8GB RAM cut it for this workflow??

[Maxwells_Equations]

Looking at m1 Air or Pro running the following concurrently during work hours:

- Apple XDR Pro Display (with lid open on the MacBook Air/Pro)

Apps:

- Either Zoom or Teams (both will not be open concurrently but one will for sure be open at all times)
- Slack
- Excel
- YouTube or SoundCloud steaming music
- MacOS Mail
- Discord
- NordVPN

Hoping I could just use the baseline for this but am I asking for trouble with the XDR especially?

Pro...Air....8....16?

Keep in mind this is just a placement machine until the 16's are released. A "get me by", but I still don't want to torture the SSD with swaps with that said or run into beachballs and freezing or GUI stuttering.

 

[pugxiwawa]

Definitely 16G, remember cpu/gpu ram are shared. You need it to drive XDR so it doesn't make sense to skim on ram. Air vs Pro is just personal preference, they should perform exactly the same in your use case. And this is just going to be a place holder for next 3-6 month until 16" M1 releases so I would probably just stay with Air if I were you.

 

[Maxwells_Equations]

Definitely 16G, remember cpu/gpu ram are shared. You need it to drive XDR so it doesn't make sense to skim on ram. Air vs Pro is just personal preference, they should perform exactly the same in your use case. And this is just going to be a place holder for next 3-6 month until 16" M1 releases so I would probably just stay with Air if I were you.

bummer was hoping to be very economical and grab the baseline.

 

[pugxiwawa]

bummer was hoping to be very economical and grab the baseline.

I mean baseline could/should work if you can tolerate some memory swapping, but you are going to use it to drive a $5000 monitor, do you really want it to be limited by $200 ram upgrade?

 

[acidfast7_redux]

Honestly, 8GiB RAM is fine with that workflow.

I usually have Zoom/Meet/Teams open in parallel. I also do PureVPN and downloading quite a bit.

Office never has an issue, even with 1.5GiB PPT slides.

I always listen to streaming music in parallel.

DropBox is always syncing.

The upgrade to 16GiB isn't worth 20% of the cost of any new machine coming (assuming the price points stay the same.)

Also, when I do that workflow. With 3h-4h of Zoom calls, I get around 10-11h total screen on time. That's with everything over WiFi.

Base MBA is a phenom machine.

 

[Maxwells_Equations]

I mean baseline could/should work if you can tolerate some memory swapping, but you are going to use it to drive a $5000 monitor, do you really want it to be limited by $200 ram upgrade?

it is an availability/shipping delay issue versus me trying to cut corners.

 

[Maxwells_Equations]

Honestly, 8GiB RAM is fine with that workflow.

I usually have Zoom/Meet/Teams open in parallel. I also do PureVPN and downloading quite a bit.

Office never has an issue, even with 1.5GiB PPT slides.

I always listen to streaming music in parallel.

DropBox is always syncing.

The upgrade to 16GiB isn't worth 20% of the cost of any new machine coming (assuming the price points stay the same.)

Also, when I do that workflow. With 3h-4h of Zoom calls, I get around 10-11h total screen on time. That's with everything over WiFi.

Base MBA is a phenom machine.

What does your memory swap look like by days end?

 

[Pressure]

Any reason you want the XDR Pro display?

 

[acidfast7_redux]

What does your memory swap look like by days end?

I can show it to you now. I never look at it really. Does that attachment help?

 

[Maxwells_Equations]

Any reason you want the XDR Pro display?

Why do I have it? Because I appreciate the overall experience of it. That is why.

Why do people wear Rolex when a $20 CASIO would work just fine?

 

[James_C]

@Maxwells_Equations I think you will be fine with the Base Air with your workflow - You should be able to pick one up in store. I would try it for a few days, if you any reason you are not happy then Apple are extending the return period until the 8th of January, you can then order a 16GB version if you are not happy.

 

[Pressure]

Why do I have it? Because I appreciate the overall experience of it. That is why.

Why do people wear Rolex when a $20 CASIO would work just fine?

Well it makes sense if you already have it. I was just curious.

 

[Krevnik]

Definitely 16G, remember cpu/gpu ram are shared. You need it to drive XDR so it doesn't make sense to skim on ram. Air vs Pro is just personal preference, they should perform exactly the same in your use case. And this is just going to be a place holder for next 3-6 month until 16" M1 releases so I would probably just stay with Air if I were you.

The difference between a frame buffer for a 4K display, vs the 6K display is something like 40MB. Framebuffers aren’t where VRAM goes, generally. There’s good reasons to go with 16GB, display resolution isn’t one of them.

it is an availability/shipping delay issue versus me trying to cut corners.

For RAM/Storage, I’d try to buy for what you’ll need during the lifespan of the device, not what you need right now. For now, you will probably be fine with 8GB, although depending on how often you upgrade, you might consider splurging on 16GB instead.

Since this is just a placeholder for a 16”, I really wouldn’t worry about it.