Apple is not going to stop starting at 8GB anytime soon. And that's good.

[nateo200]

Not just the GPU but also the SSD controller. My desktop (running Linux) has 16GB RAM, 4GB VRAM and its SSD contains 2GB of DRAM for cache. That's 22GB total memory in a machine that nominally has 16GB. I have wished at times that it had even more.

I wouldn't feel comfortable buying a new Mac with less than 24GB and, ideally, I'd want more but the next leg up (binned M3 Pro with 36GB) adds a lot to the price.

Yeah I have learned to always get more RAM than I need. I have 24GB's in my laptop because I need 16-20GBs for a lot of projects. Would go with more if I had the $$$$$ but at least I can upgrade to 40GB's in the future with a new stick of DDR5 on my ASUS G14.

 

[iF34R]

Here's Edge and Chrome using the same amount of tabs, same settings, same bookmark pages for each tab. This is on PC. 25 tabs.

 

[name99]

Yeap! Just goes to show how ridiculously blind Apple fanboys are. The 8GB systems are absolutely trash for the prices they’re selling them for. 8GB MBP is completely bottlenecked. “pro” only in name. This thread didn’t age well…and it didn’t take long.

Everyone of those workloads is a STUPID match for an 8GB system as every person on this thread would tell you!
If you are doing serious work in Lightroom or FCP or whatever, OF COURSE you don't use 8GB; that's common sense.

The whole point of people defending 8GB is that there are PLENTY of users who don't, in fact, use Lightroom or FCP. You don't prove anything by telling us what we already know, that large content creation apps are a poor match to 8GB.

BUT the fact that so many people are excited by this article, and the fact that this is apparently the best argument they can provide for why 8GB sucks (as opposed to, you know, actually engaging with the real arguments) tell you everything you need to know about these people – how little they care about reality, how little they care about logic...

 

[thebayareaisliving]

Apple is now considered a failure as a company. Timapple should be ashamed.

 

[oofio2461]

Even my very old laptop has 12 GB, and I miss expandable memory very much.

 

[Ethosik]

I really don't care. I can't even use 32GB of RAM. So to me, anything less than 64GB of RAM is not a pro device. It will always be situational. And even then, 64GB is pushing it. I need at least 128GB of RAM these days to be comfortable.

 

[LevorgPenmancho]

If they care so much about being environmentally friendly that they’re worried about shipping 16gb over 8gb as standard, why are they shipping phones with massive batteries? Nobody needs these massive power hungry screens. iPhones used to last all day with batteries smaller than an AA

 

[Shirasaki]

You don't prove anything by telling us what we already know, that large content creation apps are a poor match to 8GB.

Even browser can choke 8GB with relative ease. And are you telling me Safari is A PRO APP?

Apple is now considered a failure as a company. Timapple should be ashamed.

🤐 shhh. Don’t say this. Apple fanboys will prosecute ya.

 

[aevan]

It costs Apple less than $50 to upgrade to 16 and then they r*pe the customer by overcharging for any upgrades.

They do what they want which is why we’re starting to buy non-Apple machines. Vote with your wallet.

Who is you (plural)? Macs sell great. And even with upgrade prices, it’s still worth it.

 

[Coreymac84]

Everyone of those workloads is a STUPID match for an 8GB system as every person on this thread would tell you!
If you are doing serious work in Lightroom or FCP or whatever, OF COURSE you don't use 8GB; that's common sense.

The whole point of people defending 8GB is that there are PLENTY of users who don't, in fact, use Lightroom or FCP. You don't prove anything by telling us what we already know, that large content creation apps are a poor match to 8GB.

BUT the fact that so many people are excited by this article, and the fact that this is apparently the best argument they can provide for why 8GB sucks (as opposed to, you know, actually engaging with the real arguments) tell you everything you need to know about these people – how little they care about reality, how little they care about logic...

I would max out 8GB just with safari tabs. Have you even used a Mac?

 

[aevan]

Apple is now considered a failure as a company. Timapple should be ashamed.

Lol. I wish I had some of that “failure” in my business.

 

[SolarBear28]

Everyone of those workloads is a STUPID match for an 8GB system as every person on this thread would tell you!
If you are doing serious work in Lightroom or FCP or whatever, OF COURSE you don't use 8GB; that's common sense.

The whole point of people defending 8GB is that there are PLENTY of users who don't, in fact, use Lightroom or FCP. You don't prove anything by telling us what we already know, that large content creation apps are a poor match to 8GB.

