Disappointing performance and memory issues M1 Macbook Air

[retrocool]

I bought an 8GB Macbook Air M1. Since it was for my wife who mostly uses office apps, we didn't bother with the 16GB upgrade.
However, my mac is being repaired and while I wait for it my wife has let me use the M1 machine, which I was greatly looking forward to.
I had also heard that the unified memory was much more efficient, so that 8GB might be enough.
Now, my use case is a bit different to my wife's, but I have had trouble even using it in a cut down way.
I'm a graphic designer and typically I will run Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, two or three browsers with dozens of tabs, Thunderbird and Pathfinder.
Just now I got the "Your system has run out of application memory" for the 2nd time today with only Photoshop and not the other two Adobe apps running. This was editing a 350MB (on disk) multi layered photoshop file - a very big file for sure, but not the biggest I would have to work with by any means. No obvious memory leaks, but what happened to virtual memory? Can't I use more than 8GB and have some of it paged??
I'm moving from a 2018 MBP13, but I have also not noticed the M1 machine being especially fast. It wakes up very slowly when attached to an external monitor and usb3 hub, contrary to the keynote 'instant wake' hype. Mouse pointer lags. Scrolling in Firefox and Opera is sometimes jerky.
A lot of the problems seem to be software related, but I can't say I'm impressed with the performance so far, and this is very much not what Apple YouTube led me to believe.
I strongly believe that Apple Silicon is the future, but I'm not absolutely sure it is the best at present.

 

[Runs For Fun]

Of course some memory will get swapped to disk. There's probably some kind of limit of how much MacOS will swap out though. But I think the real problem here is your workload is way to much for 8GB. You would definitely benefit from 16GB or more which I'm sure will come soon on the next batch of Apple Silicon devices.

 

[grahamwright1]

Seems like your workflow simply needs a bit more than 8Gigs .

Seriously, I have a M1-16Gig and my wife has a M1-8Gig and I did see some memory problems with multi-threaded Usenet downloads on her system that aren't present on mine. It does swap to internal storage, but with the specific app that I was using, it was flagging problems with allocating memory on the 8Gig machine, but is super fast on my 16Gig machine. It sounds like one or more of your core app's could benefit from some additional tuning by the developers, which suck if you need to actually use them yourself.

I don't use Chrome, but I've also heard that it's a real memory hog with many tabs open. Have you tried reducing the number of open tabs and seeing if the core app's are running a bit better at that point?

 

[mi7chy]

Welcome to reality vs hype. What you read about 8GB on M1 being equivalent to 16GB on x86-64 is BS.

 

[Honza1]

M1 is the weakest (starter) system in future ARM Apple Mac system. Air, Mini, 13inch MBP are all systems targeting light users. I got M1 Mini for my wife and for her e-mail, games, and few other light apps, M1 8GB is perfect. My daughter is student with mostly office apps, ZOOM, Music, VLC player, and few other similar things. Her older 8GB Intel Air was overloaded. She got M1 16GB and is excited though I suspect 8GB would have been enough. But she leaves all applications opened all the time.
Me? I am waiting for M? with 32GB RAM. You should too. There are those who simply need lot more.
We cannot break laws of physics by any smart design.

 

[LeeW]

Welcome to reality vs hype. What you read about 8GB on M1 being equivalent to 16GB on x86-64 is BS.

Indeed, if you look back at many of the reviewers that hyped up the 8GB machines, they have since switched to 16GB.

 

[Chozes]

I agree with this. Its more like 10-12 GB RAM on x86

Hoping they release the next mid tier and high tier performance machines soon.

 

[Zazoh]

I bought an 8GB Macbook Air M1 ... I'm a graphic designer and typically I will run Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, two or three browsers with dozens of tabs, Thunderbird and Pathfinder.

Not the right tool for the job.

May I recommend:

Mac Pro

Mac Pro with M2 Ultra combines our most capable Apple silicon yet with PCIe expansion for the ultimate in workstation-class performance.

www.apple.com

 

[Fred Zed]

OP lists all those memory intense apps and claims 8GB aint enough and he's disappointed. Thanks for the heads up

 

[Kung gu]

I'm a graphic designer and typically I will run Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, two or three browsers with dozens of tabs, Thunderbird and Pathfinder.

