I meant apps that run intensively on your Chrome web browser, like video or audio streaming, and others that do a lot of work, not just pulling up web pages
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Apple Silicon Unified Memory: How Much Mac RAM Do You Need?
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I meant apps that run intensively on your Chrome web browser, like video or audio streaming, and others that do a lot of work, not just pulling up web pages
Hmm, I'll allow it.. 😛
I don't use web apps, so no expertise running them.
Once Apple Intelligence gets properly mature, IMHO, the 16 GB minimum RAM configuration will feel more like the 8 GB that we had previously. Just watch...
So Apple can charge you twice for the upgrade - one $200 charge to go to 24 from 16, and another $200 charge to go from 24 to 32.
No, but you can waste money on buying more than you need.
There is a simple fix for that:
Yes. Macs bottleneck and most users do not notice because incremental changes go unnoticed and because the Mac OS does such a good job of compensating. But the Mac is working sub-optimally just because of less than ideal RAM, and sub-optimum operation has all kinds of consequences. Over the decades I have found that faster/smoother really is better. Little glitches that present when running on less than ideal RAM disappear when running under more than enough RAM and good CPU/GPU horsepower. I would have thought that illogical, except that I have observed it for many years.
the current sales model is great for apple, not so good for the user... no way to upgrade and they can make sure you pay way more than market price for memory since you have absolutely no choice. make sure to get more than you need and pay through the nose for it. before anyone says it's because of unified memory, it is not, competing architectures do this with expand-ability, well until they figure out they can rip off their users too...
also speaking of memory - i wish they could be a little more generous with iCloud storage. 5GB is paltry these days, but come on, at least increase it if you have more apple devices! i spent $$$ for a first iphone, yay, here's your free 5gb. bought an new Ipad afterward, sorry no additional free storage for you... just bought an expensive m4 mac... nope, same 5gb for all your stuff. enjoy! 😂
also speaking of memory - i wish they could be a little more generous with iCloud storage. 5GB is paltry these days, but come on, at least increase it if you have more apple devices! i spent $$$ for a first iphone, yay, here's your free 5gb. bought an new Ipad afterward, sorry no additional free storage for you... just bought an expensive m4 mac... nope, same 5gb for all your stuff. enjoy! 😂
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Start adding tabs and multi-tasking and whichever box has more RAM will overperform.
AI, 3D work ( animation / CAD ), Scientific Simulations...
I used up my 192gb with a city animation.... I had to rent a Mac Pro with 768Gb.
Mac Studio M4 Max base model will likely have 48GB base RAM in my opinion. Mac Studio M4 Ultra will likely have 64GB RAM on the base model, although 96GB RAM would be great if Apple would do it on the base M4 Ultra Mac Studio model. Hopefully Apple will bump up the 512GB SSD to 1TB on the base Mac Studio M4 Max, and bump up the SSD to 2TB on the base Mac Studio M4 Ultra model.
I got 16GB in my 2012 MacBook Pro, 32 GB in my 2013 iMac, keeping pace I should get at least 128 GB but Apple’s upgrade pricing is quite steep. On the other hand I want to keep my next MacBook Pro for the next 10 years, so for being able to run LLMs and export 8K video and playing high-resource games 64 GB may not be enough.
In the "old" days, I could change memory, storage, video cards and even CPUs.
Now all those parts are "welded" in place.
I go for the top processor, max memory and max SSD.
The fourth generation "M" chips have the incremental CPU upgrade I was waiting for: nearly double the single core speed of the M1 family of chips. The MacBook Pro M4 Max now supports double the memory of the M1 Max and I expect the Mac Studio next year will at least double that memory capacity as well. The maximum SSD size range is still the same for both the Max and probably the Ultra chips.
I use my Mini M2 Pro (32GB of ram and 2TB SSD) as a file server. It replaced the 2019 Intel i7 Mini which had 64GB of ram. Both machines used all off the free Ram memory as a data cache. The bottleneck is the RAID four hard disk array that can only absorb information at modest speeds due to spinning drives. The new M4 Mini would transfer no faster due to the drive's speed of transfer limitation.
Now all those parts are "welded" in place.
I go for the top processor, max memory and max SSD.
The fourth generation "M" chips have the incremental CPU upgrade I was waiting for: nearly double the single core speed of the M1 family of chips. The MacBook Pro M4 Max now supports double the memory of the M1 Max and I expect the Mac Studio next year will at least double that memory capacity as well. The maximum SSD size range is still the same for both the Max and probably the Ultra chips.
I use my Mini M2 Pro (32GB of ram and 2TB SSD) as a file server. It replaced the 2019 Intel i7 Mini which had 64GB of ram. Both machines used all off the free Ram memory as a data cache. The bottleneck is the RAID four hard disk array that can only absorb information at modest speeds due to spinning drives. The new M4 Mini would transfer no faster due to the drive's speed of transfer limitation.
Of course low RAM will always work fine for mundane usages, which is why base RAM is typically relatively low.
Here's a wild idea: de-bloat the OS so that you can comfortably run with less RAM.
Run the same machine with Linux vs Win10/11 vs de-bloated Win10/11. You'll notice the difference when it's a low spec machine. Win10/11 is rubbish, whereas de-bloated Win10/11 (LTSC) runs well. Linux runs the best of all, but it's not the OS for the every man.
Run the same machine with Linux vs Win10/11 vs de-bloated Win10/11. You'll notice the difference when it's a low spec machine. Win10/11 is rubbish, whereas de-bloated Win10/11 (LTSC) runs well. Linux runs the best of all, but it's not the OS for the every man.
I guess they are recommending obvious increased steps of earlier memory configurations rather then apply all the memory configurations available now.
I think this article could have been a lot shorter. If you do not know how much memory you need, you should buy 16GB. If you know how much memory you need, buy that, or just a little more.
No. But RAM that is never used is providing no benefit, and RAM costs $$ at purchase time. E.g. so far my M2 workflow consistently has been running under 64 GB RAM, so the extra 32 GB I bought has been wasted. However I typically obtain a 5-7 year life cycle in my Macs, and I expect to be into the 64-92 GB range in year 3.
I have 64GB on a classic Mac Pro. Given the higher bandwidth, low latency Apple Silicon memory and integration with CPU, GPU and hard drive, what amount of memory would be equivalent to my 64GB?