No worries. I will also strive to be more cognizant of context - my explanation (not excuse) is merely that I was surfing multiple threads on my ipad mini at the time and complex discussions are less easy to follow.
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8GB RAM is a disappointment?
- Thread starter MacBH928
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It is clear that in my current usage, I don’t need more than 8GB. And I think it’s be safe to say that if I knew the computer 3 years, I may be fine with 8. But as someone who keeps their computers a long time (we have a 2012 and a 2013), would it not be best to get 16?
It seems the discussion has focused on who needs more than 8GB today rather than who needs more than 8GB for the life of the computer (which varies person to person).
I had 4GB on my 2012 (it was the standard), but I had to upgrade that to 8 back in 2017. Fortunately I was able to do that. But with these you don’t have that option.
Also, someone mentioned resale value. I’d be curious if there’d be a difference (and how big) selling, say a 5 year old MBA with 16 vs 8 GB.
It seems the discussion has focused on who needs more than 8GB today rather than who needs more than 8GB for the life of the computer (which varies person to person).
I had 4GB on my 2012 (it was the standard), but I had to upgrade that to 8 back in 2017. Fortunately I was able to do that. But with these you don’t have that option.
Also, someone mentioned resale value. I’d be curious if there’d be a difference (and how big) selling, say a 5 year old MBA with 16 vs 8 GB.
Also consider that in the future a lot of Apps you might use will get adapted and will run natively on the new Mac's... I am sure this increases power/battery/and Ram efficiency even more! But I am also not sure whtat to take in the MBP...
Yeah that’s another good point: are we gonna see apps in the next several years use RAM more efficiently or less efficiently?
Upgrading RAM (almost) never hurts anything but your wallet. So if you anticipate a five to seven year ownership horizon and you're on the fence, maybe go for the upgrade.
Resale rarely gets back more than a very small fraction of the cost of upgrades. Remember that used-market buyers are often in the used market because they don't need (and don't want to pay for) the higher spec current models.
That said, I would suggest that we may see more changes/improvements in the next three years of ARM macs than we'd typically see in three years of Intel macs. I'm personally considering my current M1 purchase to likely be a be a shorter term hold than I might otherwise hold.
That’s true. The past decade with Intel really hasn’t been great (in that while each generation improved, it didn’t improve much).
That’s why I haven’t upgraded - because I haven’t seen a new MacBook that I like, that I think is worth the performance for the cost.
But with M1 being the worst silicon chip Apple ever makes, and assuming we’ll see great progress (similar to their A chip improvements), I may find a Mac in 4 years that’s worth the upgrade.
There's nothing wrong with using swap as long as data isn't continually being swapped in and out. The "memory pressure" gauge is the one you need to look at. Swapping out memory used by inactive browser tabs or backgrounded apps that need a user interaction to re-start is the perfect use of swap.
More importantly, though: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If your machine is running smoothly doing what you need it to do then you have enough RAM.
8GB should be good for general use, I'd go to 16GB if I were doing heavier "creative" or scientific work and only if I knew I needed to load gigabytes of data into RAM would I worry about having more than 16GB - in which case I would be waiting for the M2/M1X/whatever "pro" machines with better GPUs, more cores and more I/O bandwidth, anyway.
In a perfect world, Apple should have started the new Macs at 16GB, because RAM is so cheap in 2020 that putting less should hardly worth the extra logistics of juggling two different models. However, in a perfect world, Apple would be making wooden abacuses carved from sustainable fast-growing biomass and bartering them for organically grown walnuts. In the real world, Apple can trouser ~$150 of pure cash-y money by upselling customers to 16GB RAM because future proofing, while keeping the headline price under the magic $1000 - but, hey, the financial incentive to design your own CPUs doesn't grow on trees.
Don't do that then.
Seriously - learn to use bookmarks. I can understand pro musicians who need a 100-piece orchestra permanently loaded into RAM. I can understand graphic artists who need scores of high-res layers in Photoshop. I can understand IT bods who need half-a-dozen VMs each with 4GB RAM allocated... but I've yet to see a justification for needing dozens of browser tags open (beyond the 30th Amendment of the US constitution: "If some is good, more shalt be better.")
Indeed - if one is lucky, that 200€ paid today becomes 40€ recouped in resale.
(for fun I checked offers at cashforyourmac.com for a 2018 MBP13 with 8/512 & 16/512. Difference was US$40.)
my wife is notorious for this, she'll have dozens of tabs open and even multiple instances of safari open, I don't understand it myself, I usually only have a few tabs open.
How does one go back and find anything, having to figure out which of the 400 tabs a particular site is in?
You don't. Just open a new window / tab.
Seriously though, what @dingclancy23 cited was someone on Twitter doing a stress test rather than an expected usage scenario.
I was going to get the 512/16 Air config, but after reading reviews and watching a handful of videos, I feel pretty good about saving $200 and going 8GB. I'll be using it casually with maybe some light work, and as much as I lean towards getting more RAM in general, it just doesn't sound like I'll need it with this machine.
Internaut
macrumors 65816
For the size of an iPad Pro it should come which much more RAM. The odd thing is that they are double to triple the size of an iPhone but yet come with the same amount of RAM. Not like don't have rooms inside to have it come with 8Gb of Ram or 16GB of RAM. Come on Apple give us more RAM for the iPad Pro models if you see this post and are listening.
Yes, that's the most important thing to note in this topic. Actually, Slack and other messaging apps are probably more of issue, because they're constantly working (to some extend) and actively using memory. Having 400 tabs open, but actually using the last five, would allow the OS to swap the remaining 395 and ignore them, just like the user does
(even if the browser actually renders them, which I honestly doubt)
I have been looking to switch to a Mac all this year. Been waiting on the new Apple Silicon. I am eyeing the M1 Mac Mini now. I have 32GB in my current PC and use it to digitize large format film. This can produce around 300MP image files and Photoshop can use up to around 20GB of RAM when checking task manager. No clue if it is actually using all of it or have it reserved.
So 16GB might be on the low side for me? Otherwise I am quite stoked about the possibibility to get a Mac that can perform at this level quite low cost compared to what an iMac or something like this will cost me.
So 16GB might be on the low side for me? Otherwise I am quite stoked about the possibibility to get a Mac that can perform at this level quite low cost compared to what an iMac or something like this will cost me.
Internaut
macrumors 65816
Well then.... It looks like you get to prove or disprove the theory that some of us have regarding Apple upping it's memory management game
.In all seriousness, enjoy.
Lol. Having +20 tabs in multiple browsers definitely sounds like "serious work"! I wish I was that serious.
Careful on assumptions...
There's lots of "serious" real-work business systems with browser interfaces. ServiceNow, Clarity, Oracle, SalesForce, AWS management console, cloud VMs, etc.
I'd also imagine a web developer or similar may tend to have a bunch of their work in browser tabs too.
That's exactly what I'm doing, got a base model M1 MacBook Pro, 8 gig ram is more than enough for me, use my MacBook Pro for browsing safari, watching videos and using a few apps.
The M1 is a beast, tired everything to make it slow down, no luck, the machine never uses the whole 8 gigs of ram, this is one well optimised machine, if you're buying the machine for light use, don't bother getting 16 gig ram, 8 gig is more than enough.
Third day using the M1 beast smashing safari, running benchmarks, watching 4K videos, battery life just hit 50% ??
Now where's the big boy 16"??
As a Senior ServiceNow Developer, it can get pretty serious in the browser ?