BUT the fact that so many people are excited by this article, and the fact that this is apparently the best argument they can provide for why 8GB sucks (as opposed to, you know, actually engaging with the real arguments) tell you everything you need to know about these people – how little they care about reality, how little they care about logic...

Well yeah, everyone knows those workloads won't do well with 8GB, that's the point. A Pro machine with active cooling and a high price tag should be able to handle those workloads. If Apple wants to sell a base model that's best for limited office use and limited web browsing the price should reflect that. And as many people have shown, 16GB helps even with basic multitasking and running lots of browser tabs. Apple have also reduced the number of performance cores on the M3 Pro, and the price for those models should be lower than last gen as well. And the RAM and SSD upgrade costs... I try not to use hyperbole but the only word I can think of is insanity.

 

[Shirasaki]

I try not to use hyperbole but the only word I can think of is insanity.

The insanity of such insanity is only Apple can reliably pull this off and face minimal consequences.

 

[Abazigal]

Even browser can choke 8GB with relative ease. And are you telling me Safari is A PRO APP?

I think we are in a tech echo chamber where "pro" is often conflated with video and photo editing, as though no other forms of productivity exists.

 

[daabido]

They stuck with 4GB and spinning platters until it went beyond embarassing, probably only stopping in the end because manufacturers told them they weren't going to make such low capacity, low margin products. I was expecting 12GB to become the standard, but I fell foul of my motto; Apple will give you half as much as you thought, take twice as long to do it, and charge you four times as much as it should.

 

[iLuddite]

They stuck with 4GB and spinning platters until it went beyond embarassing, probably only stopping in the end because manufacturers told them they weren't going to make such low capacity, low margin products. I was expecting 12GB to become the standard, but I fell foul of my motto; Apple will give you half as much as you thought, take twice as long to do it, and charge you four times as much as it should.

Perfectly put.

 

[6916494]

What satisfaction do you get from this constant whining that 8 GB of RAM shouldn't be enough?

There is a market for this model, and you're obviously not the target, because you know about how much memory you need for your tasks. So just buy the respective model.

 

[Hopscotcher]

They stuck with 4GB and spinning platters until it went beyond embarassing, probably only stopping in the end because manufacturers told them they weren't going to make such low capacity, low margin products. I was expecting 12GB to become the standard, but I fell foul of my motto; Apple will give you half as much as you thought, take twice as long to do it, and charge you four times as much as it should.

And people will continue making excuses for them.

What satisfaction do you get from this constant whining that 8 GB of RAM shouldn't be enough?

There is a market for this model, and you're obviously not the target, because you know about how much memory you need for your tasks. So just buy the respective model.

 

[thebayareaisliving]

Before he died Steve Jobs wrote a letter to Tim cook instructing him what to do with the company each year until 2050. One of those instructions was to never let the base model be worthy of a San Francisco Starbucks. It must look different so it is easily recognizable as the base model or last year’s flagship. Ram must not exceed 8 gb in order to encourage upgrades of not just ram but cpu and storage while you are it it since you may as well now you are buying a custom machine.

 

[christlinah]

Tbh this thread baffles me. It's okay to be content with 8GB when you're a casual user (although that device shouldn't be named "Pro" then) but how on earth can one defend this ridiculous decision in 2023? I mean, seriously, you're basically thanking Apple for ripping you off...

 

[Mainsail]

I would max out 8GB just with safari tabs. Have you even used a Mac?

I use Safari all of the time with my base M2 MBA (8GB) and never ever had a problem. It is fast and smooth as butter. I have no idea if I am maxing out the RAM because I don't fixate on Active Monitor....I just use the computer to do stuff. What matters to me is the my user experience, and it has been terrific.

I use my base MBA like many everyday typical computer consumers. Generally, I don't have more than a handful of tabs open and a couple of Safari windows. I could not care less what is going on under the hood with RAM as long as the computer performs well.....and, it does....it's terrific.

 

[Kottu]

My wife's Asus has 16GB RAM. As she is one of those who never closes a tab, I can see that her laptop is slow sometimes. My MacBook Pro (Intel) had 8GB and it was very slow if I had Youtube videos and few programs running. That's why I went for a base 16" M1Pro first and later bought a 14" M1Pro with 16/1TB. I will never go back to a 8GB PC or Mac. 8GB is enough for those who only use Macs for browsing. But sometimes, people do want to use a MacBook Pro for little bit of editing or use other programs. Apple's move to put a 8GB in a laptop and call it pro is very 'cheap' strategy. In Sweden, Base M3 14" cost same as Base M1Pro was.

