yup. right on. badly behaving app can ruin everything. wasn't there a post yesterday about someone saying the new mbps were crap cause one of the adobe bloatware was using like 40 gigs of ram LOLOL
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PSA: you probably don’t need 32 or 64Gb RAM unless you know you need it.
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yup. right on. badly behaving app can ruin everything. wasn't there a post yesterday about someone saying the new mbps were crap cause one of the adobe bloatware was using like 40 gigs of ram LOLOL
Sure, that's not ideal, but what are you doing? Is that your use case all the time? It might not be enough for you, but that's a far cry from saying 16GB is an insufficient floor.
I ran an 8GB M1 in the red for over a week and had no idea I was out of memory because it was behaving on par with my 2018 i7 32GB.
Now, I did return that M1 because I judged that my experiment with downsizing to 8GB was a failure. 8GB regardless of if it performed OK wasn't enough for me. I didn't want to push my luck, but after going through that, I wouldn't have gotten anxiety over being in the red for certain tasks that aren't part of my normal workflow.
That's what it looks like most of the day. I need to run multiple VMs simultaneously each day. The VMs all need to be 'live' at the same time because they replicate an industrial application running on 5 servers. I do QA & testing. The OS is lagging badly and the animations stutter. I have no idea what other people need, but I personally ordered 32GB.
Yes, they are designed to use their resources.
If your RAM is always in the green that isn't inherently good. It means you wasted your money on something not getting used.
Yeah, I'd have gone with 32GB in your situation, but that you need 32GB isn't incompatible with Aevan's point that 16GB is actually plenty for most people. I've got multiple VMs and a memory hogging IDE running at all times myself and I have a Capture One Pro often running at the same time. We're not average users.
I hope more RAM fixes your issues because I've experienced animation lag before and in my case it didn't appear to be RAM dependent. Some of your issues might not get ironed out until future releases of MacOS.
I think that this is exactly why this is so frequently discussed here, but the difficulty is not if you see either green, or red (which would be a clear indication of the need for more RAM), but what (if anything) to do if you find that you are regularly showing yellow memory pressure.
Apple's own user guide for Activity Monitor says almost the same thing, worded slightly differently (see below). The ambiguity is how to interpret 'might gain some performance' (your wording), or 'might eventually need more RAM' (Apple's wording).
The verdict is crystal clear in the example you provided, which is red memory pressure. It is not crystal clear for what is probably much more common, yellow memory pressure.
This is where the advice given by the OP is helpful, in my opinion.
Excerpt from Apple's User Guide for Activity Monitor:
The Memory Pressure graph lets you know if your computer is using memory efficiently.
- Green memory pressure: Your computer is using all of its RAM efficiently.
- Yellow memory pressure: Your computer might eventually need more RAM.
- Red memory pressure: Your computer needs more RAM.
If memory pressure is yellow, red, or has spikes, check to see if an app is using up memory and causing the memory pressure to increase. If you no longer need to have the app running, you should quit the app.
Your computer’s memory pressure is accurately measured by examining the amount of free memory available, the swap rate, and the amount of wired and file cached memory to determine if your computer is using RAM efficiently.
Link: (the user guide is selectable for different macOS versions, but the wording with respect to memory pressure does not seem to change)
Check if your Mac needs more RAM in Activity Monitor
Use Activity Monitor on your Mac to see if memory is being used efficiently and if you need more memory (RAM).
support.apple.com
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I'm not sure that I agree.
I have 32 GB RAM installed in my iMac (admittedly much more than I really need, but it was very inexpensive at the time).
My current memory pressure is green but I'm using ~ 22 GB of 32 GB. I previously had 16 GB installed, so I am using the added memory, on a regular basis. And I am always 'green', as far as I can recall (it isn't something I check very often).
Yeah, some swapping is just how the system behaves. You can disable it if you wish. @Fishrrman has said before that he runs a terminal command to prevent his system from swapping.
When he says "Green is not inherently good" it doesn't mean that always being green is bad.
Suppose you went out and got 64GB of RAM just to be safe even though 32GB seems to be well within your usage envelope. That's what he means. You would have made a nice donation to Apple for overpriced RAM and got little to no benefit from it.
anyone care to enlighten me about Control Center eating up 8.6GB of RAM? I've just started my shift today and first thing I noticed is the Control Center getting that much RAM.
Users Reporting 'Memory Leak' Issues After Updating to macOS Monterey
Some users who recently upgraded to macOS Monterey are experiencing a bug known as a "memory leak," a scenario in which a specific macOS...
www.macrumors.com
Terrific post! Been waiting a long time for this laptop and you (and the superb video) just convinced me to save my $400 on the RAM upgrade. Thanks for taking the time to post!
