8GB is most certainly not enough for developers

[senttoschool]

My 8GB MBA slows to a crawl with beachballs and stuttering UI on a daily basis. I frequently close applications before I dare to open other ones.

I run the following:

• Webpack server in terminal (always on)
• Go server (always on)
• Sometimes XCode Emulator
• Sometimes Expo for React Native app
• Sometimes Android Studio Emulator
• Chrome with multiple tabs opened
• Maestral (Open-sourced Dropbox app)
• VS Code
• Whatsapp
• Slack
• Sometimes Sketchapp for designs
• Sometimes spotify

There is no substitute for more RAM. I needed something quick to replace my 2015 MBP 15" with 16GB of RAM so I just bought the base model. Although my overall experience has been better and faster, the 8GB of RAM is truly a bottleneck for developers.

I absolutely can't wait for the 16" MBP. 32GB is a must for any serious developers in my opinion.

 

[Ritsuka]

It depends on what are you developing, but surely running so many Electron apps and Chrome requires more than 8 GB of RAM.

I have 32 GB on my Mac and still avoid every Electron app I can.

 

[senttoschool]

It depends on what are you developing, but surely running so many Electron apps and Chrome requires more than 8 GB of RAM.

I have 32 GB on my Mac and still avoid every Electron app I can.

XCode Emulators and Android Emulators take up a ton of RAM and can slow my system to a crawl.

But Electron Apps are unavoidable and they're getting more common. Whatsapp, Slack, VSCode, Notion are all Electron apps. They're honestly not that bad.

 

[Kung gu]

its not thats why Apple gave 16GB in the dev kit. case closed

 

[Andropov]

But Electron Apps are unavoidable and they're getting more common. Whatsapp, Slack, VSCode, Notion are all Electron apps. They're honestly not that bad.

’Not that bad’ but they slow the system to a crawl due to the high RAM usage? That does sound bad to me.

 

[leons]

Absolutely depends on "what" you are developing and how/with which tools. @TheSynchronizer is about as serious a developer as you will find, and he runs 8GB with no problems at all. Maybe he will chime in, but his development environment is clearly different than yours.

 

[TheSynchronizer]

I have no issues at all running 100s of tabs open in FF with multiple windows, multiple windows of intelliJ IDEA and netbeans, mysql workbench, MATLAB, MS word, powerpoint, excel, a few terminals and text editors, zoom, discord, apple music, messages, onedrive and others etc.

on two monitors with a range of windows active at once. All works great on my 8GB M1 MBP.

 

[Internaut]

It depends on what are you developing, but surely running so many Electron apps and Chrome requires more than 8 GB of RAM.

I have 32 GB on my Mac and still avoid every Electron app I can.

Wherever possible, I run the browser based versions of these Electron apps. So Teams and Trello (both Intel), for example, both run inside Edge. Wondering if the OP has upgraded to 11.4 (but suspect the difference will be marginal).

I got 8GB because that is pretty much all that was available at the time, and it hasn’t burned me (yet). In the future, I will just be more patient (or buy alternatives to Apple, as I did when I had a specific need for 5G earlier this year).

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

There is no substitute for more RAM. I needed something quick to replace my 2015 MBP 15" with 16GB of RAM so I just bought the base model.

More to the point - why did you believe that 8gb could replace 16gb?

I really don’t understand the purpose of this thread.

 

[senttoschool]

More to the point - why did you believe that 8gb could replace 16gb?

I really don’t understand the purpose of this thread.

When did I say that?

Also, the M1 8GB was able to replace 16GB from my 2015 Macbook Pro. The overall system still feels faster.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

When did I say that?

Also, the M1 8GB was able to replace 16GB from my 2015 Macbook Pro. The overall system still feels faster.

You said you "needed something quick to replace [the] 2015 MBP 15" with 16GB of RAM so bought the base model". Why replace with it a device that has half the RAM for development?

 

[senttoschool]

You said you "needed something quick to replace [the] 2015 MBP 15" with 16GB of RAM so bought the base model". Why replace with it a device that has half the RAM for development?

