this is a good one. Despite of what some folks might think about maxTech
8GB vs. 16GB RAM on M3-MB air
The problem with this video is that it tells us the wrong thing. It
does demonstrate nicely how macOS will use greater resources when they are available, and this isn't just because it's using swap to dump in and out of the SSD. If it were, the single module 256Gb in the 8/256 M2 would significantly reduce system performance set against a 16/512 model - or even a 8/256 M1 model - due to the volume of swap that would be happening. The video also shows that even when ramping up demand on 8Gb, within fairly normal constraints the 8Gb system does not show any marked performance constraints or memory pressure. Indeed, memory pressure appears to decline after initial loading of his test apps/files - exactly what you'd expect.
His conclusion that the 8Gb is good for single app use at a time, and the 16 for those who like to multitask is blatantly obvious and really doesn't need to be said at all. The actual question is exactly where in between those two use cases is the line where it makes the $200 extra worth spending. By selecting Lightroom - an app that Adobe tells us has an 8Gb
minimum requirement with 16 recommended, and then setting about working on 50 RAW files whilst also running dozens of tabs in Safari and some other stuff... well yes, 8Gb chokes just as anyone knows it would.
I's clearly not a use case you'd reasonably expect a base model to be capable of handling as efficiently - or else why would anyone need more RAM in the first place.
Lightroom's
minimum is 8Gb, so reasonably if using it on the base model, you'd not sensibly expect to have a whole bunch of other stuff going on in the background anyway. As such, the video makes interesting watching, and tells us a lot, but not necessarily what the guy actually meant it to tell us. It's a bit like saying that yes, your Hyundai Sonata will manage 100mph if you really need it to, but put two elephants in the front (one driving, obviously, because it's not a Tesla) and three in the back, and oh dear, it struggles. This really isn't news.
There's a different video (
) in which there's a realistic appraisal of RAM - still critical of Apple's option to use 8Gb in the base model, but not argued around a rather fallacious choice of evidence as in the first, but in the fact that what we really don't have any control over is what RAM overhead there may be in web-based services or software in the future.
This is actually a great argument against rentware such as Lightroom, because vendors have you locked into their software and can inflate the monthly fees for access as and when they wish, often on the back of shiny-looking upgrades justifying the price hike. The answer is simple: look for software you can buy and own, and can control rather than be dictated to, and avoid being trapped into web apps for essential workflows.
There's another video (
) which takes a bit less technical, and a bit more experiential approach to the 8/16Gb debate, where the guy talks about the practical choice of memory size and how to judge what the differences are worth on an individual case. Given this guy runs his business on an M2 8Gb Air, yet was sent a 16Gb M3 by Apple to review, he's not in a bad position to comment on the comparative RAM capacities.
This latter guy's experiences pretty closely match my own, so I watched his video commemorating the M1 MBA as it dropped off Apple's official product list, and it is interesting that his take on his M1 8Gb model was exactly as mine has been - that it just does what it's given to do. Sometimes, as he says, the RAM capacity hinders performance somewhat doing a demanding task, but personally it seems a bit odd to me that we're so bothered about fractional gains that we don't see just how much computing power we get for our money these days.
Anyway, that bit was just opinion of mine, and irrelevant. The three videos offer rather different takes on what 8Gb RAM actually means in use. And for my money, the first proves that the user needs to analyze their needs before buying, the second that Apple ought not to be selling 8Gb base models if they don't want to be seen as totally cynical, and the third that for a user with moderate needs, 8Gb is functionally enough. YouTube proves everything. And nothing.
