Don't buy M1 Air with 8Gb of RAM

[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.

 

[mi7chy]

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.

More RAM helps if iOS/iPadOS and apps are updated to take advantage it but iPadOS/iOS as of 15.0.1 is also aggressive with killing background apps which has a lifetime of up to 1 minute and as short as 5 seconds. If you want to see it for yourself, close all apps and browser tabs then open up https://www.time.gov/ with browser, put it background for 5 seconds then bring it back to foreground and watch it reload. If you bring it back to foreground about 4 seconds or sooner it won't reload. Obviously a case of aggressive iPadOS/iOS memory management and not running out of RAM since it's just a single browser tab and simple web page.

 

[Argon_]

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.

This. Particularly for iOS which, from the beginning, was masterfully optimized to do a lot with a little. Eight gigs of RAM on an iPad makes for substantial overhead, much less so on a desktop OS. The user experience on a 3GB iPad feels smooth. That much RAM in a Mac in 2021, much less so.

 

[CANXOR]

was generating up to 1TB of SSD writes per day from swapping.

What in seven hells?

 

[smirking]

What in seven hells?

I know, huh? I still can't find my jaw after I ran the SSD check program. I think it was because I develop websites with large databases that need aggressive caching to perform well so with a limited amount of memory it was furiously swapping to and from disk. If so, that makes it even more impressive that I didn't notice anything wrong during actual usage.

 

[dogslobber]

.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.

One oft overlooked benefit of 8GB/256GB is how cheap it can be bought for. I’ve seen it as low as 750$ at Best Buy. These are systems produced in vast quantities. 16GB systems are not on sale very often.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

One oft overlooked benefit of 8GB/256GB is how cheap it can be bought for. I’ve seen it as low as 750$ at Best Buy. These are systems produced in vast quantities. 16GB systems are not on sale very often.

Amazon even had a better deal. They were recently selling it for $599.99 and currently it’s $659 on Amazon and for me the base model is the best deal.

 

[dogslobber]

Amazon even had a better deal. They were recently selling it for $599.99 and currently it’s $659 on Amazon and for me the base model is the best deal.

Are you sure this is the M1 MBA? CamelCamelCamel says cheapest price was 807.49$.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Are you sure this is the M1 MBA? CamelCamelCamel says cheapest price was 807.49$.

Haha, I read the thread and I had Mini on my mind as that's what i'm looking to buy. My bad !

 

[staypuftforums]

Pretty crazy to think 8GB has been the standard base configuration since 2012 for iMac and 2014 for Macbooks and Mac Mini.

 

[EugW]

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. 😝

True, but that is why it’s good to get more memory. Recent versions of Office are slow and can use a lot of memory. However, while it can slow any Mac down, it does better if you have more memory.

Mind you I just installed Office 2011 on one machine and it is super speedy. Too bad it’s no longer supported.

 

[smirking]

True, but that is why it’s good to get more memory. Recent versions of Office are slow and can use a lot of memory. However, while it can slow any Mac down, it does better if you have more memory.

I do remember earlier versions of Office being better than this, but in my last two versions of Office it's been pretty awful. I have a 32 GB machine. I've got plenty of memory. Office is the culprit... or it's Office interacting with something that it doesn't play nicely with.