I needed something quick, as in buy something and put it to use ASAP. My 2015 was falling apart.

 

[Gregintosh]

I needed something quick, as in buy something and put it to use ASAP. My 2015 was falling apart.

But you could have gotten the 16GB model to at least match your previous unit.

 

[senttoschool]

But you could have gotten the 16GB model to at least match your previous unit.

I had to wait weeks for the 16GB model.

 

[theluggage]

But you could have gotten the 16GB model to at least match your previous unit.

Depends whether you read @senttoschool's post as a whine, or a public service announcement to counter all the tripe posted about "8GB on M1 = 16GB on Intel" (based on misinterpretations of what "unified RAM" is and "speed tests" that don't look beyond geekbench or straightforward video rendering drag races).

...and, yes, for some people it's not just about the cost of the 16GB version but delays/complications in getting hold of anything but the base models that may have made them want to believe the tripe.

The M1 machines sound great and the RAM/storage/connectivity options are reasonable for ultraportable laptops - and you can do a lot with a 16GB M1 - but they're not viable replacements for the 16" MBP, the 5k iMac etc. unless they just happen to hit the sweet spot for your particular workflow. "Development" is a piece of string that can't be adequately summarised by how long it takes XCode, running on its own, to build a large Swift/C++ project (which is mainly a random-access disk read/write test).

 

[darngooddesign]

...

 

[darngooddesign]

There is no substitute for more RAM. I needed something quick to replace my 2015 MBP 15" with 16GB of RAM so I just bought the base model. Although my overall experience has been better and faster, the 8GB of RAM is truly a bottleneck for developers.

I absolutely can't wait for the 16" MBP. 32GB is a must for any serious developers in my opinion.

The base 256GB drive is 30-40% slower than the 512GB and larger drives so that probably contributed to the system slowness.

 

[theluggage]

The base 256GB drive is 30-40% slower than the 512GB and larger drives so that probably contributed to the system slowness.

If the issue is lack of RAM causing swapping to SSD, any SSD is still an order of magnitude slower than RAM.

Lots of people don't need 16GB of more of RAM - but if you do, there is no substitute, although faster swapping will only help in borderline cases. Sometimes, once you've accounted for all the M1 advantages of I/O speed, faster single-core, new types of GPU acceleration etc. in your use-case the M1 will come out on top - but even then it is liable to get hosed by "pro" machines with M1x/M2/whatever when they appear.

So many of the speed comparisons simply didn't look at swap rates or "memory pressure" on either platform.

 

[darngooddesign]

If the issue is lack of RAM causing swapping to SSD, any SSD is still an order of magnitude slower than RAM.

However, under the same swap conditions the 8GB Mac with the faster drive won't beachball as frequently as the one with the slower drive will.

 

[Lemon Olive]

Curious why "serious developer" would buy a base model, entry-level consumer product. That use case is the definition of Pro tier.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Curious why "serious developer" would buy a base model, entry-level consumer product. That use case is the definition of Pro tier.

Did you read the post? He needed something quick, as in he couldn't wait weeks for more ram or a better model. The OP then stated they can't wait for the true pro machines. Does that help?

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Depends whether you read @senttoschool's post as a whine, or a public service announcement to counter all the tripe posted about "8GB on M1 = 16GB on Intel" (based on misinterpretations of what "unified RAM" is and "speed tests" that don't look beyond geekbench or straightforward video rendering drag races).

...and, yes, for some people it's not just about the cost of the 16GB version but delays/complications in getting hold of anything but the base models that may have made them want to believe the tripe.

The M1 machines sound great and the RAM/storage/connectivity options are reasonable for ultraportable laptops - and you can do a lot with a 16GB M1 - but they're not viable replacements for the 16" MBP, the 5k iMac etc. unless they just happen to hit the sweet spot for your particular workflow. "Development" is a piece of string that can't be adequately summarised by how long it takes XCode, running on its own, to build a large Swift/C++ project (which is mainly a random-access disk read/write test).

No he couldn't. He would have had to wait weeks. I would have been in the same boat. But I took a look at what I do and realize 8GB would work for me. So I did the same thing.