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PSA: you probably don’t need 32 or 64Gb RAM unless you know you need it.
- Thread starter aevan
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"imperceptible" does depend on memory use pattern by apps. It can be heavy performance hit. It can get even to incompressible. it all depends on what and how is used on computer. It is not a silver bullet. One of the most valid use-cases (and I suspect aim of this feature) is a browsing with 50 open tabs ). For that it work nice! Till it encounters few web-sites/tabs which developers coded with brain off
Oh, I agree - it all comes to usage cases.
I have been an active, I'd even say heavy Mac user for years, with multiple large Photoshop projects, a lot of small apps, a lot of notes apps with bunch of images for reference and a lot of websites open - I never felt like 16Gb was not enough. Even in my iMac which I could've easily upgraded to 32, I never felt the need to do so. I also worked in Zbrush a lot, and it was the same. This is why when I see these "I got 32Gb because I have a lot of tabs" posts, I scratch my head.
Now, of course, there are so many usage cases - like running a lot of VMs, music production, app development, science simulations, etc. that are vastly different - so I don't know about that and I keep repeating: there are certainly valid reasons to go for 32, 64, 128, 512, etc gigabytes of RAM. But it's not "because I open a lot of tabs, lol".
What I can tell you - that while you may need more than 16Gb RAM for your project, you don't need it to have a smooth running computer and for some reason a lot of people vastly overestimate their needs. Of course, there are professionals out there who know exactly how much they need, or simply don't care (as I said, "just max out new hardware every few years and don't think about it" is a good strategy, too - if you can cover your expenses with your work quickly).
Anyway, it is true - this really depends on your usage. And look, if you feel like getting a bunch of RAM even if you don't need it - that's perfectly fine.
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It's not the newest. Icelake (10 nm super fin) was this thime the newest. Cometlake (14 nm) is tech from 2020. Problem with 14 nm is the high power consumption and the heat. The clock speed is significantly lower.
Apple switched because of this problems to M1. They didn't expect Intel will rise again. Big mistake. Now they have a niche cpu for niche apps.
Apple switched because of this problems to M1. They didn't expect Intel will rise again. Big mistake. Now they have a niche cpu for niche apps.
My biggest problem with modern Apple computers in general is, that you cannot change/replace (just for fun: swap out) the SSDs. If it dies, it dies, especially in the case of the Apple Silicon Mac, that becomes practically bricked...
www.zdnet.com
How bad is the M1 Mac's SSD failure problem?
If your M1 Mac's SSD fails, you can't boot off an external drive, a change from past decades. Here's the problem and strategies to manage the risk.
www.zdnet.com
If one is deligent follower of Apple then that person must possess all the regalias - like 2-4TB iCloud with sync.
Personally i am not using that way, but it is designed/supposed to be used by all the extra paid add-ons.
Or, you know, a local backup. No one has to pay Apple unless they have an unending urge to.
True. But you are restricted to whatever old backup you made in the past(usual case). Or you are expensive NAS customer (rare case). Not so equal to Win - if win dies, then you can take out ssd and have all the latest files.
So closest analogy on MacOS is some sort of paid cloud sync/backup or to have NAS, neither of which is free.
The other poster said if the SSD dies, not if the OS dies. If the OS dies, in both cases the SSD is fine and you reinstall. If the SSD dies you don’t have any files either way.
And, with Time Machine on macOS, backing up is as simple as connecting the drive. So, it’s very likely that anyone that wants to keep a current backup, has a current backup.
No one is saying 16GB is enough for everyone.
But do show us what kind of applications you are using and some screen shots from Activity Monitor.
If here are users who dont know what slowniness is, it's irrelevant which application is exceeding the ram.
I would like to see what this users were thinking about M1 Pro/Max, when they used Intels 12900K combined with fast ram in gear 1 mode and pcie gen4 ssd.
"This M1 is so slow, i won't use it again."
I would like to see what this users were thinking about M1 Pro/Max, when they used Intels 12900K combined with fast ram in gear 1 mode and pcie gen4 ssd
."This M1 is so slow, i won't use it again."
Lightroom is known to be a memory hog for almost all of its operations on the Mac and can probably make use of 64Gb of RAM for some of its operations. Lightroom is also not a good program on the Mac.
Most user's of Lightroom should know this and buy accordingly.
Compression is not free. There is no free cheese
It's so fast that you as a normal user won't notice it in most cases.
"imperceptible" does depend on memory use pattern by apps. It can be heavy performance hit. It can get even to incompressible. it all depends on what and how is used on computer. It is not a silver bullet. One of the most valid use-cases (and I suspect aim of this feature) is a browsing with 50 open tabs ). For that it work nice! Till it encounters few web-sites/tabs which developers coded with brain off
It is exactly in the many tab in browser-scenario where you don't need that much memory since memory compression and swap is so effective in dealing with massive memory usage. The reason is that you can't look at 50 web pages at once and so 45 of them could be "paused" and put into compressed memory or swap.
Also if you are using Safari it will warn you about high memory usage in tabs.
The memory compression and decompression is essentially free as in you has a human don't notice the short time it takes to decompress the memory.
AFAIK, the memory compression in macOS is using the WKDM algorithm and you can see the source code here: https://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-2422.110.17/libkern/kxld/WKdmDecompress.c.auto.html
As you can see there is only two fast while loops.