I spent 2 months on a base M2 Mac Mini

[klasma]

My work PC has 8GB of RAM and it works just fine.

Same here for my non-work PC. Unless you are doing video editing or something like that, it’s perfectly sufficient.

 

[Chuckeee]

We disagree. When I say sub-optimal it is not about my use case, I am referring to how well the computer computes. Although it is defined consequent to OS and app choices, it is not simply some user preference. Some user may tolerate sub-optimal operation due to less than ideal RAM, I did for years. But the fact that I tolerated it did not then make it optimal.

It seems like that modern Apple Silicon machines are fast enough that even sub optimal performance is perfectly adequate for many users. Apple realizes this and it structure their baseline appropriately, basically to maximize profit from the more educated users, who understand what optimal performance can provide, and require that level of performance. In other words, Apple understands their boutique brand and that they can get away charging a premium for fully configured hardware.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Your condescension towards people in this thread who don’t agree with your “lifecycle of the machine” diatribe is definitely not subtle. I grant it, you’re walking a fine line towards basically calling us all idiots, but each individual has a different interpretation of a lifecycle. Mine’s about three years, some here are 5-7, others are 10+ years. Who is right? For me, it’s me, no matter how much hash you’re slinging. For the 10+ year users, it’s 10+ years and they’re aghast at my 3 years approach. Most normal users don’t think in that context, it doesn’t mean they’re unintelligent, but maybe it’s just not as important to them as it is to you. Different strokes for different folks.

Sorry to offend. Note that never have I stated what term a life cycle should be. We agree that life cycle might be 2 years, 5 or 10+ years (personally I usually think in 5-7 year terms based on my own experience, but 2 year or 10+ year individual preferences also work fine for me).

My point is just that life cycle (pick 2 or 5 or 10 yrs.) needs to be considered. All the many folks commenting "buy an 8 GB box for the future, look how well mine worked for me in the past" without thinking about the life cycle that has not even started yet are not giving fully thought out advice IMO.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

It seems like that modern Apple Silicon machines are fast enough that even sub optimal performance is perfectly adequate for many users. Apple realizes this and it structure their baseline appropriately, basically to maximize profit for the more educated users, who understand what optimal performance can provide, and require that level of performance. In other words, Apple understands their boutique brand and that they can get away charging a premium for fully configured hardware.

Agreed that "modern Apple Silicon machines are fast enough that even sub optimal performance is perfectly adequate for many users." In fact that is something that will be curious to see how it evolves. OS and apps will change. How will operational performance change?

 

[smirking]

Threads like this make me realize how many neurodivergent people there are in the world (self included).

There should be a diagnostic criteria for autism that asks "In the past month have you spent more than 1 hour arguing with randos about how much RAM a computer should have?"

Once you realize that a lot of the people in these threads are indeed exhibiting some form of neurodivergence, it all makes a lot more sense why this keeps going on.

 

[ric22]

Much of everything else has, tad more to Apple than RAM & SSD chips

Q-6

Lucky they ditched the Intel processors and SSDs and RAM became incredibly cheap. The profit margins are more than slightly healthy despite certain increases.

 

[Analog Kid]

I agree with your general premise that we do not know exactly what will happen as regards optimizing computing. E.g. look how M3 throws us a curve ball adding 3D competence specific to M3 such that for some things an M3 Pro may be better than the otherwise much stronger M2 Max.

Yeah, that's the point I'm trying make.

However after watching Mac RAM demands increase inexorably for 40 years I am pretty darn confident that the next 5 years will be more of the same.

More of the same 5 years from now would mean adding as much to the minimum configuration as over the last 5 years, which would be... zero. The 2018 Mac Mini minimum configuration was also 8GB.

Your comment that "If I buy a box with a certain configuration today, I should be able to do with it in 5 years exactly what I can do with it today." is simply wrong, because Mac OS and apps change over 5 years.

It's a simplistic point, but I meant it merely as a reference point: if you're changing the OS and the apps, you're not doing exactly the same thing.

