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.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Telling people not to get the 8GB of RAM model is terrible advice.

 

[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.

 

[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 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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[Mikael H]

don't believe into 8GB of RAM magic

Anybody who believes in magical solutions to physical questions deserves to be disappointed.
The 8GB model is excellent for the lowest-end needs. If you know enough about your computing needs to worry about whether it's enough for you, you probably should get the 16 GB model. Conversely: unless you know enough about your computing needs that you can objectively say you need more than 16 GB of RAM, 16 GB will probably be enough for you, for another few years.

 

[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]

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.

 

[grandM]

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

 

[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.

 

[chevyboy60013]

microsoft apps are pure crap. I do not use any, because of that and if it costs me a raise or promotion at my job so be it.

 

[staypuftforums]

This is one of the things that’s keeping me away from Apple for desktop/laptop. You are completely at their mercy. Everything is soldered and they control your OS. You are just too locked in for my taste.

 

[Shirasaki]

I go to 16GB the time I decide to buy an M1 MacBook Pro. There is no point in saving money on RAM unless the budget is extremely tight or your usage is extremely light (under 5 tab web browsing, streaming contents, play light games). Apple having only 8GB on M1 Mac is a bit unfortunate but 16GB should be doable for most people.

I don't monitor my RAM usage often, but I have 16GB so I have no reason to spend time and energy worrying about RAM usage being too high or so. My used RAM constantly fluctuates around 13GB or so. Just a handful of permanent Chrome tabs, Microsoft Office apps, some odd applications, remote control software and nothing much more.

 

[vanryan]

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.

Wouldn't the iOSification actually reduce the amount of memory needed considering most iOS devices have less than 8GB of memory?

 

[Argon_]

According to you? Do you realize that flagship smartphones nowadays ship with 16 GB of RAM (besides Apple). So running out of memory is not normal for mobile devices (besides Apple).

Besides, when multitasking, which the iPad Pro supports, your applications should not shut down and then have to be restarted.

The fact is however, 8GB of RAM can still lead to applications being forced to reload (I do get this regularly). So 8GB is not sufficient on the iPad Pro still.

I'm not disputing what a given quantity of bytes means, just what I consider 'sufficient' for an iPad. Obviously more RAM can hold more stuff. That's not what we disagree on.

"I guess you are the only person in the world" "According to you?" "Do you realize"

Not quite, but getting close to Ad Hominem territory.

 

[jlc1978]

I guess you are the only person in the world who thinks it is better to be slower by having to wait for applications to reload, rather than having sufficient RAM so that this doesn’t happen.

I have never really had that problem that I've noticed, and I suspect most users are in the same boat. It all depends on the use case, and I suspect Apple decided 8 is enough given the OS's memory management. My previous MBP (2018) had 16 and my M1 Air 8 and I've not noticed any difference in applications.

If RAM is insufficient, the iPad Pro cannot hold all applications in memory. Which is what is happening with 8 GB of RAM.

This isn’t rocket science is it?

Are you also going to dispute that a 500ml glass is insufficient to pour 1 litre of milk into it?

No, but it is if all you want is 500ml. Going to 16 would add cost to the device without noticeably improving the experience for most users, so it makes no economic sense to do that until it is needed to maintain the experience for 90+% of the users.

The money could be better spent making the iPad more of a portable replacement for a Mac.

If you pour half of it, drink it, then pour the other half; yes, that's a lot like what I said.

Exactly.

 

[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?

 

[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.