The OP's view of future proofing is a little limited. It's not only about future in time, but also about future situations. Tomorrow, I could decide to move some of my work from my Windows machine to my Mac and my RAM requirements would go up substantially. Or, I could soon encounter some development situation which is far more RAM demanding than what I'm dealing with now. Unexpected situations are far more of a concern to me than what computer I'll need in three years.
People do like to be told what to think when the topic is complex. I think the OP's post was well written and made very good points. The challenge is to figure out whether those good points apply to you.
People do like to be told what to think when the topic is complex. I think the OP's post was well written and made very good points. The challenge is to figure out whether those good points apply to you.
The post stated "If your RAM is always in the green that isn't inherently good. It means you wasted your money on something not getting used." (emphasis added)
I disagree with that (the whole statement, not just the first part) for the reasons stated. My example shows that the additional RAM I've installed in my own iMac is in fact being used.
It's not a huge deal. Your point regarding 'little to no benefit' is well taken. I agree that may in fact be the case. My own computer would be working just as well with 16 GB RAM, and I wouldn't have upgraded to 32 GB RAM if the cost had been $400 as is the case for the Apple upgrades to new M1 Macs. I was able to install the additional 16 GB RAM for less than $50 at the time. I don't consider it to be money wasted. Different situation in making a decision on a new purchase and the much larger price adder for the higher RAM.
As said may times before, your Machine using 22GB out of 32GB doesn’t particularly mean it needs that 22GB to work properly. MacOS took a look at your available memory and allocated it in the most effective/beneficial way, making sure it uses the RAM rather then letting it sit there unused. You would have seen a similar case when using 16GB of RAM, Activity monitor would have shown something like 13GB used out of 16GB.
Don’t know what your use case is but 16GB could have been just fine for you, judging by this picture.
I don't think future proofing is a very useful concern these days if you're buying one of the Pro machines. In 4 to 5 years, the single core scores for the M chips will have advanced so much that an Air is going to outperform an M1 Max for on most everyday tasks. If the technology landscape has changed so much in 4 years that my laptop isn't even able to show up, I'd expect that even a maxed out model would still leave me so frustrated that I'd just bite the bullet and upgrade anyway.
It's entirely possible that there are such radical changes brewing that we're going to soon enter a new period of frequent upgrades like we saw in the late 90's and early 2000's, but using the last 10 years as a guide, that doesn't seem likely.
Utter nonsense is entirely dependant on the users needs not an individual opinion. This W10 Notebook has 32GB of RAM for good reason, my 13" M1 MBP just 8GB RAM, neither falters or fails in it's prescribed role.
If you didn't specify the correct amount of RAM for your needs that's lies firmly on you, not the provider. As said it's not rocket science....
Q-6
I am not saying that I need the 32 GB (or 22 GB). I'm saying it is using it. Isn't that what I said (several times)??
Sure seems to be difficult here to get simple points across. I'm not trying to argue one way or another but I do usually respond back to posts when I feel that someone is misinterpreting or misunderstanding what I have written.
What you have written is no different from what the OP has written, and I'm in agreement with it and started off in this thread by complimenting it as adding a good thoughtful explanation to this particular question.
'As said many times before' suggests I'm not getting the point. I can assure you, I am.
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Agreed if you're only talking about time-based future proofing. But if a radical change in requirements hits you in a week, 4 or 5 years from now is irrelevant. I'm referring to a future event, not a future point in time. Anything after now is the future.
Everyone I've heard arguing against future proofing only considers future as a period of time (usually a few years from now). That's not at all what I worry about when I think about future proofing.
I’m currently on a 2018 MBP with 32 GB of Ram. I’m rarely using swap and have around 10GB in cached files. I’ve never seen memory pressure hit yellow.
I’m trying to decide if I can safely downgrade to 16GB without sacrificing any performance. Theoretically I think I’m ok? I don’t want to cheap out, but at the same time I’m finding myself moving from the “futureproof and keep laptop forever” camp to “buy less machine and upgrade more frequently.” Technology is evolving more rapidly, while long term reliability is declining so it seems like a better overall strategy
I’m trying to decide if I can safely downgrade to 16GB without sacrificing any performance. Theoretically I think I’m ok? I don’t want to cheap out, but at the same time I’m finding myself moving from the “futureproof and keep laptop forever” camp to “buy less machine and upgrade more frequently.” Technology is evolving more rapidly, while long term reliability is declining so it seems like a better overall strategy