Don't buy M1 Air with 8Gb of RAM

[ctjack]

I was a happy camper with my Air m1 512gb/8Gb of RAM on macOS 11.2. Even though my usage got me close to 100% used, i couldn't care less because i was really making it work hard with tons of tabs open in every software while driving 2k external - so 2 displays.
But then i fall a victim of OS upgrade, and now on macOS 11.5 i am always in the high yellow zone sometimes hitting the red zone. It scares me, because now i am not doing the job i was doing previously, so my Air sees only really casual easy stuff.

I wish i had gone 16GB of RAM. Kind of too late to exchange it now going refurbished way. But if you are in the market, then don't believe into 8GB of RAM magic, better get the 16GB. Everything was working well up until i have upgraded my macOS.

 

[Lihp8270]

You’re sometimes hitting red on 11.5?

You also said you’re getting close to 100% used on 11.2 as well.

What is the difference?

 

[smirking]

I wouldn't worry about memory pressure unless you're seeing marked slowdowns because of it. I test abused an 8GB M1 MBP earlier this year and it took the punishment very well. My memory graph was red almost 100% of the time.

The only reason I didn't keep the machine was because I develop sites that employ extremely aggressive caching and I was generating up to 1TB of SSD writes per day from swapping. Yikes. The SSD would probably be OK even with that kind of load but I didn't want to take that chance.

I was running all of these programs at the same time:

• PHPStorm
• MAMP Pro with 2GB server
• Windows on ARM over Parallels
• Capture One Pro
• Safari with lots of tabs
• Firefox with lots of tabs
• Chrome with lots of tabs
• OS X Mail
• Terminal
• Quickbooks
• Photoshop
• And a lot of minor programs.

Now, I didn't try to max every program out at the same time. This was just normal usage and it did fine. I'm sure had I been exporting 50Gb of RAW images in Capture One Pro while also compiling a software build in XCode it would have gotten dicey, but for snacking on a lot of different uses at the same time, it was a champ.

 

[ctjack]

You’re sometimes hitting red on 11.5?

I am hitting red on 11.5, while that never happened on 11.2. Also some of my ios apps got kicked out(not working anymore).

You also said you’re getting close to 100% used on 11.2 as well.

What is the difference?

Difference is that i was hitting 100% usage while abusing on 11.2. On 11.5 i am doing 50% of my previous workload and get 100% usage with high yellow zones. With the same 50% workload, i was on mid green on 11.2.

I wouldn't worry about memory pressure unless you're seeing marked slowdowns because of it. I test abused an 8G M1 MBP earlier this year and it took the punishment very well. My memory graph was red almost 100% of the time.

Thank you for sharing your experience. That really helped a lot to calm down my fear. Probably i am just hoarding macrumors tabs, which maybe got quite heavy in the meantime. No hiccups, but still i feel at some point that this mac is less responsive than my 16GB Win laptop.

 

[grandM]

I was a happy camper with my Air m1 512gb/8Gb of RAM on macOS 11.2. Even though my usage got me close to 100% used, i couldn't care less because i was really making it work hard with tons of tabs open in every software while driving 2k external - so 2 displays.
But then i fall a victim of OS upgrade, and now on macOS 11.5 i am always in the high yellow zone sometimes hitting the red zone. It scares me, because now i am not doing the job i was doing previously, so my Air sees only really casual easy stuff.

I wish i had gone 16GB of RAM. Kind of too late to exchange it now going refurbished way. But if you are in the market, then don't believe into 8GB of RAM magic, better get the 16GB. Everything was working well up until i have upgraded my macOS.

What software are you running?

 

[UBS28]

My M1 12.9 iPad Pro with 8GB of RAM runs out of memory, so I don't see how 8GB of RAM is sufficient on a MBP.