Then why did you buy 8gb MacBook. RAM is RAM and does not matter if it's on ARM or x86, the more there is the better it is.

It wakes up very slowly when attached to an external monitor and usb3 hub, contrary to the keynote 'instant wake' hype.

The instant wake works when the laptop is used by itself without the external monitor. But I have seen it connecting way quicker to detect on M1s compared to Intel Macs.

For your wife the M1 Air will be an amazing machine.

For your use case, it won't. It will be crap.

 

[KPOM]

I bought an 8GB Macbook Air M1. Since it was for my wife who mostly uses office apps, we didn't bother with the 16GB upgrade.
However, my mac is being repaired and while I wait for it my wife has let me use the M1 machine, which I was greatly looking forward to.
I had also heard that the unified memory was much more efficient, so that 8GB might be enough.
Now, my use case is a bit different to my wife's, but I have had trouble even using it in a cut down way.
I'm a graphic designer and typically I will run Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, two or three browsers with dozens of tabs, Thunderbird and Pathfinder.
Just now I got the "Your system has run out of application memory" for the 2nd time today with only Photoshop and not the other two Adobe apps running. This was editing a 350MB (on disk) multi layered photoshop file - a very big file for sure, but not the biggest I would have to work with by any means. No obvious memory leaks, but what happened to virtual memory? Can't I use more than 8GB and have some of it paged??
I'm moving from a 2018 MBP13, but I have also not noticed the M1 machine being especially fast. It wakes up very slowly when attached to an external monitor and usb3 hub, contrary to the keynote 'instant wake' hype. Mouse pointer lags. Scrolling in Firefox and Opera is sometimes jerky.
A lot of the problems seem to be software related, but I can't say I'm impressed with the performance so far, and this is very much not what Apple YouTube led me to believe.
I strongly believe that Apple Silicon is the future, but I'm not absolutely sure it is the best at present.

A Corvette won’t tow a trailer, but a Sliverado will.

As for the monitor, it does take a few seconds to connect to my LG UltraFine 5K through a Thunderbolt hub, but once connected it switches into and out of clamshell mode almost instantly.

 

[Deliro]

Welcome to reality vs hype. What you read about 8GB on M1 being equivalent to 16GB on x86-64 is BS.

Have both. Real world performance is nearly the same for me in my use cases. The only thing the 8 gb lags behind is battery. I’m going to exchange it as I think this one is a dud. But when side by side performing tasks from exports to video editing and multiple tabs they’re nearly the same. *shrug*

My 8 gb is actually my daughters and mine is the 16. Games are the FPS is the same with background tasks going. With that said I don’t edit videos and photos on a professional scale.

 

[Argon_]

A Corvette won’t tow a trailer, but a Sliverado will.

As for the monitor, it does take a few seconds to connect to my LG UltraFine 5K through a Thunderbolt hub, but once connected it switches into and out of clamshell mode almost instantly.

Dave Schroeder disagrees.

 

[OldCorpse]

Yeah, but what if 8GB RAM is not sufficient for even very simple tasks? That’s my situation, as I’ve described in another thread.

MBP 8/256 stock, with zero added apps or safari extensions, just as I got it original. BS 11.1

I can run ONE Safari window and tab, stream APPLE’S TV+ show, and within half an hour get a dialogue across the top of the window telling me that the application is very memory intensive and if I quit it my mac will operate with “greater efficiency”.

I ignore it. 15 minutes later, the streaming collapses.

ALL THIS WHILE RUNNING NOTHING ELSE!

Tell me how is this acceptable? This has happened every time I’ve done this. It can’t do ONE freakin’ task. Beyond pathetic.

However, full disclosure, if I’m streaming a movie in Safari from HBO MAX, no such issues.

Still, my conclusion is that 8GB RAM on the M1 MBP is woefully underpowered.

 

[mi7chy]

That sounds like a memory leak. That workload should work on a system with 4GB. Thanks for the idea. I'll let those two apps run and monitor memory usage over time.

 

[martyjmclean]

That sounds like a memory leak. That workload should work on a system with 4GB.

Finder barley works on 4GB of memory lol. You must never have used Adobe's apps before, as 16GB is recommended.

