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johannnn

macrumors 68020
Nov 20, 2009
2,315
2,602
Sweden
Most people don't need more than M1 for sure. 8GB however is way too little. My M1 MBA becomes unusable when I have many Safari tabs and MS Office open. Like extremely unusable. I always thought that RAM was almost unnecessary nowadays because the SSD is so fast so you shouldn't notice when it pages to disk. But no way, it's extremely noticeable.

M1 with 16GB should be enough for me for ~5 years easily.
 

johannnn

macrumors 68020
Nov 20, 2009
2,315
2,602
Sweden
I've had a bottom end M1 Air. For general day to day tasks it's absolutely spot on. Battery life is insane and it just works perfectly.

The only workload issues I had were running virtual machines on it in UTM which pushed memory a little hard. I got around this by spinning up a VM on Linode when I needed one for $10 a month which was "meh" money. The other one was Lightroom causing memory pressure issues, which was solved by just taking better photos and using Photos app ?

The only annoyance was the lack of SD slot.

I bought a bottom end 14" MBP in the end because my daughter needed a new laptop to replace her 3 year old thinkpad so I gave her the Air. And why the hell not - it annoys my ex wife when I buy stuff :)

Honestly the absolute ass end M1 MBA or iMac machines are amazing!
What's your thought of the MBA vs 14 MBP? I love how lightweight the MBA is, I often use the laptop in my lap in the couch. I've played with the 14" in a store, and it feels quite thick and heavy. The screen looks gorgeous however!
 

ric22

Suspended
Mar 8, 2022
2,713
2,963
Most people don't need more than M1 for sure. 8GB however is way too little. My M1 MBA becomes unusable when I have many Safari tabs and MS Office open. Like extremely unusable. I always thought that RAM was almost unnecessary nowadays because the SSD is so fast so you shouldn't notice when it pages to disk. But no way, it's extremely noticeable.

M1 with 16GB should be enough for me for ~5 years easily.
I think something is wrong...

I have an M1 Air with 8GB too, and with about 50 tabs open, and a number of other programs, it's barely in yellow for memory pressure...
 

ric22

Suspended
Mar 8, 2022
2,713
2,963
What's your thought of the MBA vs 14 MBP? I love how lightweight the MBA is, I often use the laptop in my lap in the couch. I've played with the 14" in a store, and it feels quite thick and heavy. The screen looks gorgeous however!
How does the edge shadow not put off more people on the 14 and 16? Open anything with a white background and it looks bad.
 

thedocbwarren

macrumors 6502
Nov 10, 2017
430
378
San Francisco, CA
How does the edge shadow not put off more people on the 14 and 16? Open anything with a white background and it looks bad.
Don't own one, is it possible to screenshot? Not sure what you are referring to and would like to see it. I played with one at an Apple store and was considering ordering is why.
 

ric22

Suspended
Mar 8, 2022
2,713
2,963
It's a problem on the iPad Pro 12.9 too. It's a problem with all mini-LED devices. The outside edge simply has a lower backlight capability.

1649801275121.jpeg
 
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Bodhitree

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 5, 2021
2,085
2,216
Netherlands
I think something is wrong...

I have an M1 Air with 8GB too, and with about 50 tabs open, and a number of other programs, it's barely in yellow for memory pressure...

I’ve never yet been other than green for memory pressure on my 16 GB M1 iMac.
 

ric22

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Mar 8, 2022
2,713
2,963
I’ve never yet been other than green for memory pressure on my 16 GB M1 iMac.
If I was the guy whose 8GB M1 Mac was always in red, I'd be taking steps to fix that! He should look at some of the videos where they try (and mostly fail) to make an 8GB M1 Mac slower at anything than a 16GB M1 Mac. The memory management is phenomenal.
 

johannnn

macrumors 68020
Nov 20, 2009
2,315
2,602
Sweden
I think something is wrong...

I have an M1 Air with 8GB too, and with about 50 tabs open, and a number of other programs, it's barely in yellow for memory pressure...
If I was the guy whose 8GB M1 Mac was always in red, I'd be taking steps to fix that! He should look at some of the videos where they try (and mostly fail) to make an 8GB M1 Mac slower at anything than a 16GB M1 Mac. The memory management is phenomenal.

The print screen is in Swedish but I think you get the picture. Some Safari tabs. Less than Firefox tabs. A single document open in Numbers. Microsoft Teams and Outlook hidden in the background, with just one window each. Excel has no document open.

No power user app at all open, just a few browser tabs and microsoft apps open.
Skärmavbild 2022-04-13 kl. 20.22.56.png
 

ric22

Suspended
Mar 8, 2022
2,713
2,963
The print screen is in Swedish but I think you get the picture. Some Safari tabs. Less than Firefox tabs. A single document open in Numbers. Microsoft Teams and Outlook hidden in the background, with just one window each. Excel has no document open.

