I have not had any issues with Office apps except PowerPoint crashing when there are comments in the deck, but yesterday I switched to the beta track and there was a noticeable improvement in performance in all apps. And PowerPoint hasn't crashed since!
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Don't buy M1 Air with 8Gb of RAM
- Thread starter ctjack
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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.
Seriously, stop spreading misinformation.
A M1 iPad Pro can run out of memory, you will notice that when iOS / iPad OS starts to eject applications from memory.
Do you even own a M1 iPad Pro?
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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.
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.
same here with a 12 year older modelDon't mind me I'm going my very own little way with my 8GB M1 Air
I don't program or anything just a casual user of MacOS
maybe these MacBook are like scotch?
I use a dell ups with 8GB and twice is wishedi had more RAM, well the laptop, not me.
and Apple will make the next OS more fluid and manageable like Catalina from Mojave.
I'm sticking with Mojave, but Catalina is a performance improvement, ram wise.
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.
Wouldn't the iOSification actually reduce the amount of memory needed considering most iOS devices have less than 8GB of memory?
12.9 2TB/16GB RAM 5G Cellular configuration.
- Safari [With 15 tabs] [3 in Split-view]
- Chrome [with 3 tabs] [2 in Split-view]
- Edge [With 1 Tab]
- Procreate [6 4K image edits with 40 layers]
- Photoshop [3 4K image edits with 10 layers]
- Notes
- Calendar
- Amazon
- Ebay
- Lumafusion [With 3 4K projects & 1 8K project]
- Discord [Slide-Over]
- Apple Music [Slide-over w/Photoshop]
- YouTube [Split-View w/Safari]
- Youtube studio
- ShadowPC [VM with Adobe Premier Pro editing 2 4K projects]
- 2TB Samsung T7 SSD connected
Never once saw an App "ejected" nor slowdown since purchased. Only issue was battery life.
Also none of these apps are iPadOS 15 updated with the RAM increase
The iOS kill protocol activates long before you 'run out.' It'll strike memory heavy webpges, javascript, CPU loads, etc in order not to run out. Again, we're talking about an OS originally written for a device with 128MB of RAM, at a time when a MBP had two gigabytes.
For reference, an iBook G3 had 128MB of RAM. In late 2001.
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It is happening because of insuffient memory.
My other iOS devices such as iPhones and older iPads who have less RAM can even hold less applications in memory.
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Our disagreement seems to be a matter of opinion, with my point being that iOS is designed for aggressive memory management to prevent running out, which makes sense given its history. It just reloads pages and programs instead of getting to the point where a Mac would experience hangs/stutters/beachballs.
Four gigs would be inadequate in a modern desktop OS, except maybe lightweight Linux. In contrast 3GB in a 2020 base iPad feels responsive.
I've had my 8GB 512GB M1 Air for about two months now. I think I have only noticed a slow down/lag one time. Everything was just running really slow. I had Safari, Firefox and Chrome open with at least 15 tabs on each. I closed Firefox and everything was fine once again. Haven't had the slowdown happen ever since and I run all three browsers every day with those same tabs open on them.
Opinion? It is a fact.
More RAM = iPad can hold more application in memory before it starts ejecting applications from memory.
The opinion is whether it's a problem, or an acceptable behavior. Obviously RAM is a fixed quantity.
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.
Better? No, but normal for such devices. iOS isn't a desktop operating system.
Meaning that I consider an iPad air to have 'sufficient' RAM.
According to you? You do realize that flagship smartphones ship with 16 GB of RAM nowadays (besides Apple)?
The fact is, 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. It will not happen if there is sufficient memory on the device.
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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.
Not quite, but getting close to Ad Hominem territory.
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?
And... the Ad Hominem I was expecting. If somewhat disguised.
To your point though, it's easy to install a hundred gigabytes of applications on a device. Expecting a device to keep "all applications in memory" with that many is an untenable position for most users, given how much a 128GB kit costs. That's why computers swap, or in the case of iOS, kill and reload.
The amount of RAM required to be 'adequate' is a personal answer based on use case, beyond what the OS needs to run. iOS needs very little, as stated earlier.
If you pour half of it, drink it, then pour the other half; yes, that's a lot like what I said.
Most macOS versions needed 2 GB of RAM minimum, since Mavericks (anything older is another category of use); Mac laptops could be had with 4 GB of RAM installed. Catalina was the first macOS to specify 4 GB of RAM minimum; no Mac laptops come with less than 8 GB of RAM installed today.
macOS doesn't increase its minimum specs for RAM very fast; Mavericks was 2013 and Mojave was 2019. The question is how fast will Apple pile on features until 4 GB of RAM minimum isn't enough?
I'm a light user, always have been; because I've always bought older computers until my current. I'm on my computers a lot, always have. I work for myself and have no employees, so I can choose the software I want to run and I've been able to trend to lighter apps (a force of habit) and stay away from the heavier apps.
16 GB of RAM is still a little expensive for me for my next M1 MBA. My Windows 10 i5 Ivy Bridge test machine, on the other hand, has at least 12 GB of RAM installed minimum (policy) to run properly.
macOS doesn't increase its minimum specs for RAM very fast; Mavericks was 2013 and Mojave was 2019. The question is how fast will Apple pile on features until 4 GB of RAM minimum isn't enough?
I'm a light user, always have been; because I've always bought older computers until my current. I'm on my computers a lot, always have. I work for myself and have no employees, so I can choose the software I want to run and I've been able to trend to lighter apps (a force of habit) and stay away from the heavier apps.
16 GB of RAM is still a little expensive for me for my next M1 MBA. My Windows 10 i5 Ivy Bridge test machine, on the other hand, has at least 12 GB of RAM installed minimum (policy) to run properly.
I suspect Apple may pile on features faster than 8GB RAM could handle. We are long gone from needing to squeeze 64KB memory on Commodore 64 to do more, but also means conserving memory and not consciously using more than necessary becomes less of a concern and more of a customer's purchase power.