 

[Ethosik]

I’d like to see someone using a 4 GB RAM MacBook Air or Mac mini report their findings, I’d be curious to know how well it actually runs. But yes, my “gut feeling” on how well it runs Sonoma is pretty simply “not well”. There were lots of complaints in 2014/2015 about those machines coming with 4 GB in their base configs (although the Pro was already coming with more RAM than the Air).

One of my clients still uses an old Powermac with 1GB of RAM. Still using older Photoshop to this day on it. That same client still has old Windows PCs that have 6GB of RAM. Photoshop works well on that too. Leave your bubble and echo chambers and you will understand that there are still uses for these kinds of configurations.

 

[Ethosik]

People need to stop using the browser as a benchmark for RAM requirements. Saying 20 tabs is the equivalent of saying you have 20 programs running. Okay....WHAT are the programs? NOBODY mentions WHAT the tabs are. Just the numbers. I can have 1,000 tabs open with a "Hello World" basic HTML5 one line website and barely have my RAM impacted. And I can have 1 tab.....ONE TAB open with a lot of javascript and ads and that SINGLE tab can take 2 GB......I know, I accidentally caused a memory leak in my codebase before that made one of the sites take up 2GB of RAM.

Seriously, people need to explain more. It really is the same as saying "I have 20 programs open"......Notepad windows/small word documents/etc?......or Photoshop/After Effects/Premiere Pro/etc all open?

People are all in their little world trying to push their standards on everyone else. 8GB of RAM can be quite functional, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Outlook, Word, Mail, is all perfectly functional.

PLUS you need to take WHAT you do on the applications into account. Are you doing 8K video editing? Or 720p video editing? Are you just cutting the beginning and end of a video then exporting? Then you can get by with 8GB just fine. Just saying Final Cut Pro usage doesn't help either. People really need to start digging deep with RAM recommendations and how RAM actually impacts the system. I fell into this trap when I asked for recommendations in 2019 and was advised "just buy as much memory as possible". So I installed 128GB of RAM and all I did at the time was minor cuts to 1080p videos. Something my 8GB of RAM 2010 Mac Pro was still doing at the time very well. And 128GB of RAM did NOT make things better AT ALL.

People are making VERY BASIC generalities when this is a much more complex topic. Some of my clients are quite happy with 8GB configurations, and they can accomplish their work just fine with Green memory pressure.

Since 2019, I have exponentially changed my requirements, so now 128GB of RAM is even a little limiting at times with 3D rendering, 8K video editing, much much larger After Effects projects etc. But I won't just complain non stop saying 8GB of RAM is NOT a pro configuration because for me even 64GB of RAM is NOT a pro configuration. That is just nonsense though.

I have no problem recommending 8GB of RAM to a client depending on their needs. Especially if they have a tight budget, why push them to 16GB of RAM if they don't need it. And you do the CORRECT thing and understand their upgrade cycle. See how their business might be in 3 years. This is essentially what I did with my Mac Studio configurations. Most of the time I am hovering at around 50GB of RAM used, but I have tracked my progress and understood I wanted my system to last 5 years so I got the 128GB of RAM system. And it has paid off as I have used the extra RAM a few times already. But talking about tabs now I have 60 tabs open and only using 2GB of RAM for the browser. BUT like I said, it is the content of the tabs that matter here, not the number. Ads and a lot of javascript make websites take up so much RAM. I have adblocker and stop a lot of javascript from running unless I explicitly allow it. Websites that allow it (like this one) I pay to support it and get ad-free experience.

I am not saying Apple should keep 8GB as the base config. I mean who would say "nah" to the base configuration getting better? Who would say "nah" to the maxed out MacBook Pro costing $3,000? Nobody. But I am saying this whole "NOTHING WILL RUN ON 8GB OF RAM" conversation is just tiresome at this point. There is a lot of proof out there if you did research on it.

This whole "Pro this....Pro that" is a conversation as old as Apple has used the term. One person's Pro needs are different from another person's pro needs.

 

[Coreymac84]

I use Safari all of the time with my base M2 MBA (8GB) and never ever had a problem. It is fast and smooth as butter. I have no idea if I am maxing out the RAM because I don't fixate on Active Monitor....I just use the computer to do stuff. What matters to me is the my user experience, and it has been terrific.

I use my base MBA like many everyday typical computer consumers. Generally, I don't have more than a handful of tabs open and a couple of Safari windows. I could not care less what is going on under the hood with RAM as long as the computer performs well.....and, it does....it's terrific.

Nobody is saying it won't function or run properly. This is why comparisons are done however. You can't see the difference if you have nothing to compare it to. I still thing my Samsung Q90 QLED tv looks amazing but If you put the newest TV next to it, I bet I'll be like meh....