 

[ctjack]

What software are you running?

on 11.2 - R, Python, webSAS, citrix workspace, bunch of word/excel/pdf files in Adobe/Native PDF viewer/MS Office, Safari with 40 tabs. Simultaneously could do Lightroom for hobby and Davinci Resolve for work. This is all running 2 displays: Air and external 2K. MS Teams always on and screen sharing in Zoom(sharing external, while doing my things hidden on Air screen to make presentation fluid)
on 11.5 - bunch of word/excel/pdf, safari 20-30 tabs, MS Teams, Zoom.
Last checked and had 87TBW on SSD.

 

[iHorseHead]

I'm using Xcode on 8GB MacBook Air and it works fine and is fast. Even simulators are working fine.

 

[Gherkin]

With the software you are running, you sound much more technical than I am, but it just doesn't make sense to me why going from a small OS update would affect the RAM like this? MAYBE going from MacOS 11 to 12? Even then seems odd. Maybe it's a bug/memory leak or something?

 

[Aggedor]

People need to stop worrying about this kind of thing and stop MONITORING it. It doesn't matter. I've got the 8GB model and it's running absolutely fine on heavy workload, while powering an external 4K display.

If you have a significant slowdown/lag or other things which are problems, then yes, look into it. Otherwise, don't even open Activity Monitor

 

[spiderman0616]

I have the 8GB base model. Still running circles around everything else I own. Not sure I’ve ever cared to look how much RAM I’m using, but it’s never refused to run an app so I’m a happy user for sure.

 

[smirking]

...bunch of word/excel/pdf files in Adobe/Native PDF viewer/MS Office... bunch of word/excel/pdf, safari 20-30 tabs, MS Teams, Zoom.

I see MS Office in there. I don't think there's a computer in existence that can't be brought to its knees by MS Office. 😝

One day we're probably going to learn that Microsoft has been using all of us to mine crypto via Office.

 

[ader42]

I find it weird is that people expect 8GB RAM to do so much. Especially so many applications or tabs open at once. Even my 2014 MBP had 16GB RAM and my 2015 iMac has 32GB RAM; the 2019 iMac the missus uses has 64GB RAM.

I have an 8GB M1 Mini and I only bought it as a test machine and knew it would end up as just a media server soon enough (seeing as it has an hdmi port).

I did think about buying an M1 MBA for my son and I’m more than sure an 8GB RAM version would have been fine for several years use at college etc. if used sensibly, but decided to wait for the next generation.

 

[smirking]

I find it weird is that people expect 8GB RAM to do so much. Especially so many applications or tabs open at once. Even my 2014 MBP had 16GB RAM and my 2015 iMac has 32GB RAM; the 2019 iMac the missus uses has 64GB RAM.

8GB actually is quite an ample amount of RAM with the modern memory management of today's systems. Your old 2014 MBP was a totally different animal than an M1 MBP.

One should never say no to more RAM if the extra cost is not a big deal to you, but we obsess way too much over the size of our RAM being too small. 😝

 

[chabig]

I am hitting red on 11.5

Two thoughts:
1) Update to the current version, 11.6
2) Stop watching Activity Monitor, as Aggedor said.

 

[840quadra]

I think Apple manages memory quite well on these devices and unless you are experiencing slow / unresponsive performance it isn't anything to worry about. Software will sometimes use up more RAM to act as a sort of RAM disk, to speed up performance of an active application, especially if others are napping or not using much.

I agree with others, don't monitor RAM usage, unless you are experiencing performance or possibly poor battery life. It just isn't as important as say a Windows XP, 7, etc operating system.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Fishrrman's rule 4" (regarding m-series Macs):
16gb is "the new 8".

(in other words, buying an m-series Mac with 8gb of RAM in 2021 is like buying a 2014 Mac Mini with 4gb of RAM -- it wasn't enough, and it wasn't upgradeable)

 

[grandM]

Sell the 8, buy 16 or more at the next MacBook refresh. Don't go Intel.
You're wearing down the SSD.

