Then go and buy a Lenovo. It’s that simple.
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I refuse to buy an Apple Silicon Mac with only 8 GB RAM!
- Thread starter AlixSPQR
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Then buy from the Refurb Store https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished
16 gb M1 Macbook Airs and Mac Minis are there for the price of base spec, so you're saving a lot of money buying refurbished instead of new, and Apple treats their refurb items with the same quality as new items. You won't be able to tell it's refurbished or not because of how good Apple treats them.
I have the 8GB and run bunch of background apps like backups, Google Drive, email for spam filtering, amongst the apps I am interactively using.
I can say there are times where I max the RAM and I’m annoyed. As you would expect system slows down and even the login screen screensaver is sluggish. Usually I just close bunch of interactive apps and things return to normal.
That said, if you are buying something long term just get the 16GB if you think you may need it. It’s not that much more and if you calculate the cost over your now 9 year ownership cycle of your current Mac Mini it would be what like $22 a year extra?
It would be one thing to listen to this spew about 8GB of ram if anyone was actually coming up with issues related to it. I bought an M1 13 MBP with 8GB, and it is working absolutely fine for me. I keep activity monitor open and I have to stretch my use case to even show any memory pressure, and my virtual memory is almost always 0. so, 8 is plenty of rme. I did know this going in because I did the same thing on my 2014 MBP with 16 GB of ram and almost never used more than 8, so I knew I didn't need it.
I am the first to admit I do not represent all users and if your use case (based on activity monitor actual results) shows you need more, get it. BTW, I use safari (not that memory hog chrome), Pages, Numbers, Quicktime, Infuse, Davinci, handbrake, Mail, Maps, messages, TV, Music, Shazam, fan control, and use spaces to keep my apps organized with 6 desktops, 2 on an external monitor and an additional monitor through airplay (yah it works, 1 internal and 2 external that way): so not a memory intensive case, but then again, no issues with 8 GB - none, notta
I am the first to admit I do not represent all users and if your use case (based on activity monitor actual results) shows you need more, get it. BTW, I use safari (not that memory hog chrome), Pages, Numbers, Quicktime, Infuse, Davinci, handbrake, Mail, Maps, messages, TV, Music, Shazam, fan control, and use spaces to keep my apps organized with 6 desktops, 2 on an external monitor and an additional monitor through airplay (yah it works, 1 internal and 2 external that way): so not a memory intensive case, but then again, no issues with 8 GB - none, notta
The entry level 14" and 16" MBPs come with 16GB; you can get them at today's prices.
You do you.
I bet, and I'd be really happy to buy a Mac Studio for $5. LOL. The real question is always what do you get performance wise for your money, compared to the competition, apple silicon is priced very well. (and no, I won't defend the RAM and SSD prices - they don't make sense to me or anyone else)
And herein lies the problem with the OPs demands. There are countless people that can work with 8 GB of memory with zero issues. Demanding that Apple put 16GB in as a base basically increases the price for the users that don’t need it.
For equavalant pcs the ram amount is not any better for example, https://store.acer.com/en-us/nitro-...578366489434625&utm_content=Gaming - Products
There are many people for which 8gb of ram is fine. You even admit that! And I think you are being a choosing beggar. You want a high performance high ram count machine and you expect not to pay a premium for that. Is it costly, yes but you have to be willing to spend money on high performance machines.
8 GB was maybe fine in 2013 (that's the RAM on a PC that I built back then, now it's been upgraded to 16 GB and is normally using about 60% of it).
8 GB on 2017 iMac wasn't enough. I upgraded it myself, as Apple RAM was a rip-off.
8 GB in 2022 is already a joke. I believe, 16 GB is an absolute minimum these days, no matter the architecture.
What's wrong with these new computers (Apple and many Windows too) is that they are not upgradable, so Apple can easily upsell, charging its huge premium, if you want a decent amount of RAM or storage. And then, in a few years, you cannot simply add what you want, so you buy a new computer.
8 GB on 2017 iMac wasn't enough. I upgraded it myself, as Apple RAM was a rip-off.
8 GB in 2022 is already a joke. I believe, 16 GB is an absolute minimum these days, no matter the architecture.
What's wrong with these new computers (Apple and many Windows too) is that they are not upgradable, so Apple can easily upsell, charging its huge premium, if you want a decent amount of RAM or storage. And then, in a few years, you cannot simply add what you want, so you buy a new computer.
Yes, as of now, but I'm talking about the future, and decisions for that.
Apple quietly uppgraded the MBA to 8 GB for the base model in April 2016. No difference in price. So, these things happen, even with Apple, right? I want to be part of that pressure for them to do the same to 16 GB. Most of you seem content with Apple deciding what you should pay, but I'm not.
Third time: Refurb Store. 16 gb M1 Macs are base spec price there.
Well, firstly, that doesn't address the question in principal, and, secondly, not all of us live in the US. I don't.
But by that time you'll be starting a thread titled "I refuse to buy an Apple Silicon Mac with only 16 GB RAM!"
Rinse and repeat 😂
As others said, buy what you need, whether it's the base model or not. If you refuse to pay the upgrade price, well then I guess you either didn't really need that much RAM or you'll need to buy a non-Mac laptop that lets you add cheaper RAM. Or buy used/refurbished.
I refuse to buy a Porsche! They cannot make me!
Upgrading a laptop is insanely rare.
99% of the user base benefits from a design that doesn’t have to account for upgradability and thus the design can be optimized in other ways.
The Refurb Store is available outside of the US pal
Bing Bing Bing! Exactly.
If you are not doing video editing and are also bright enough to NOT keep a dozen plus tabs open at once in the most inefficient web browser ever, or trying to run multiple virtual machines, 8GB is enough.
If you are routinely doing memory intensive things on your Mac then you should not be trying to do them on a low end MacBook Air, or low end Mini. Apple has "Pro" laptops for such work. You might even want one of those desktop machines they make for real work.
Current memory used, 4.8 GB; swap used, 0
For the m-series Macs:
16gb is "the new 8".
Buying an m-series Mac with 8gb of RAM in 2022, is similar to buying a 2014 Mac Mini in 2016 with 4gb of RAM (yes, they came that way).
It will run. But it won't be long before you're "pushing against the RAM limits", with no way to upgrade...
16gb is "the new 8".
Buying an m-series Mac with 8gb of RAM in 2022, is similar to buying a 2014 Mac Mini in 2016 with 4gb of RAM (yes, they came that way).
It will run. But it won't be long before you're "pushing against the RAM limits", with no way to upgrade...
Do you have any idea how hard it is to solder all those little chips on?! 
Unless things change drastically in the industry that might take longer than you think. Here's a (log-scaled) chart of Mac base RAM sizes per SKU over the last few decades:
As you can see the rate of increase dropped off dramatically in the past 10-15 years, with 8GB being a common size since ~2012 (compare that to the rate of change from 2002 to 2012). Workloads just aren't getting more RAM-intensive in the same way as they used to be, maybe because so many libraries and websites need to optimize for phones with 2 or 3 GB RAM.
Back a few months when it was the 10th anniversary of the first retina MBP, I thought it'd be fun to look back 10 years to see what people on the forums were saying about it at the time it came out. Can you guess how many posts from 2012 I saw complaining that 8 GB of soldered RAM was unconscionable and would be obsolete in 2 or 3 years' time?
Agreed. And let’s be honest here. An M1 and M2 are far better than the Intel i3 and i5 you find in similarly specced Windows systems. And some of those have 1080p displays. It’s not just RAM that impacts pricing of a product people.
Yep. And a 1080p display too? Gross. It’s not just RAM that makes up a computer.