Yup. Everybody has their own area of expertise.
Not everybody studied CS/EE and managed Unix systems professionally for years.
Virtual memory is a wonderful thing, but it’s not an item that a lot of computer users understand very well.
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8GB RAM is a disappointment?
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Not everybody studied CS/EE and managed Unix systems professionally for years.
Virtual memory is a wonderful thing, but it’s not an item that a lot of computer users understand very well.
Oh, sorry!
I haven't used Windows in about a decade - does Windows "use" RAM like Mac, or does it only show what it "actually" uses? If so, I guess some of the confusion could come from that.
I dunno, I get annoyed when an app that was paused in the background is killed and comes up completely clean on my iPhone 8, that's typically a RAM issue. Again I think this goes back to what I've been saying on this thread: expectations and use case. I expect running into that kind of limitation and the OS' workarounds for it on a phone more frequently than I'd expect it on a laptop -I'd be vastly more annoyed if that happened frequently on my macbook air
since that’s not how virtual memory works under macOS, you have nothing to worry about.
phones don’t have virtual memory. Laptops and desktops do. Worst case, your applications state gets swapped out to the fast SSD and sits there until it is needed back in memory again. But, as you note that’s not what happens on the phone, due to it not having virtual memory
1) Your reply totally misses the point of what I was replying to, which was, and I quote "You don't worry about RAM on iPhone typically". I was replying that I do, in fact, sometimes worry about RAM on my phone.
2) Since we're now talking about this, I'm well aware of how virtual memory works; paging to disk, even on a very very fast SSD, can still be pretty damn painful. Until we have stateful memory with the same latencies and random access speeds as our volatile memory at reasonable prices and sizes paging is always going to be a problem (I could also dig into swap files and issues with current SSDs including wear and tear, and FDE speed issues, but that's a whole separate discussion)
3) When I was referring to my previous comments on expectations I was referring to elsewhere in this thread where it's been suggested that a reasonable solution for low RAM on a mac would be to simply pause apps tabbed away from a la iOS.
You may be surprised at how often my 128 GiB workstation runs out of RAM.
It depends on what you're doing.
People don't realise how the RAM is used. Here is a little history lesson which will help you all understand.
Back in the classic MacOS days - 1990's and earlier, the user would allocate the minimum and maximum RAM allocated to each application. Usually done in the get info screen for that application. The application would have that much RAM allocated to use. It didn't matter how much of the allocated RAM you allocated for it, all of it was only available for that application.
Say you set an application with a max of 20MB of RAM. That entire 20MB can only be used by that one application. If the application actually only used 10MB, the other 10MB goes begging, unable to be used by anything else. Functionally it's 10MB doing nothing.
Moderm MacOS on the other hand is similar, but different. It automatically allocates the maximum amount of RAM an application can use. However this amount is not fixed. It can be changed on the fly if other applications or the system needs it. Say an application is allocated 20MB. But it only uses 10MB. That other 10MB is not wasted so to speak. The OS can move some of that RAM to another application.
Think of it as the OS dynamically adjusts the RAM allocated to each application and process to ensure the least amount of RAM required is allocated to each application, with enough of a buffer so if a spike in RAM requirements happens the application doesn't run out of allocated memory. Of cause with more applications and processes running concurrently, the less buffer each app and process can have.
As a side note back in the classic MacOS days, you set how much virtual memory you wanted. That portion of the HDD was then effectively used up by the OS for that one purpose. Closed off to everything else unless you changed how much virtual RAM you wanted. Modern MacOS dynamically does this and only uses as much of the HDD or SSD as required for virtual RAM (often called swap disk these days). Since virtual RAM is created and deleted "so to speak" when required, there's no unused virtual RAM sitting there doing nothing.
So it's a good idea to leave some of your main drive free for virtual RAM usage.
So overall this makes 8 and 16 GB of RAM in ARM Macs not as bad as people think. Also the M1 uses RAM more efficiently by way of it's unified architecture. If you are on the fence I'd wait for real world tests to see if and when the bottlenecks start occuring in people's workflow with only 8GB.
Back in the classic MacOS days - 1990's and earlier, the user would allocate the minimum and maximum RAM allocated to each application. Usually done in the get info screen for that application. The application would have that much RAM allocated to use. It didn't matter how much of the allocated RAM you allocated for it, all of it was only available for that application.
Say you set an application with a max of 20MB of RAM. That entire 20MB can only be used by that one application. If the application actually only used 10MB, the other 10MB goes begging, unable to be used by anything else. Functionally it's 10MB doing nothing.
Moderm MacOS on the other hand is similar, but different. It automatically allocates the maximum amount of RAM an application can use. However this amount is not fixed. It can be changed on the fly if other applications or the system needs it. Say an application is allocated 20MB. But it only uses 10MB. That other 10MB is not wasted so to speak. The OS can move some of that RAM to another application.
