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Apple Silicon Unified Memory: How Much Mac RAM Do You Need?
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16 to 48 GB for everyday casual/lightweight use with standard photo and video editing.
64 to 96 GB for professional/heavyweight use with heavy video and 3D applications.
128 to 192 GB for the most demanding tasks AKA less than 0,01% of users.
Actually, I would say 32 GB RAM would be future proof for most everyday users.
64 to 96 GB for professional/heavyweight use with heavy video and 3D applications.
128 to 192 GB for the most demanding tasks AKA less than 0,01% of users.
Actually, I would say 32 GB RAM would be future proof for most everyday users.
I should’ve written Apple’s 8GB is the equivalent of 1TB in Windows. I you need to exaggerate for people to catch sarcasm.
8GB is fine for the majority of customers who do basically nothing taxing with their computers. Myself included. Will be 16 when Apple insists you turn on intelligence.
Exactly 0% of typical everyday consumers are going to read up on Apple’s Unified Memory Architecture. 😆
Rather, they will buy the base model, which gets the greatest volume discount, at their local big box store and happily use their computer for 5 trouble-free years without once having a self-inflected freak-out by opening Active Monitor to check memory pressure.
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Why 32GB option is not available for MacBook Pro M4 Pro? I would prefer 32GB as I use one Windows VM but the jump is from 24GB to 48GB.
Same thing that I was thinking regarding the M4 Pro Mac Mini. Apparently there’s no option of 32 or 36GB of RAM for that SoC by design, for some reason.
If Apple can’t provide an in-between step of memory, at least don’t charge almost 500€ to jump to 48GB.
Given the situation, and that I really don’t need the extra GPU as much as I initially thought, I’m finally going for a regular M4 with 32GB of RAM.
By the way, after using the 24GB M4 Pro Mac mini for more than a month, I honestly think 24GB of RAM should be enough for quite a large portion of the population. Problem is that the M4 Pro is geared towards a more specialised and demanding sector of the users.
M4 is good enough for my work but I need a larger screen. Even 16" is a bit small as I am used to my old MacBook Pro with 17" screen. Viewing that 16" screen feels kind of lacking. The notch makes it even worse. Apple also does not make 16-17" M4 MacBook Pro. That is the problem.
Your levels of appropriate RAM are good guidelines, very well thought out. For today. However no buyer of new equipment should focus too much on today, because new equipment is not used today it will only be used in the future. I am in your middle category and if I was buying new today I would consider 128 GB to be a minimum life cycle of a new box.
Suggesting only 0.0001 of users will take advantage of more than 128 GB for demanding tasks is IMO probably too small a number, but who knows? I agree that 32 GB is probably a good number for most everyday users and normal new equipment life cycles.
The term future proofing is problematic for me, because [although accurate] it implies some kind of option folks can opt out of. But no one can opt out of the future when buying a new box, because a new box is only used in the future. Current app demands are only meaningful as starting points for what RAM demands will increase to over the life cycle of a new box.
Suffice to say that I disagree. The majority of customers today with today's apps and today's OS running under 8 GB RAM will already be routinely paging to disk, which is decidedly sub-optimal operation. But you are welcome to your opinion. The Mac OS will certainly force-fit operations to make it all work if one sticks to single tasks.
Correct: "it just showcases how much of a casual user" you are. Which is fine, I am not denigrating casual usage.
I max memory size in all new gear. SSDs are sized for the job planned for the device. Two new M4 Pro minis 64GB Ram, 10Gb Ethernet. One has a 2TB SSD as a file server due to other programs also and the other has 8 TB SSD as a backup for my M1 Ultra Mac Studio and computer for our summer place in the mountains.
My M4 Max 16” MacBook Pro has the same screen size as the old 17” MBPros due to smaller bezels. It was configured with a nano display, 128 GB Ram and 8 TB SSD so it can do anything I need done. I also have a Brydge stand that will hold this laptop vertical with additional ports for my desk in the shop that has a Studio Display.
This could be my last round of Apple acquisitions as I cross age 80 this year.
My M4 Max 16” MacBook Pro has the same screen size as the old 17” MBPros due to smaller bezels. It was configured with a nano display, 128 GB Ram and 8 TB SSD so it can do anything I need done. I also have a Brydge stand that will hold this laptop vertical with additional ports for my desk in the shop that has a Studio Display.
This could be my last round of Apple acquisitions as I cross age 80 this year.
I'd hard disagree that 128GB is a minimum for most users. That's a minimum for a specific subset of users.
Apple wants an extra $1500 or so to push the 16" MacBook Pro up from base to 128GB of RAM. That's an absolute waste of money for most users. They won't use that amount of RAM today nor in the foreseeable future.
For my usage, the biggest RAM heavy portion is experimenting with Local LLMs. I'll likely transition that usage to a rack server though where I can get over 1TB of RAM in the box and multiple GPUs to run any size model. That's a very niche use case though. The majority of users even in that space are better served with online models from one of the big outfits.
I'm running local LLMs, and I'm desperately waiting for the new Mac Studio so I can buy one with max RAM. Our whole way of thinking about RAM is going to change as LLM-style activity becomes more and more commonplace on our machines (yes, everyone, whether you like it or not, it's going to happen).
For those who do not see any page outs, upgrading RAM isn't needed. I used to pretty much max out my MacPro, but found out that a bare minimum (256/8) Mini is all I need. It rips through Flac files like butter, faster than my 2012MP with dual quad Intel and 96GB RAM (converting them to mp3).