 

[Ev0d3vil]

I wouldn't worry about memory pressure unless you're seeing marked slowdowns because of it. I test abused an 8GB M1 MBP earlier this year and it took the punishment very well. My memory graph was red almost 100% of the time.

The only reason I didn't keep the machine was because I develop sites that employ extremely aggressive caching and I was generating up to 1TB of SSD writes per day from swapping. Yikes. The SSD would probably be OK even with that kind of load but I didn't want to take that chance.

I was running all of these programs at the same time:

• PHPStorm
• MAMP Pro with 2GB server
• Windows on ARM over Parallels
• Capture One Pro
• Safari with lots of tabs
• Firefox with lots of tabs
• Chrome with lots of tabs
• OS X Mail
• Terminal
• Quickbooks
• Photoshop
• And a lot of minor programs.

Now, I didn't try to max every program out at the same time. This was just normal usage and it did fine. I'm sure had I been exporting 50Gb of RAW images in Capture One Pro while also compiling a software build in XCode it would have gotten dicey, but for snacking on a lot of different uses at the same time, it was a champ.

Thats a lot of tabs on safari and FF and chrome which I don't even know how someone can multi task like that !

 

[smirking]

Thats a lot of tabs on safari and FF and chrome which I don't even know how someone can multi task like that !

Oh when your work is building multi-user websites, you run out of browsers very fast. While I'm working on a site I'll have one login be the admin, one be a regular user, and one as an anonymous user. It's a lot easier to remember what is what if they're all different browsers.

The of course, I've got windows open to whatever pages I'm reading that aren't related to the websites I'm working on. Sometimes that happens in yet another browser. I'm basically four users at the same time all the time.

 

[iHorseHead]

I see MS Office in there. I don't think there's a computer in existence that can't be brought to its knees by MS Office. 😝

One day we're probably going to learn that Microsoft has been using all of us to mine crypto via Office.

Never had any issues with MS Office.
What do I have to do to get such issues?

 

[PsykX]

People need to stop worrying about this kind of thing and stop MONITORING it. It doesn't matter. I've got the 8GB model and it's running absolutely fine on heavy workload, while powering an external 4K display.

If you have a significant slowdown/lag or other things which are problems, then yes, look into it. Otherwise, don't even open Activity Monitor

I TRIED to stop monitoring it, because I don't really notice a slowdown or anything.

But 1-2X a day, a Force Quit popup appears telling me the memory is full and I'm being suggested to close an app. The main culprit is Microsoft Teams, which is sometimes taking more than 5.2 GB just for itself.

Can the indicator hit a red zone ? I've never come past yellow, and still had this popup.

 

[entropi]

mm, this is what makes me hesitant on staying with Apple.

the M1 will soon be slow as molassses and 16 GB will not help anyway because of forced upgrades and the iOSification of Mac OS.

my i7 is still as snappy as it was when it was new - bacause I stayed on 10.11 and get no nags about that.

 

[smirking]

the M1 will soon be slow as molassses and 16 GB will not help anyway because of forced upgrades and the iOSification of Mac OS.

Deep breath, yo. The M1 is not slow as molasses on 8GB, much less 16GB. I threw the house at an 8GB M1 I test drove and it handily outperformed my 32GB 2018 Vega20.

The 8GB Intel Macs aren't even slow as molasses. They perform quite well actually.

 

[smirking]

Never had any issues with MS Office.
What do I have to do to get such issues?

My regular routine goes like this.

"Why is my laptop running so hot? Why are the fans on? Did I leave the debugger running again?"

"Oh. I left Excel open."

Beachball while I wait for Excel to come to foreground. Quit.

(5 minutes later) fans have stopped.

I don't have this problem with the Office clones. Just Office. Sometimes I use LibreOffice Spreadsheets because Excel just takes too long.

There's probably something I could do to improve performance, but I don't use Office enough to worry much about it. This is the way it's been for years and multiple Office versions for me.