There's a lot of users who don't stress their current system, so incremental increases demanded by security patches won't really affect their experience in any meaningful way. The fact most of the discussion around memory usage involves "open tabs" tells us all we need to know about how hard they're pushing the memory manager.

E.g. my workflow and apps did not change, but my 2016 MBP rammed-out nevertheless.

Leaving aside the "it happened to me, so is universally true" argument being implied, and the fact this is a 7 year old machine that's probably not getting the security updates you wanted anyway, can you explain better how it "rammed out"?

I'm not sure RAM was the real performance bottleneck at that point:

Versus:

As a side note, the money you'd have spent up front has an added cost. This isn't the greatest way of looking at opportunity costs, but I find the numbers interesting none the less: Upgrading a 8GB 13" to 16GB would have cost about $300. If you'd invested that $300 in Apple stock, ignoring dividends, it would be worth $2000 today-- basically enough to replace the machine. If you'd taken a more conservative approach and invested in a Nasdaq index fund, it would be worth $900 and get you halfway there.

And if you really did bring stock tips back from the future and put that money into Nvidia, you'd be holding somewhere around $10,000. You can buy wheels with that kind of money.

 

[Lift Bar]

Apple prevents it by the way CTO choices are laid out. Max chip required to get max RAM for instance.

Yes it seems limited. For the $599 starting Mac Mini, 24GB RAM is $400 extra, 2TB SSD is $800 extra. Makes it an $1,800 machine quite quickly! Would be quite amusing if they also let you upgrade to 8TB SSD like the Studio for an extra $2400 or so.

 

[iHorseHead]

Same here for my non-work PC. Unless you are doing video editing or something like that, it’s perfectly sufficient.

Yup, I work in IT support. I mostly have 4 web browsers open, Kaseya LiveConnect,Addigy,RDP and Word and Outlook open and I've never had any issues. It's fine with 8GB of RAM.

I don't understand the RAM obsession. Why people are always like "Get 16GB to future proof it?" while Apple doesnt support many computers even though they have 16GB of RAM. M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM is much better than MacBook from 2016 with 16GB of RAM and 512SSD.

8GB is enough for Windows too for now.

 

[arkitect]

Future proofing seems to come up a lot in these discussions.

For me personally the amount of RAM I buy has nothing to do with future proofing.


I buy the Mac with the amount of RAM I need right there and then for current workflow.

Sure, it would be nice to go back to my Mac Pro 1,1 days when I could just expand the damn thing endlessly, but those days are gone.

When I retire my current setup and move to Apple Silicon I'll again buy as much as I can afford.

Edit:
Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, AE, Rhino 3D, Maxwell Render

 

[iHorseHead]

Future proofing seems to come up a lot in these discussions.

For me the amount of RAM I buy has nothing to do with future proofing.

I buy the Mac with the amount of RAM I need right there and then for current workflow.

Sure, it would be nice to go back to my Mac Pro 1,1 days when I could just expand the damn thing endlessly, but those days are gone.

When I move to Apple Silicon I'll again buy as much as I can afford.

Edit:
Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, AE, Rhino 3D, Maxwell Render

Future proofing for Apple products is BS. When your OS is no longer supported, it doesnt matter whether you have 8 or 16GB of RAM. Also, the base model MacBook Air M1 works a lot better than MacBooks from 2016 with 16GB of RAM. I remember I stupidly bought MacBook early 2008 and even spent extra money on RAM, which wasn't cheap in order to future proof my Mac. I was so disappointed when I found out this thing wont support Mountain Lion. I could've gotten a newer used Mac for the money I spent on upgrading the RAM.

 

[AlmightyKang]

What made me get more disciplined about my photo management was that I started running social media accounts for some of the people I did photography for. Once I started needing my full back catalog of photos on an on demand basis, it became clear how much excessive nostalgia was costing me. It took forever to find the right image and sometimes I'd accidentally pick one of the outtakes.

I learned to kill my darlings in phases. I purge the obvious discards immediately. The distant seconds are reviewed and removed in a week or two. The handful of remaining alternates get the same treatment a month later. By then I'm less sentimental and hard judgement calls are easier to make.

