything else short of replacing the entire system. Suppose you bought the base Mac Mini.
The price difference between that with 8GB Ram and 256GB SSD... And the only option with 16GB Ram, albeit with 256GB more storage and 2 additional CPU cores...
You can get 64GB Ram, 2TB PCIe4 NVME Storage and a dedicated GPU with 12GB Ram for $100 less than Apple's 'upgrade' price which... really isn't an upgrade price since you have to completely replace the system if you want more ram or storage. So rather than spending $700 to upgrade a system you have, you have the luxury of spending $1300 instead. To go from 8 to 16GB ram.
What Apple is doing here is unconscionable... and people eat their marketing bullshit right up.