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in today's context, do u agree 16gb is the minimum ram required?
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Depends on what you do. For a lot of tasks, 8Gb is still more than enough and probably will be for a long time.
In retrospect I wish I had got my Pro with 16GB Vs 8 to futureproof it...
It is more than enough and I don’t really believe in future proofing, but if you can go for 16Gb, sure, why not.
Nothing is future proof in the tech world, buy what you can afford.
I often have a couple IDE instances open, at least 10 tabs in a browser, Spotify, Mail, SQL Workbench.. I have never reached 16GB. Virtual machines take up a lot of ram but honestly, why would you need to run more than one at once?
For regular people who do banking and Facebook, 8GB is going to be enough for the next 3 years at least.
For regular people who do banking and Facebook, 8GB is going to be enough for the next 3 years at least.
I used to believe quite a bit in future-proofing but not so much anymore. A Mac is a system and there are many possible bottlenecks/pacing factors besides RAM. Even if 16GB of RAM may be enough 5 years down the road, there are still graphics, processor, hardware encoder, I/O etc. to think about.
For home and office use, 8GB is still enough and will be so for a few more years. Both the content size and software complexity — two biggest RAM consumers — have reached their peak some time ago, and the current trend is actually the reverse one. For example, Apple ecosystem moves from Objective-C to Swift, which uses less RAM. Also, new media formats are out that are actually more efficient (e.g. HEIC for image data).
But then again, there is a raise of ML, which can potentially need large amount of RAM.
But then again, there is a raise of ML, which can potentially need large amount of RAM.
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Totally depends on what the computer is used for:
For my wife's business, she daily uses a 2012 MBA with only 4GB of RAM. She love it, and will use it until it dies.
It also totally depends on the computer:
For her other job, she was provided a much newer computer (I think HP) that she is required to use with 16GB of RAM, but she hates using it. According to her, it is slow, freezes, and the battery dies really quick and takes a long time to charge.
For my wife's business, she daily uses a 2012 MBA with only 4GB of RAM. She love it, and will use it until it dies.
It also totally depends on the computer:
For her other job, she was provided a much newer computer (I think HP) that she is required to use with 16GB of RAM, but she hates using it. According to her, it is slow, freezes, and the battery dies really quick and takes a long time to charge.
I have Mac's with both 16gb and 8gb. My MacBook Pro is 16gb and I run Windows VM in Parallels Desktop, so the extra memory is a benefit. I also run Office apps, Safari, and MS Edge browsers for various tasks.
My Mac mini is an 8gb version and is used mainly for web surfing with Safari and Microsoft Edge browser, along with Outlook and Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel etc.). For this kind of use, 8gb is more than sufficient.
So, it really all gets down to what you are going to use the machine for. Also, i just picked up the Mac mini a couple weeks ago, so for me personally, I am not concerned about future proofing as this machine will last me for years given how I use it.
My Mac mini is an 8gb version and is used mainly for web surfing with Safari and Microsoft Edge browser, along with Outlook and Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel etc.). For this kind of use, 8gb is more than sufficient.
So, it really all gets down to what you are going to use the machine for. Also, i just picked up the Mac mini a couple weeks ago, so for me personally, I am not concerned about future proofing as this machine will last me for years given how I use it.
I had a 2015 MacBook Air with 4 gb of ram, we just upgraded to a MacBook Pro with 16 gb. I felt the 16gb would make a worthwhile difference versus cost benefit for the 5 years or so we plan on keeping the machine as our primary computer. Based on our experience of the speed when doing one task versus several things open, I believe if we could upgrade the 4gb MacBook Air it would perform significantly better, so definitely felt the 16gb was a worthwhile upgrade to squeeze out some additional time and overall happier use for the machine when doing more than just the basics. I think there are many people who would be perfectly fine with a machine with 8gb of ram doing basic word processing, email, etc, but I think they'd actually be better off with a cheaper used computer in general. For anyone who even wants to do SOME iMovie, let alone something more advanced like FCP, even minor photo editing, or multiple browser tabs open at once, which is MANY MANY people, 16gb is helpful.
Still using my base model 2012 rMBP with 8gb of ram for a daily driver for dev work. It's officially obsolete in August I believe. Would do me no good at this point to have "future proofed." I'll use it until it dies and then buy another base model.
