I wonder if Apple will introduce a 12GB option in coming revisions, I think it would be nice at this point to have a stock Air model offering more than 8GB, but it's difficult to see them putting 16GB in even the $1,499 model. Maybe the M3 could offer 12 & 24 only with the M2 staying in the lineup to replace the M1 and trimmed to 8 & 16 options.
$1,099 - M2, 8GB, 256GB
$1,299 - M3, 12GB, 256GB
$1,499 - M3, 12GB, 512GB
In the near term, IMO it's very unlikely. There is simply no need for 12 GB at the low end, even for M3, so I don't see Apple spending extra money to do this. For the low end, 8 GB will be sufficient even until 2024 IMO.
While I think a 12 GB entry level would be awesome, from a business and profit perspective Apple would probably be much better off keeping 8 GB for a couple more years, and making people pay for 16 GB if they need it. Another idea would be a 12 GB option for $100 more than 8 GB, but I don't see Apple doing this either, even though I think a lot of people would do that upgrade.
On a personal note, I still haven't completely decided what I'm going to do with my (likely) M2 Mac mini purchase come spring. I will need than 8 GB. 16 GB would probably be sufficient the vast majority of the time, but at $200 more (or in my case CA$225 / US$170 more for edu), I probably will just get 24 GB, just because. I already have 24 GB in my iMac, and the M2 Mac mini will probably eventually replace the iMac.
BTW, are 6 GB chips common? Just wondering. A 12 GB machine would likely be 6+6 GB chips. Right now the configurations are 4+4, 8+8, and 12+12. This provides a nice 3 tier system separated by 8 GB at each tier transition.
P.S. When I bought my 2017 MacBook, 8 GB was fine most of the time for me, but occasionally a little restrictive, as I sometimes would need to do heavy business application multitasking on the road. Had 12 GB been an option for me, I would have gotten that, especially since my plan was to keep it more than 5 years, and my memory usage on average has gone up over time. However, 12 GB wasn't an option, so I paid the extra Apple tax and went all the way to 16 GB. The ironic part is my work has since changed and I essentially never need to do the heavy lifting on my laptop anymore, as I now always just use my 24 GB iMac for that. These days I just have entry level needs for my laptop, so after 5 years, my laptop memory usage is
less than what I needed back in 2017, despite the fact I was running macOS 10.12 Sierra back then and now I'm running macOS 13 Ventura.
random things start to act up, my recent folder refuse to load and its just a blank, team would refuse to connect to camera, word would not save properly, basically making workflow more frustrating.
Yeah, people keep saying swap is fine on these machines because the storage is so fast, but when things get complex, weird things happen. Haven't some swap is indeed fine, but consistently having high swap is a recipe for disaster IMO. Not only do some things slow right down, lots of YouTubers report that things become unpredictable in their workflows when they hit the swap a lot. They'd get weird glitches and random crashes on 8 GB M1 machines. Those problems disappeared when they upgraded to 16 GB M1 models.
I'm not saying 8 GB is bad by any means, and I still stand by my statement that 8 GB is enough for entry level (which is most MacBook Air customers), but not everyone is entry level of course.