LLMs are extremely RAM heavy, but it isn't yet clear how much that will directly impact user RAM needs.
Locally running LLMs is currently a niche area used by engineers and data scientists working on models or users with specific needs. The rest of the user base getting value from LLMs are using some form of a hosted model (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc) and that is likely to continue.
I am in that Software Engineer camp so I purchased a MacBook Pro to allow me to experiment with LLMs without being stuck at my desk as much. I stopped at the 48GB 16" M4 MBP though as the extra cost to bump up my MacBook to run larger models locally didn't excite me. I'll expand my rack servers in my homelab to incorporate an "AI" server that can run larger models via multiple RTX 3090 or 4090 GPUs and 1TB of RAM for larger models. I am keeping an eye out on the Mac mini and potentially others to consider a Mac mini cluster instead mainly due to the power efficiency that Apple brings to the table without the extra "tax" of the MacBook.
Macs run LLMs slower than Nvidia chips as the industry has standardized around CUDA. The niche that Macs bring to the table is the Unified RAM that allows larger VRAM options than consumers otherwise have access to also power efficiency as I mentioned earlier.
Yeah it's odd to see so many still holding on to this 8GB baseline when apple decided that machines originally shipped in 2022 just needed RAM boosted to 16GB to ship confidently in 2025.
Can anybody who understands unified memory please explain this?
From product pages, the recommended memory for the below software is:
Windows 11: 4GB
Parallels for Mac: 16GB or more
Mac OS: 8GB
So if I run Windows OS alone using Parallels, the recommended memory is: 4+16+8 = 28GB. If I run other applications in Windows, that would take even more memory, say 16GB minimum. We also need to concern with multiple external displays of 4K or higher resolutions.
However, I did not feel any lag running the above on a 16Gb Mac Mini M4. What is happening here?
The recommended memory is over-specified? The OS is able to manage swap memory well?
I recall that one time it had about 4.4M swap.
From product pages, the recommended memory for the below software is:
Windows 11: 4GB
Parallels for Mac: 16GB or more
Mac OS: 8GB
So if I run Windows OS alone using Parallels, the recommended memory is: 4+16+8 = 28GB. If I run other applications in Windows, that would take even more memory, say 16GB minimum. We also need to concern with multiple external displays of 4K or higher resolutions.
However, I did not feel any lag running the above on a 16Gb Mac Mini M4. What is happening here?
The recommended memory is over-specified? The OS is able to manage swap memory well?
I recall that one time it had about 4.4M swap.
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Thanks. The reason I get riled up about it, is that some users do not feel that way, and clearly believes that a “casual user” like me should not be allowed to have nice things, but should always just buy crappy cheap crappety crap, because they don’t use their computer “properly”.
With my use, I enjoy being able to buy a nice quality computer with a great screen, keyboard, touchpad etc, and a beautiful OS, and that is “fast enough”. I don’t want to pay extra for speed I don’t need, and I don’t want to give up quality hardware to save money, or gain speed I don’t need.
I now have TWO Windows computers in my house next to my Mac, both of which cost about the same as a Mac when they were new, both have 16GB of RAM, both are slower and feel crappier to use for my “casual use”. And both are useless in my kitchen because of low screen brightness in actual use (one is specced as higher brightness, not sure how). And both have crappy keyboards and even crappier touchpads, compared to my Mac. And don’t even get me started on fan noise and battery life, or the “made by Harman” so-called speakers in one of them.
I may be a “casual user” in terms of the tasks I use it for, and the amount of hours I use it for. But my quality requirements and expectations are most certainly NOT “casual”. I am a very critical customer, that just happens to not need super fast computers. And I’m willing to bet that I’m not alone, and that I am in fact Apple’s core customer type for their low-end computers. The entry level MacBook Air was MADE for me. At least that’s how it feels. That’s why it’s so cringy when people tell me I bought the wrong computer.
Yes, most likely the memory is over-specified. Happens all the time. They don’t want people with minimum spec to be angry for not getting the best performance.
I have run many software titles at below minimum spec in my life, and not always with good results, but often “good enough” to live with a bit of lag rather than buying new hardware.
But yeah, basically you are just swapping, and it’s still fast enough to work for you. No big deal. Don’t believe the “$wAP wiLl kiLL yOuR c0mPu7eRz iN $eCoNDz” mafia.
That’s because you don’t understand what we’re saying. The point is, if you need a computer with X amount of RAM, it is 100% irrelevant to you what the price of a computer with X/2 costs. You should focus on the price of the computer you want, not on the price of the computer you don’t want.
We all hate Apple’s pricing policy, but it is what it is. They’re gonna get their money, regardless of what the baseline spec is. Don’t believe me? Look at some of the models upgraded from 8 to 16GB baseline. The 32GB model costs exactly the same! They just changed the steps from 8-16-32 to 16-24-32. So if you need a 32GB computer, the price is EXACTLY THE SAME. “Fixing” the baseline may have shut you up, but it made zero difference for you. If you want to complain about something, stop complaining about the baseline, and start complaining about the price of the computer you are actually buying.
All the big Windows manufacturers, except for Microsoft themselves, still sell 4GB computers.
This is well written, and I could not have put it better. I am in the same boat. I want a good quality quiet computer with long battery life and a great OS for productivity apps and access to business data. The term "casual user" can be misleading. While the spec requirements for these users might be modest, many traditional everyday users spend hours on their base MBAs being incredibly productive. These users just happen to not need applications that are resource intensive, but their computer is still essential for their livelihoods.