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I refuse to buy an Apple Silicon Mac with only 8 GB RAM!

J

jimmirehman

macrumors 6502a
Sep 14, 2012
519
384
Future-Proofing isn't a thing anymore. All tech is disposable.

If you work or hobby in an industry that requires better specs, buy better specs.

The average user isn't going to need top of the line specs for anything other than bragging rights.

5 years from now, using your 5 year old machine to run software designed 5 years after its release is going to feel the affects aging regardless of the amount of RAM you have.

An intel Core 2 Duo machine with 32GB of RAM can't compete with an i7 with 16GB of RAM.

In 5 years an M5 MacBook with 8GB of ram will run circles on a M1 MacBook with 16GB of ram.
 
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boak

macrumors 68000
Jun 26, 2021
1,632
2,825
ahurst said:
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:

full


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?
Click to expand...
Also because storage has become so fast, swapping can reduce the amount of RAM required without significantly impacting performance.
 
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boak

macrumors 68000
Jun 26, 2021
1,632
2,825
Annv said:
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.
Click to expand...
Yet many users can get by with 8GB 5 years on. Interesting.
 
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matt_and_187_like_this

macrumors 6502a
Dec 8, 2015
589
2,040
Wouldn't hold my breath. With SOC allowing for less price discrimination, keeping RAM at 8 is the surest way to get people with a higher willingness to pay to spend more. Cook applies textbook business strategy. One is to make the cheapest options a bit worse than it has to be.
 
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A

ahurst

macrumors 6502
Oct 12, 2021
410
815
boak said:
Yet many users can get by with 8GB 5 years on. Interesting.
Click to expand...
I upgraded my Late 2013 iMac from 8GB RAM to 24GB RAM because I was running into RAM usage issues with a neuroimaging tool I was trying to use for a project. Turns out, the high RAM usage was just a poor optimization issue and the software now runs much faster with only 3-4 GB peak RAM usage instead of 16+!

Apart from that, the two main advantages I've seen from upgrading to 24 GB have been a) the ability to use multiple VMs with 4 GB RAM each at once, and b) enabling my bad habit of filling up multiple browser windows with 20+ tabs each without running into performance issues. a) is a mostly a niche use-case, and I'm not sure b) is a particularly good thing.
 
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E

Ethosik

Contributor
Oct 21, 2009
8,142
7,120
jimmirehman said:
Future-Proofing isn't a thing anymore. All tech is disposable.

If you work or hobby in an industry that requires better specs, buy better specs.

The average user isn't going to need top of the line specs for anything other than bragging rights.

5 years from now, using your 5 year old machine to run software designed 5 years after its release is going to feel the affects aging regardless of the amount of RAM you have.

An intel Core 2 Duo machine with 32GB of RAM can't compete with an i7 with 16GB of RAM.

In 5 years an M5 MacBook with 8GB of ram will run circles on a M1 MacBook with 16GB of ram.
Click to expand...
This bit me HARD with my 2010 Mac Pro. I still use it but for basic tasks and a compressor system. But when it was my primary driver (without a lot of modifications and work) I didn’t have SATA 3, USB 3, PCIe 3+, Xeon and official GPU support that didn’t support HEVC.

A 3Ghz 6 core Xeon from 2010 is slower than a 3Ghz Intel quad/ 6 core i7. Even though on paper it has the same speeds.
 
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nate320

nate320

macrumors member
Sep 12, 2016
46
53
AlixSPQR said:
I'm aware that 8 GB RAM as of now fits most people's needs. And that the Si/ARM SoC technology isn't as RAM dependent as x86.

But macs are so expensive that I want them to last for regular use for a very long time. We know nothing of that now.

I have had my 2012 mini since 2013 and it works just fine. But, then, I installed 16 GB RAM immediately, and feel secure with that. 8 GB RAM for the future, not upgradeble, no way.

If the entry level gets 16 GB of RAM, and today's prices continue, I'll buy one. But not otherwise.

What do you think?
Click to expand...
Then don’t.
 
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U

unrigestered

Suspended
Jun 17, 2022
879
840
i think that you're not going to buy an Apple Silicon Mac anytime soon then

edit: my bad, scratch that. 🤦‍♂️
the solution is actually quite simple and already available: the 14 and 16" MBPs are starting with 16GB RAM for their base models, the Max even with 32GB.
so there's actually no good reason anymore to procrastinate your purchase any further! :)
 
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mikethemartian

mikethemartian

macrumors 65816
Jan 5, 2017
1,483
2,239
Melbourne, FL
AlixSPQR said:
I'm aware that 8 GB RAM as of now fits most people's needs. And that the Si/ARM SoC technology isn't as RAM dependent as x86.

But macs are so expensive that I want them to last for regular use for a very long time. We know nothing of that now.

I have had my 2012 mini since 2013 and it works just fine. But, then, I installed 16 GB RAM immediately, and feel secure with that. 8 GB RAM for the future, not upgradeble, no way.

If the entry level gets 16 GB of RAM, and today's prices continue, I'll buy one. But not otherwise.

What do you think?
Click to expand...
I’ve been waiting to see the direction the Mac Pro is going but I will probably be getting a Studio Ultra with 128 GB just because it isn’t upgradeable and I don’t want to be constrained more than I have to be. But I’m not someone who upgrades every other so I will be using it for a long time.
 
C

canadianpj

macrumors 6502a
Jun 27, 2008
553
500
AlixSPQR said:
I'm aware that 8 GB RAM as of now fits most people's needs. And that the Si/ARM SoC technology isn't as RAM dependent as x86.

But macs are so expensive that I want them to last for regular use for a very long time. We know nothing of that now.

I have had my 2012 mini since 2013 and it works just fine. But, then, I installed 16 GB RAM immediately, and feel secure with that. 8 GB RAM for the future, not upgradeble, no way.

If the entry level gets 16 GB of RAM, and today's prices continue, I'll buy one. But not otherwise.

What do you think?
Click to expand...
I say then don't? I'm not sure what the point of this post is?

Now I'll agree, I wouldn't ever, under any circumstances, recommend someone get 8GB of memory in a computer and oftentimes recommend higher if they can afford it.
 
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