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Is 8GB of RAM Enough for a Mac in 2024?
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I agree. Anyhow, I already have a 16 GB MacBook from years ago, but ironically the 16 GB is not necessary for me now. 8 GB would be fine since I only have light needs for it now. (I do the vast majority of my work on my 16 GB Mac mini.)
For my next purchase, it will likely be an OLED iPad Pro. I suspect they will keep the iPad Pro at 8 GB RAM for the entry level, but may increase the base storage to 256 GB. They will likely increase the price at the same time, but I'm hoping what they will do is just to delete the 128 GB model, leaving the price of the 8/256 GB tier unchanged, despite the upgrade to OLED.
The thing is most Mac memory is not upgradable. For most people, buying a new Mac just because Memory is yellow doesn't make sense at all. In my experience, being in yellow doesn't make any noticeable difference in performance. Again, this video is a great explanation of how it works: https://macmost.com/memory-pressure-and-how-your-mac-uses-memory.html
I’ve worked non stop since I was 16. I had a full time job even when going to school. I regularly spent around $1,0000 for my computers back then. Macs where still to expensive for me then
I can easily edit 4k raw video on my base M1 Air with 8gb when needed (have a Max Studio too). I would have thought it sounded crazy but using the computer doesn’t lie…
Tell that to my dad. He bought a MacBook Pro to read emails and watch YouTube. Why? Because he likes having the best, but really doesn't need more than 8gb of RAM. I'm always fascinated by people on here trying to explain why 8gb of RAM isn't enough and Apple should really start out at 16gb of RAM as if Apple doesn't know their customer base. You know why they keep selling Mac's with 8gb of RAM? Because people keep buying them. And you know why people keep buying them? Because they just work. My wife uses a MacBook Air M1 with 8gb of RAM and not once does it struggle to process her emails, photos, web browsing or movie watching. So why on earth would Apple voluntarily put more memory into a device that doesn't need any help being sold? They need differentiators in their products, and 8gb of RAM is one of those differentiators. If 8gb of RAM wasn't working in their devices, people weren't buying them and they were getting consistently poor feedback on performance, they'd stop selling them. But they're not. .......and yes, you're right, these SKU's exist for a "lower" price so Apple can attract more customers. This is standard business practice. Car manufacturers should include certain basic features in the basic trim levels but they don't, why? So we pay more for the next trim level. I'm not saying that I personally wouldn't like having 16gb as a standard, but people need to use some common sense. It's like people don't realize Apple's entire purpose is to turn a profit and make money.
No it's not, what a ridiculous statement. I can do all of those things and edit a video in Final Cut on an M1 MacBook Air without any problems. Your "software tricks" is called code efficiency. Would you rather them just say "forget making our software run more efficiently, lets just slap 64gb of ram in here because dz5b609 said that'll solve the problem." Some Android manufacturers have been doing that for years.
In my experience, current Apple Silicon chips, at least M1 and M2 (I haven’t tried any M3 mac yet), make a bigger use of RAM than old Intel CPUs with their GPUs. And no, I’m not saying they make a better use of memory, but rather that Apple Silicon with just 8GB of RAM reaches both yellow and red zone way earlier than older Intel machines.
That’s why for any Apple Silicon Mac, I wouldn’t recommend less than 16GB of RAM, because even if today it works somehow well, in a few years those machines will hit the red pressure zone way earlier, using tons of swapping and degrading the SSDs way sooner.
I Personally aim for 32GB of RAM for my next Mac computer, but that’s because I tend to keep machines up to 10 years, especially Macs. For anyone else 16GB should be fine. And 8GB… well, it’s probably going to work well for non-intensive tasks this year, but who knows how it will run in a few years? And you cannot add RAM anymore.
That’s why for any Apple Silicon Mac, I wouldn’t recommend less than 16GB of RAM, because even if today it works somehow well, in a few years those machines will hit the red pressure zone way earlier, using tons of swapping and degrading the SSDs way sooner.
I Personally aim for 32GB of RAM for my next Mac computer, but that’s because I tend to keep machines up to 10 years, especially Macs. For anyone else 16GB should be fine. And 8GB… well, it’s probably going to work well for non-intensive tasks this year, but who knows how it will run in a few years? And you cannot add RAM anymore.
A tech guy on YouTube showed he could do 8K on 8GB, and it worked not too badly.
Strip out all the bloat and 8GB is plenty.
I ran the regular, bloated version of Win10 on my work 8GB RAM system. That thing ran like a dog--a legless chihuahua.😑 My slower 2 core, half the GHz, half RAM toy I have loaded with a bloat free Win 10 (LTSC) is surprising usuable.
I want to install the LTSC version of Win10 on my work machine, but MS doesn't make it available to the general public.☹️
I ran the regular, bloated version of Win10 on my work 8GB RAM system. That thing ran like a dog--a legless chihuahua.😑 My slower 2 core, half the GHz, half RAM toy I have loaded with a bloat free Win 10 (LTSC) is surprising usuable.
I want to install the LTSC version of Win10 on my work machine, but MS doesn't make it available to the general public.☹️
Why is this so hard?
Apple removed our ability to change our own RAM and then started charging incredibly huge markups for just 8 gig more. THAT is the issue.
Apple removed our ability to change our own RAM and then started charging incredibly huge markups for just 8 gig more. THAT is the issue.