I used to think that was the primary factor in future-proofing, but not so much anymore. I just switched from a 2020 MBA to a 2020 MBP - and both had 8gb of ram, but the Air performed poorly and the Pro performs flawlessly. Granted, I would have gotten 16gb of ram had the price still been a $100 increase over the base price instead of $200, but I think $200 is an excessive ask for such an upgrade.
8GB RAM is great for my usage. I'd say it all depends how you use your Mac, and what software you have.
Just picked up the base MBP (8gb ram) yesterday. I'm not too worried about future proofing and the 8gb is working fine for me, even using Chrome.
I have 8 GB on my 2013 MacBook Pro. Memory pressure rarely leaves the green area even while using VM, video playing or handbrake transcoding. I did notice that Catalina increased the memory requirement from 2 GB under Mojave to 4 GB. I don't know why but I am guessing it has to do with side car or running iOS apps. I am still on Mojave.
I bought my 2017 iMac with 8 GB ram knowing it could be upgraded.
After a year, and with memory being not too expensive, I added 2 x 8 GB modules which gave me 24 GB (I'd bought Affinity Designer and Photo and thought they'd be hungry for ram!).
To be honest, I haven't noticed much difference.
One thing that is a little different is that if you look at Activity Monitor, the amount of swap files (using HD as memory I think) is always zero now, before it wasn't. Day to day use? Not much changed.
Er.... sorry, just noticed this is under MacBook Pro (getting used to forum layout.... jumped in to new post!) so the above may not be relevant. Oops.
After a year, and with memory being not too expensive, I added 2 x 8 GB modules which gave me 24 GB (I'd bought Affinity Designer and Photo and thought they'd be hungry for ram!).
To be honest, I haven't noticed much difference.
One thing that is a little different is that if you look at Activity Monitor, the amount of swap files (using HD as memory I think) is always zero now, before it wasn't. Day to day use? Not much changed.
Er.... sorry, just noticed this is under MacBook Pro (getting used to forum layout.... jumped in to new post!) so the above may not be relevant. Oops.
The problem with Apple's crazy price jump for the extra 8gb of ram on the base 8th gen MBP as the price is now too close to the 10th gen. If you're going to pay the crazy $200 price that Apple is asking for to go from 8gb to 16gb(32gb of ram is around $125 street price and you know Apple isn't paying retail), you might as well pay the extra $100 and get the superior machine...
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SSDs are still about 80-100x slower than RAM. And if you're like many users, their SSD is over 90% filled up and you don't want writing to the SSD over and over when it's almost to capacity which causes excessive wear. It's not a good substitute
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SSDs and memory compression help.
Another thing is that back in the day, RAM size progression worked differently... a jump from 256MB to 2GB is a whopping 8x increase in relative terms, but it's still "only" around 1.75 GB in absolute terms. While a jump from 8GB to 16GB gives gives you whopping 8GB, which is a very significant increase. RAM demands grow more or less linearly over time and in the time RAM sticks were only 128MB or so, you had to keep upgrading to stay in the game. These days... not so much.
Yes, since we are talking about MacBook Pro, and likely aiming at specific audience.
If you are everyday consumers, those who are comfortable using iPad 99% of the time and only really wanted a Mac for the Keyboard and may be software. 8GB is plenty for those type of people.
Power user will definitely want 16GB. If you have multiple Electron Apps open, ( *cough* Slack *cough* ) you will run past 8GB very soon.
If you are everyday consumers, those who are comfortable using iPad 99% of the time and only really wanted a Mac for the Keyboard and may be software. 8GB is plenty for those type of people.
Power user will definitely want 16GB. If you have multiple Electron Apps open, ( *cough* Slack *cough* ) you will run past 8GB very soon.
as long as you don't use Chrome, and aren't a big multitasker, 8gb runs fine. I would often run an adobe product like Illustrator, have a few (emphasis on few) tabs open in Chrome, while running trello, slack, and Spotify and that was fine with 8gb on a 2014 MBA.
However, when I would start pushing chrome usage I started noticing lagging.
If you can afford 16gs, get it. Otherwise, you have to be very responsible with memory and remember to often quit applications and periodically restart the computer.
I am much happier with 16gs.
Not sure how the one dude's wife uses a machine with 4gb.
I agree with @ksec
However, when I would start pushing chrome usage I started noticing lagging.
If you can afford 16gs, get it. Otherwise, you have to be very responsible with memory and remember to often quit applications and periodically restart the computer.
I am much happier with 16gs.
Not sure how the one dude's wife uses a machine with 4gb.
I agree with @ksec