Think of it as the OS dynamically adjusts the RAM allocated to each application and process to ensure the least amount of RAM required is allocated to each application, with enough of a buffer so if a spike in RAM requirements happens the application doesn't run out of allocated memory. Of cause with more applications and processes running concurrently, the less buffer each app and process can have.
As a side note back in the classic MacOS days, you set how much virtual memory you wanted. That portion of the HDD was then effectively used up by the OS for that one purpose. Closed off to everything else unless you changed how much virtual RAM you wanted. Modern MacOS dynamically does this and only uses as much of the HDD or SSD as required for virtual RAM (often called swap disk these days). Since virtual RAM is created and deleted "so to speak" when required, there's no unused virtual RAM sitting there doing nothing.
So it's a good idea to leave some of your main drive free for virtual RAM usage.
So overall this makes 8 and 16 GB of RAM in ARM Macs not as bad as people think. Also the M1 uses RAM more efficiently by way of it's unified architecture. If you are on the fence I'd wait for real world tests to see if and when the bottlenecks start occuring in people's workflow with only 8GB.
I think we can all agree that there are some types of work that requires more RAM. There are certainly types of work that requires the fully maxed out Mac Pro at 1.5 TB of RAM. There are a couple of servers at my work that need 4 TB of RAM. It is all based on what you need. So far, all the videos I have seen with the 8GB version have been very impressive with their memory pressure and RAM usage.
Perhaps next time you suspect someone misunderstood your post, consider simply suggesting that thought?
It’d save you a bit of typing.
Brian Tong also said that 8GB with the M1 was plenty and he was shocked. He’s thinking that the old rules of thumb don’t apply to the new way Apple is doing things. He got a 8GB MacBook Pro review unit from Apple he used for a week. He compared it to his $5,000 maxxed out 2019 16” MacBook Pro(64gb) and with only 8GB the M1 laptop kicked it’s A$$ in every test.
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Fair enough, I was irritated over something completely unrelated when I replied to you, sorry I was a bit of a douche
Yeah, I think if Apple is sending out review units with 8GB of RAM they are pretty confident that they won’t look bad. They are sending a message.
I’m not sure how similar but Windows does similar things. If you boot an identical system with 2, 4, 6, 8, etc you will see very different reported RAM numbers. Free RAM is wasted RAM after all.
I got my base model Air with just 8GB a little earlier today and I've been installing apps and running a few benchmarks and I haven't seen even a hint of a slowdown. Nor any error messages or issues. Admittedly, I have no plans to run anything too hardcore--mostly Internet surfing, email, router setups for my day job, and writing using Scrivener and Word and probably Pages. I may try World of Warcraft again just because I say they released an M1 version of the game client yesterday and I'm... intrigued. But, for my uses today, it's handled everything I've thrown at it with ease. Also, it was very fast both downloading and installing the 11.01 system updates. I upgraded my router to WiFi 6 last month in preparation for today. 😀
It's pretty insane just how fast apps open as well. Damned snappy for sure. So far, I couldn't be happier. If all goes well the next week or so on the job and doing my day-to-day stuff, I'll pass my 2018 15" Pro down to my daughter and live happily with this base model machine.
It's pretty insane just how fast apps open as well. Damned snappy for sure. So far, I couldn't be happier. If all goes well the next week or so on the job and doing my day-to-day stuff, I'll pass my 2018 15" Pro down to my daughter and live happily with this base model machine.
Do you mind testing it with many chrome tabs open? Like many windows and tabs
i use chrome and like to have a lot of tabs open at once. I'm debating if i should upgrade the ram since 8gb always showed memory pressure with my old mac.
400 Chrome tabs will choke Chrome.. but only Chrome.
400 Safari Tabs is more than fine. Wow!
Your Ram is literally sleeping at this time. Check your Memory Pressure.I'm wondering if I need to go for the 16GB version, this is what my 8GB M1MBA looks like. A lot of swap. I see a lot of Safari web content (cached) processes.
This machines are made for running Lightroom, FCP and Photoshop at the same time
I agree. For my computing needs now a days 8gb is plenty. But how is that plenty for others who need these machines as their workhorse. Even with good RAM management, 8gb is 8gb.
Waiting on some 8gb vs 16gb comparison that shows the 16gb benefits , for now folks are focusing on Apple vs the World comparisons , and not so much between models , but as of today I didn't see anyone saying a 16gb is better then the 8gb version with a real world use case , once I see what are those use cases I can decide if its worth the extra money , in the PC world that jump is between unable to surf the web and play a game vs being able to do so.
TLDR - So to the person above me saying 8gb is 8gb , lets see where the 16gb makes a difference! for now no one showed a meaningful use case that it does (which in itself is amazing).
TLDR - So to the person above me saying 8gb is 8gb , lets see where the 16gb makes a difference! for now no one showed a meaningful use case that it does (which in itself is amazing).
On the 8GB I have noticed some Safari tabs taking a second to pop back in / respond to input when I'm running a lot of apps. I've got a 16GB on the way.