I use only browser at work but usually have 200+ tabs of different applications (dashboard, slides, meeting, docs, etc). My company (Google) does everything in chrome even coding thru cloud editor or chrome Remote Desktop. 8 is not enough at all.
Just like that old laughable sitcom —“Eight is Enough”.
That’s true for the overwhelming majority of Mac users.
My word. I'm still using an 8GB 2015 MacBook Air as my main workhorse — and it works like a champ. I've written 400-page books; maintain massive, multi-sheet Excel financial workbooks; run in-depth statistical analyses on data sets with thousands of cases with graphing-visualization software; run large-scale astronomy simulations; have libraries with thousands of photos and videos; researched large projects with scores of Safari tabs open; and even used Safari that way while annotating many PDFs of historical documents. No slowdowns, no sluggishness, responsive, wonderful computing experiences.
No doubt, 8GB on an M-series Apple silicon Mac would work even better! So, in this day and age, most need no more. The fixation on the memory gauge and fretting over it getting, sometimes, into the yellow rather than focusing on any actual slow down in performance is telling.
For sure, certain workflows involving 3-D renderings; HD movie editing; complex algorithms and protein simulations; heavy duty coding; etc. would benefit from 16GB or more — but that’s not the daily work or play situation for the vast majority of Mac users!
Yes, it would be far better if Apple provided 16GB RAM and 512GB storage as the base — far better, that is, for consumers who would enjoy having more. Not as good for Apple's bottom line, however.
Keep in mind that MR attracts a disproportionate share of techies, programmers, and high-end users and, thus, predictably, abounds in calls for and echoes of, many echoes of, 16GB+ as being absolutely essential along with the repeated decrying, ad infinitum ad nauseum, of 8GB as inadequate, ridiculous, definitely not enough, a travesty, and an embarrassment.
Such assailing of Apple, however, has an amusing, wonderfully ironic effect — it makes more casual MR readers and consumers nervous and, out of fear, ending up needlessly spending $200 or $400 extra on more RAM when they didn't need to!
Bottom line, though. Haven't we flogged this topic sufficiently? One of these threads should be turned into a sticky and whenever the topic comes up, just refer people to it! 😁
That’s true for the overwhelming majority of Mac users.
My word. I'm still using an 8GB 2015 MacBook Air as my main workhorse — and it works like a champ. I've written 400-page books; maintain massive, multi-sheet Excel financial workbooks; run in-depth statistical analyses on data sets with thousands of cases with graphing-visualization software; run large-scale astronomy simulations; have libraries with thousands of photos and videos; researched large projects with scores of Safari tabs open; and even used Safari that way while annotating many PDFs of historical documents. No slowdowns, no sluggishness, responsive, wonderful computing experiences.
No doubt, 8GB on an M-series Apple silicon Mac would work even better! So, in this day and age, most need no more. The fixation on the memory gauge and fretting over it getting, sometimes, into the yellow rather than focusing on any actual slow down in performance is telling.
For sure, certain workflows involving 3-D renderings; HD movie editing; complex algorithms and protein simulations; heavy duty coding; etc. would benefit from 16GB or more — but that’s not the daily work or play situation for the vast majority of Mac users!
Yes, it would be far better if Apple provided 16GB RAM and 512GB storage as the base — far better, that is, for consumers who would enjoy having more. Not as good for Apple's bottom line, however.
Keep in mind that MR attracts a disproportionate share of techies, programmers, and high-end users and, thus, predictably, abounds in calls for and echoes of, many echoes of, 16GB+ as being absolutely essential along with the repeated decrying, ad infinitum ad nauseum, of 8GB as inadequate, ridiculous, definitely not enough, a travesty, and an embarrassment.
Such assailing of Apple, however, has an amusing, wonderfully ironic effect — it makes more casual MR readers and consumers nervous and, out of fear, ending up needlessly spending $200 or $400 extra on more RAM when they didn't need to!
Bottom line, though. Haven't we flogged this topic sufficiently? One of these threads should be turned into a sticky and whenever the topic comes up, just refer people to it! 😁
It depends. If you just do web browsing, email, documents, listening to music and watching streaming video platforms, then yes, 8 GB should definitely be enough. But if you multitask a lot, play games, and/or do digital media creation (audio and/or video editing, digital artwork, animation, etc.) then you'll definitely want at least 16 GB of RAM. My M1 MacBook Air has 16 GB, and it handles all of that very well.
It's fine for the millions of Apple customers who have minimal/modest computing needs (web surfing, email, music, simple spreadsheets, messages, Notes, calculator, Pages, looking at photos, etc).
Need more memory because you're doing complex stuff (Photoshop, Affinity Publisher, Lightroom, Blender, DaVinci Resolve, etc)? No problem. Simply pay for it.
Apple makes computers for everyone.
Need more memory because you're doing complex stuff (Photoshop, Affinity Publisher, Lightroom, Blender, DaVinci Resolve, etc)? No problem. Simply pay for it.
Apple makes computers for everyone.
8GB is fine if your Mac needs could be met by an iPad, but once your needs are more demanding than that upgrade to 16GB.
Apple prices the entry-level Mac lower than many of their iPhones. Why don't we complain about how much RAM is in the iPhone?
Seriously, why don't people complain that iPhones don't come with 16 or 23 GB of RAM? I think because the iPhone works well-enough with whatever RAM it ships with. But why does that explanation not work on a Mac?
After all, most Macs are used for Youtube and Amazon. A webbrowser is the only app most users use.