 

[UBS28]

Welcome to reality vs hype. What you read about 8GB on M1 being equivalent to 16GB on x86-64 is BS.

Indeed. 8GB is 8GB. If I load 50GB data into memory, it will still remain to be 50GB whether it is on x86 or ARM.

ARM smartphones even have 16GB of RAM these days.

Unless Macrumors are implying that Apple are using a compression algorithm to reduce the size.

 

[Kung gu]

However, full disclosure, if I’m streaming a movie in Safari from HBO MAX, no such issues.

Still, my conclusion is that 8GB RAM on the M1 MBP is woefully underpowered

Then it’s not a RAM problem, if 8GB is fine for HBO max. Then the other is that Apple did not optimise the Apple TV+ for website viewing.

Clearly that seems to be the case, when you open that website, a memory leak happens.

I have done lots of YouTube, opened multiple tabs and multiple programs on 8GB computers before.

 

[Tchakatak]

Then it’s not a RAM problem, if 8GB is fine for HBO max. Then the other is that Apple did not optimise the Apple TV+ for website viewing.

Clearly that seems to be the case, when you open that website, a memory leak happens.

I have done lots of YouTube, opened multiple tabs and multiple programs on 8GB computers before.

Same. Its “just” a memory leak. Nothing 8 (or even 16g) would fix.

 

[Toutou]

Just now I got the "Your system has run out of application memory" for the 2nd time today with only Photoshop and not the other two Adobe apps running. This was editing a 350MB (on disk) multi layered photoshop file - a very big file for sure, but not the biggest I would have to work with by any means.

While I do agree that 8 gigs of RAM is simply 8 gigs of RAM and the "ooh but it's more like 323213 GB on x86" raving is mostly BS, I also think that what you were doing should NOT be enough to bring the machine down. I have a 2013 machine with 4 GB of RAM that works just fine for my GF with two browsers and other apps open. It's not lightning fast and swaps a lot, but it certainly doesn't crash.

It wakes up very slowly when attached to an external monitor and usb3 hub, contrary to the keynote 'instant wake' hype. Mouse pointer lags. Scrolling in Firefox and Opera is sometimes jerky.

This is absolutely not what I'm seeing with my Air, I have it connected to a 4K display and it's snappy and smooth, even in Firefox and with UI heavy pages.
I'd maybe investigate further, there seems to be something off about the machine. I don't know how computer-savvy your wife is, so I'm not pointing fingers, maybe the hw is a lemon. Or maybe it's just a memory leak.

 

[alien3dx]

Indeed. 8GB is 8GB. If I load 50GB data into memory, it will still remain to be 50GB whether it is on x86 or ARM.

ARM smartphones even have 16GB of RAM these days.

Unless Macrumors are implying that Apple are using a compression algorithm to reduce the size.

hehe.. gotcha.. if you open the activity monitor you will see App Memory | Wired Memory | Compressed

For nowdays culprit ram usage high for. me

1. Google Chrome
2. Adobe Creative Cloud

 

[leman]

I can run ONE Safari window and tab, stream APPLE’S TV+ show, and within half an hour get a dialogue across the top of the window telling me that the application is very memory intensive and if I quit it my mac will operate with “greater efficiency”.

That's most likely a bug in Safari.

 

[JohnnyGo]

That's most likely a bug in Safari.

Indeed

Why don’t you try using the AppleTV app that is now available in macOS?

 

[James_C]

To be honest your problem is not the M1, its the software that you are using. Photoshop and most of Adobe's other Apps are not native for M1 and running under Rosetta Emulation. Wait until Adobe gets its lazy rear in gear and updates its apps before you start complaining about performance or Memory issues.

 

[darngooddesign]

What I noticed was that Photoshop uses more RAM under Rosetta simply idling, but the M1-optimized beta uses the same amount of RAM as my Intel-Book while idling. As a test I loaded a ~500GB PSD with 16 duplicate layers of a 26MP Photo and the Beta didn't Apple-magically use less RAM for that huge asset because its still huge PSD.

Unless you watched video from a designer manipulating large graphic assets, while having other resource-intensive apps open, you should have known that 16GB is required.

But its ok, you now know that when you upgrade your computer, you need 16GB as a minimum. Luckily, that will probably be an option in the upcoming 16" MBP.