No power user app at all open, just a few browser tabs and microsoft apps open.
View attachment 1991018
What does the usage look like immediately after a restart? Choose to reopen everything. Your swap is huge too, while mine stays under 100 or 200 MB!
 

johannnn

macrumors 68020
Nov 20, 2009
2,315
2,602
Sweden
What does the usage look like immediately after a restart? Choose to reopen everything. Your swap is huge too, while mine stays under 100 or 200 MB!
Yea everything always looks better after a restart if I restart all apps. I find Monterey to be very bad at releasing memory, which is bad if you have a high turnover of many browser tabs.
 

Tagbert

macrumors 603
Jun 22, 2011
6,256
7,281
Seattle
The print screen is in Swedish but I think you get the picture. Some Safari tabs. Less than Firefox tabs. A single document open in Numbers. Microsoft Teams and Outlook hidden in the background, with just one window each. Excel has no document open.

No power user app at all open, just a few browser tabs and microsoft apps open.
View attachment 1991018
8GB works better if you are more of a single-tasker. Once you start loading up multiple apps at once it starts getting crowded. You can see that each of those browser tabs is using as much memory as apps often do. You may need to be more restrictive with the tabs if those are the sites you typically use. Multiple YouTube tabs are using around 1.5GB of RAM. You have two spreadsheets open at once. It is true that the OS will swap apps or browser tabs to ssd cache when the memory pressure gets too high, but you can preempt that by closing some of these down, sooner.
 

ric22

Suspended
Mar 8, 2022
2,713
2,963
Yea everything always looks better after a restart if I restart all apps. I find Monterey to be very bad at releasing memory, which is bad if you have a high turnover of many browser tabs.
Weird, mine is brilliant at it, unless I'm hammering the thing with a demanding program running through Rosetta.
 

Kaikidan

macrumors regular
Jul 3, 2017
182
168
Before adquiring a base 8gb M1 and coming from a 2014 Mini, I had the idea that I would probably need a M1 pro mini since the M1 become pretty "weak" compared to the pro, max and ultras, after purchacing one (base 8gb) oh boy, I was wrong, it´s not that the M1 is weak, it´s the other ones who are WAY too powerful. I don´t do anything particulary heavy but everything I tried with the M1 was done perfectly, I even played with clip studio opening one of my huge files and using the ipad in sidecar as a graphics tablet alongside with brave, plexamp and some other software open on the background. just to be safe I bough apple care in case I somehow ends up destroying the SSD with swap, so until 2025 I'm safe, planning to upgrade it when M3 launches or in a year and a half or so if the M2 turns out to be amazing enough to justify the early upgrade.
 
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darngooddesign

macrumors P6
Jul 4, 2007
18,362
10,114
Atlanta, GA
How does the edge shadow not put off more people on the 14 and 16? Open anything with a white background and it looks bad.
Since I never have a solid white background extending to the sides of my screen it's not a problem for me because I simply don't notice it. I'm 100% happy with the screen on my 16" MBP.
 

ric22

Suspended
Mar 8, 2022
2,713
2,963
Since I never have a solid white background extending to the sides of my screen it's not a problem for me because I simply don't notice it. I'm 100% happy with the screen on my 16" MBP.
You don't browse the internet? How do you avoid backgrounds that are white?! Regardless, I don't mean to take away from anyone's joy of their product. I just couldn't un-see it.
 

darngooddesign

macrumors P6
Jul 4, 2007
18,362
10,114
Atlanta, GA
You don't browse the internet? How do you avoid backgrounds that are white?! Regardless, I don't mean to take away from anyone's joy of their product. I just couldn't un-see it.
I have a 16" screen, there is literally no reason for me to have a full-width browser window except when streaming video and the issue simply isn't visible with that.

I'm aware of the edge shadow issue, the first time I heard of the issue I tried to see what the big deal is, then I just went back to using my computer normally and haven't been bothered by it since.
 
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spiderman0616

Suspended
Aug 1, 2010
5,670
7,499
You don't browse the internet? How do you avoid backgrounds that are white?! Regardless, I don't mean to take away from anyone's joy of their product. I just couldn't un-see it.
I looked for it on mine after you mentioned it--I do see it, but would probably not have noticed it otherwise. In fact, I'm deliberately trying to notice it right now as I type this and really can't see it in my peripheral vision.
 
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Tagbert

macrumors 603
Jun 22, 2011
6,256
7,281
Seattle
I looked for it on mine after you mentioned it--I do see it, but would probably not have noticed it otherwise. In fact, I'm deliberately trying to notice it right now as I type this and really can't see it in my peripheral vision.
Interesting to see it there, but it really looks kind of how real world lighting works. Not a major problem for me.
 
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