16GB is NOT enough for anything greater than administrative work.

[lewisflude]

Nice picture but I assume it is old as all values seems to be on the low side.

It's from the prehistoric year of 2018. https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/how-much-ram

Might be a dumb article, but I generally agree with this picture! Having said that, part of the argument for going to 32GB is to have headroom or to do multiple things such as those in this image at the same time.

 

[matram]

Personally, rarely more than five tabs, so I am also curious.
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I have only been in the MAC world since 2011. I have not felt a need for headroom. My resource usage has increased very little over that time.

I have owned a number of Thinkpads before that and on the Windows side headroom was a bigger factor. MSFT never seemed to care about efficient use of resources.

 

[Cryates]

Since you asked; I can understand the photo editing bit, but 30+ tabs in a web browser? I can't imagine any use case that would require that. I would think that the Add To Reading List and Bookmarks functionality would be much more efficient.

I know some students doing research who will have like 30-50 tabs open at once. I can't fathom it, because I like keeping my active tabs low and managed properly, but it is a thing that happens in certain use cases.

 

[macintoshmac]

I like how our opinions often get masqueraded as facts in our heads for us.

For light to moderate work and for those who do not demand the ultimate performance, even 8GB is fine for the moment. 16GB is very good. 32GB is luxury for most and necessity for specific use-cases, it is certainly not a norm that stands valid for every user out there.

I do occasional photo-editing work on my 2017 MBA that has 8GB RAM. Previously was doing it on 2016 MBP with 8GB RAM. Before that, was doing it on a 2011 MBP with 16GB. RAM is a factor of individual use-case after a threshold and that threshold today is probably 16GB, certainly not 32GB, and most users would still be completely okay with 8GB if only Apple had provided user-upgradable RAM so users did not feel tied up at the onset and could make decisions as per need and not simply future-proofing.

 

[revmacian]

I know some students doing research who will have like 30-50 tabs open at once. I can't fathom it, because I like keeping my active tabs low and managed properly, but it is a thing that happens in certain use cases.

Ah, ok, I can see how research might require more tabs open. I like to keep my open tabs to a minimum.. perhaps just my old brain can't handle too many tabs.

 

[matram]

I started my programming on a minicomputer with 16 KILObyte of ferrit core memory programming in Assembler.

You young kids are spoiled.😃

 

[impulse462]

I know some students doing research who will have like 30-50 tabs open at once. I can't fathom it, because I like keeping my active tabs low and managed properly, but it is a thing that happens in certain use cases.

Ah, ok, I can see how research might require more tabs open. I like to keep my open tabs to a minimum.. perhaps just my old brain can't handle too many tabs.

I’m a grad student and I usually keep 4-5 browser windows open with ~20 tabs open each because I like having easy access to read cited papers. Of course just this doesn’t mean 32gb is necessary (16gb is fine probably) but combined with stuff like matlab, Python, IDEs, and a VM running in the background 32gb of ram really help at least in my experience.

 

[kinster]

I started my programming on a minicomputer with 16 KILObyte of ferrit core memory programming in Assembler.

You young kids are spoiled.😃

Same here. Assembly on the Motorola 68000

 

[tivoboy]

I know some students doing research who will have like 30-50 tabs open at once. I can't fathom it, because I like keeping my active tabs low and managed properly, but it is a thing that happens in certain use cases.

I frequently will have multiple chrome windows with 200-300 tabs open. With 16gb and some setting tweaks it works but yes I like pain.

 

[Ener Ji]

....even just using chrome you need 32.

This is laughable. Good troll.

 

[Jimmy James]

I can do my basic personal stuff with 4.

 

[Tommy c]

I can tell you that sometimes my iMac can hit 32GB when using LR. LR room sometimes uses 20GB. Im guess it's all the photos I have. I'm really sure honestly. But I have the 16 base as well and I hovering right around 15GB usage with windows open and LR open.

 

[||\||]

I can tell you that sometimes my iMac can hit 32GB when using LR. LR room sometimes uses 20GB. Im guess it's all the photos I have. I'm really sure honestly. But I have the 16 base as well and I hovering right around 15GB usage with windows open and LR open.

Wired and cached memory are not good indicators. You want to look at memory pressure.