It's still a constant struggle though. I still find myself reverting to old bad habits whenever I have the option to be lazy about making decisions. That's why I stick to having slightly less storage than is comfortable.

Photo management discipline was motivated by inheriting a 4TB NAS from a dead relative here.

I figured I didn't want to put that on my kids' shoulders one day.

 

[Closingracer]

Newbie here. First post.

I found the OG post enlightening, encouraging and rather true.

I still have a Mac Mini (2012) and couldn't compile my App because I can no longer install latest X-Code for High Sierra 10.12.6 which i'm stuck on.

So I've been forced to using my wife's M1 8gb/256 Macbook Air and I am blown away by the speed in which it compiled my App. buttery smooth. Perfectly fine. Can't wait to put my App on the App store. Built on a Mac Mini(2012) compiled on an M1. 😂

Going to get a bare bones M2 asap.

What I got out of this thread is, know your needs & buy accordingly.

16gb base is not going to make the PC world all the sudden respect Apple.

Respect ? I mean Like or hate Apple they are the trend setter and if Apple makes it happen the industry follows. Floopy Disk removal, Headphone jack, and so forth. Or they make stuff popular. I wonder how big of a push windows on ARM would actually be if Apple didn't make the M series MacBooks. Probably little.

8GB of RAM is insane on a $1099 purchase. I would also say 256GB SSD is as well. I see this laptop as a 6-8 yr purchase and considering we can't upgrade the RAM I would like to have 16GB for anything down the line. Apple knows this and lets you pay for that $200 upgrade on memory. why not make the buck? The M2 Base Air was fine for me but I would like to know I have the headroom for the future especially when I am considering going into photography.

 

[jouster]

I have two base spec M2 computers: a Mini and a 13" Air. The latter will be my daughter's first college computer in about 6 months, but it's mine for now.

For general productivity, light photo and video work, and a few hours of Minecraft a week, both computers are essentially perfect. I can't tell the difference between the experiences other than location--which makes sense given that computationally they are identical.

I love MacOS, and have for many years. But I refuse to pay Apple's memory and storage upgrade prices if I don't need to. Fast SSDs are available, and take about five seconds to plug in and mount.

 

[ric22]

I love MacOS, and have for many years. But I refuse to pay Apple's memory and storage upgrade prices if I don't need to. Fast SSDs are available, and take about five seconds to plug in and mount.

I love MacOS and feel the same. I also buy external SSD's. It's frustrating that Apple insist on charging >2,000% or so markup on the price they pay for storage. It's so petty and needless.

 

[skottichan]

I've got about 70Gb and that is everything I've ever done.

Are you sure you're not a data hoarder? 😂

It's kinda funny, if I ignore my artwork archive (backed up digital work and scanned traditional work), I've been sitting at just shy of 100GB out of the 500Gb on my M2Pro Mini. Add the archive and I'm looking at just shy of 1.2Tb of archive alone.

Personally, I want to purge a lot of it, but my wife would kill me.


It's pretty much the only digital hoarding I do, and man, not a fan.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Yeah, that's the point I'm trying make.



More of the same 5 years from now would mean adding as much to the minimum configuration as over the last 5 years, which would be... zero. The 2018 Mac Mini minimum configuration was also 8GB.



It's a simplistic point, but I meant it merely as a reference point: if you're changing the OS and the apps, you're not doing exactly the same thing.

There's a lot of users who don't stress their current system, so incremental increases demanded by security patches won't really affect their experience in any meaningful way. The fact most of the discussion around memory usage involves "open tabs" tells us all we need to know about how hard they're pushing the memory manager.



Leaving aside the "it happened to me, so is universally true" argument being implied, and the fact this is a 7 year old machine that's probably not getting the security updates you wanted anyway, can you explain better how it "rammed out"?

I'm not sure RAM was the real performance bottleneck at that point:

View attachment 2353346
View attachment 2353347

Versus:

View attachment 2353348
View attachment 2353349

As a side note, the money you'd have spent up front has an added cost. This isn't the greatest way of looking at opportunity costs, but I find the numbers interesting none the less: Upgrading a 8GB 13" to 16GB would have cost about $300. If you'd invested that $300 in Apple stock, ignoring dividends, it would be worth $2000 today-- basically enough to replace the machine. If you'd taken a more conservative approach and invested in a Nasdaq index fund, it would be worth $900 and get you halfway there.

And if you really did bring stock tips back from the future and put that money into Nvidia, you'd be holding somewhere around $10,000. You can buy wheels with that kind of money.

------
More of the same 5 years from now would mean adding as much to the minimum configuration as over the last 5 years, which would be... zero. The 2018 Mac Mini minimum configuration was also 8GB.
It's a simplistic point, but I meant it merely as a reference point: if you're changing the OS and the apps, you're not doing exactly the same thing.
------
Base RAM was never the point, max available RAM at a point in time for MBPs was the point: 2016=16, 2023=128 (previously stated). And we also previously noted why essentially everyone is changing the OS and the apps, so presuming a reference point is false.

 

[JosephAW]

Still waiting out on the Intel platform. Heavy Quark, Photoshop and iDVD user.
Looking into Photoshop elements as a replacement. Use layers heavily. Quark has newer versions but I’ve read my 2018 version can run under Rosetta. iDVD will be a little trickier because wherever I move to I’ll have to remake all my custom templates.
This review was helpful.

 

[GoodWheaties]

You've got me thinking. I NEVER delete photos, and I've always justified it by telling myself that it's not costing me anything and you never know what you may need or want in the future. But looking through my library, there are so so many shots of just.... nothing. Clearly I need to find a middle ground 🙃

My middle ground is have a large external drive (mine is a RAID) then move everything but the last year or two to that drive. It keeps your computer relatively clean and doesn’t require that large of storage on the main computer.

 

[GoodWheaties]

Actually, you CAN'T make the assumption that it means whether the 8GB only works well enough for the first year or two. Everyone's use cases are different, and everyone's definition of how well their computer works differs also. It may not be optimal for YOU but it does not mean it's not optimal for everyone else.

My father purchased a base M1 Mini when it first came out. He uses it to surf, email, and light gaming. It's now years 3 1/2 years later, and he's never had an issue. Thing runs great. He'll probably get another 2-3 years for his use case before it even starts to slow down. There are tons of users out there that have similar use cases, and I'd argue that $500 for 5-6 + years of quality computing is pretty darn good.

Heck my dad is still running a 2012 Mac mini. I bumped it from 4gb to 8gb a few years ago and it made no noticeable difference to him. I keep telling him we should upgrade it to the M2 and he says it still works fine.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Even if you think 8GB base RAM is enough

Can we all agree Apple charges too much for upgrading that component?

(All their component upgrades are overpriced)

 

[Zdigital2015]

Even if you think 8GB base RAM is enough

Can we all agree Apple charges too much for upgrading that component?

(All their component upgrades are overpriced)

Yes, I can agree with that, they could cut those prices in half for both DRAM and Storage and still make “money”. Unfortunately, Apple based its profits on margin and, boy oh boy, do those prices buoy their overall margin.

 

[iHorseHead]

I love MacOS and feel the same. I also buy external SSD's. It's frustrating that Apple insist on charging >2,000% or so markup on the price they pay for storage. It's so petty and needless.

How does it work? Does it work fast enough?

 

[Howard2k]

Even if you think 8GB base RAM is enough

Can we all agree Apple charges too much for upgrading that component?

(All their component upgrades are overpriced)

We can all agree on that!

 

[colinsky]

I spent ten days on a base m2 Pro Mini. It did not seem like a significant upgrade from my 16/512 m1 Mini. They both bogged down in the same heavy Adobe situations. Yellow and red memory pressure.

So I returned it and bit the bullet for the 32/1tb Mini, and everything runs fast and quiet in the green now no matter how many different things I'm running at once.