 

[PeterJP]

I started my programming on a minicomputer with 16 KILObyte of ferrit core memory programming in Assembler.

You young kids are spoiled.😃

You're so young! My first computer had 2kb
Lightroom and Chrome work fine on my late 2013, 8gb MBP. The OP is obviously irony.

 

[workerbee]

I started my programming on a minicomputer with 16 KILObyte of ferrit core memory programming in Assembler.

You young kids are spoiled.😃

I made (sort of) professional 3D animations on a x286 with 8MB Ram.
These days, and especially here amongst the hardware fetishists, folks seem to think they need 32GB RAM to be able to surf the net.

(Opened up a bunch of additional apps including Windows 8 and Windows 10 in Parallels and about two dozen tabs in Safari to make one more «where's the memory pressure?» screenshot, just for the fun of it. Maybe it's just me and my magical rMBP, but 16GB RAM do seem to go a loooong way, even under Catalina.)

 

[Hexley]

any type of photo editing....even just using chrome you need 32.

apple screwed everyone with 16.

With the 16" Apple should have took the opportunity to bump up RAM of the $2,399 Core i7 & $2,799 Core i9 base models to 32GB.

Few would complain that Apple is too expensive.

Also offer 64GB & 128GB of RAM as well as their are specific use cases for it.

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I have 4 in my 2012 MacBook Pro. Works great.

You can jack it up to 2x8GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM.

 

[pshufd]

You're so young! My first computer had 2kb
Lightroom and Chrome work fine on my late 2013, 8gb MBP. The OP is obviously irony.

I played around with a SBC back in the 1970s. It might have been the ELF. It had a quad-hex display and a keypad and you could hook it up to a tape recorder for storage. I think that it had 256 bytes of memory.

I have a working computer at home with 256 words of memory. I programmed some games and math tools back in high-school. Anyone out there that had an Altair 8080?

 

[maflynn]

You're so young! My first computer had 2kb

Mine was 4k, oh the joys of the early computer era.

 

[darkmatter343]

Mine was 4k, oh the joys of the early computer era.

Yep, been there... TRS-80 MC-10 4kb

 

[jerwin]

I know some students doing research who will have like 30-50 tabs open at once. I can't fathom it, because I like keeping my active tabs low and managed properly, but it is a thing that happens in certain use cases.

I use a massive number of tabs-- and I have two monitors. Often, when I'm researching something, I'll have a window open with ten or twenty search results opened up-- and I'll attend to something else entirely. If I'm reading the New York Times-- same thing. Ten or twenty articles that might possibly interest me.

I have enough RAM, and screen space. When I need to use lesser machines-- this pattern suffers.

 

[dz5b609]

any type of photo editing....even just using chrome you need 32.

apple screwed everyone with 16.

Maybe just don't use chrome and photoshop on a macbook like a normal person... You probably also one of those people using Premiere on a Mac...

 

[revmacian]

any type of photo editing....even just using chrome you need 32.

apple screwed everyone with 16.

I regularly use GIMP, Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer on a 2019 MacBook Air (8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) and I have no issues whatsoever - I even edit video in iMovie on this machine. So, either I'm magic or your statement is false.

 

[chrono1081]

any type of photo editing....even just using chrome you need 32.

apple screwed everyone with 16.

Sorry but this isn't remotely true. My work machine only has 16 gigs and I develop lots of software on it, use programs like Final Cut, Motion, Affinity Photo/Designer, Modo, and more. I don't know what benchmark you're using but its not accurate.

 

[ascender]

Some of the continued misinformation (or bold statements without any sort of context) on this thread really isn't helpful to people looking for advice about their use case.

Its not accurate to just say you need more than 16GB of RAM because.... VMs... Photo Editing... Development etc. Maybe you do need more than that because of what you do with VMs, or what sort of photo and video work you do, but to say that you can't do those types of tasks with less than 16GB RAM is really disingenuous.

 

[bsamcash]

I still use my 2013 11" MacBook Air with only 4 GB for development and it works fine. That's with sharing 2 GB with a Linux VM. I'm able to use Lightroom for RAF files and have usually around 3-4 tabs open in Safari. Does it stutter? Sure. But I think that's more likely due to the CPU. The memory management in OS X is an underrated marvel. When I got my 2019 Air with 8 GB I was like "Who can live at this speed!"