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Is 8GB of RAM Enough for a Mac in 2024?

The short answer to "Is 8GB of RAM enough on a Mac?” is a qualified, "It highly depends on your usage.”

The real point is, “Maybe even if 8GB of RAM is okay on a $599 Mac mini it sure as **** isn't on a $1099 MacBook Air, let alone a $1599 MacBook Pro.”

Apple, with all of its talented engineers, could come up with ways to make aesthetically pleasing devices with RAM slots (especially Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro). You keep whatever onboard RAM is necessary for Secure Enclave, system reliability, etc. and then you give one or more RAM slots. It's not hard. Lenovo figured it out on their $600 ThinkPad E14.

It's exacerbated by the fact that Apple doesn't use particularly speedy SSDs in their devices. How I would LOVE a Mac mini with a RAM slot and a 2280 NVMe drive for a Samsung 990 Pro.
 
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I don't know if it is or not because I refuse to buy a laptop or desktop from Apple that doesn't have at a minimum 16GB of RAM. If I can't buy it with that amount of RAM then its not being purchased.
 
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rishey said:
What I don't understand is, if Apple's strategy is to have low RAM configurations just to keep the advertised base price low, with the idea that they will upgrade when purchasing, why don't they stock more high end configurations? Like I always upgrade my Mac and the upgrades I want are NEVER in stock. If Apple was trying to upsell, wouldn't they keep the upsell models on the shelf?
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They have a lot of higher spec machines in stock that don’t show up on the website or app. You have a chance of finding what you want if you walk in a store
 
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I don't get this "portability" argument of the Airs. An Air is no more or less portable than a Pro. A 15 inch Air is 3.3 pounds and a 14 inch Pro is 3.4 pounds. The Air is slightly thinner. The differences are negligible.
 
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Seems like a lot of people here would be happy using an Apple computer that came out 15 years ago since that could also handle basic needs.

With time technology gets cheaper and with that in mind you are paying more for less. 16gb should have been standard 5 years ago, I won’t as a principle buy a MacBook for that reason, base storage should be 16gb at the very least.
 
ghanwani said:
8GB is a joke in this day and age. But then again, so is almost every Apple product that has been released in the last few years.
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Yeah like camera on iPhone 15 Pro max having trouble taking picture of texts without weird smearing and blurring.
8GB is so inefficient I can easily push it 24*7 and make everything runs slower than necessary. Even my 16GB M1 MacBook stutters sometimes.
 
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buy an 8Gb RAM Macbook now and rinse and repeat in 2027/2028, only than you will really need a 12/16Gb RAM Mac

Wonder why Apple is one of the most richest companies in the world? ;)
 
I think 8gb is enough for many needs, but I didn't begrudge spending a bit extra for 16 as it should reduce the amount of swap memory in more intensive use, and accordingly, fewer cycles on the ssd drive. I do some video editing, and that can be taxing.

Since the ssd is not swappable in the Apple Silicon macs, I'd recommend upgrading ram to reduce swap if your use is moderate to taxing.
16 at base would be nice, but 8 will work fine for WP, internet, content consumption etc.
 
Apple knows the crap they get for the 8/256 starting point. The cost for them to start at 16/512 instead would be worth it for the goodwill they would gain. Then again, that would instantly start the is 16/512 enough as a starting point threads, so maybe I'm wrong.
 
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blastdoor said:
The people who buy the lowest cost model are not apples core customers – – from Apple’s point of view, they are the most dispensable customers.
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Those are the majority of customers. Most people buy the base models and if those are the disposable customers, Apple's market share and profits would absolutely plummet if they're trying to only cater to the Pro customers who care to upgrade from base. And catering to Pros clearly is the opposite of what they're doing - if anything they're actively working on destroying whatever leftover love professionals had for the brand and its products.
 
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macos9rules said:
Just because Photos is not reponding, it doesn't mean it's a memory issue. Your Swap Used is quite high, how much space have you left on your SSD?
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Photos was using 105 GB (on a 24 GB machine) so yeah it was a memory issue. Available SSD space was not an issue. I had 1 TB on that Mac with a couple of hundred GB free.

The point is that it is misleading to just say yellow memory pressure is OK, because it’s not that simple. I’d say a reasonable rule of thumb may be that if you’re very often in the yellow, you probably would benefit from more memory. However, if you’re only very occasionally in the yellow, more memory is probably not necessary.

—-

Meanwhile, for my wife and kid who both only have 8 GB RAM on their Macs, they are always in the green. The reason I know is because I loaded Activity Monitor on their machines and left it running and would periodically check its status. It never ever budged from the green no matter what they were doing, but that’s not surprising given their light computing needs (as described earlier in the thread).
 
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polaris20 said:
Yeah, totally agree. If you're buying that Acer special for $499, sure. But not on an $1100 Mac. Just buy a frickin' iPad and keyboard case at that point, if all you need is 8GB.
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Funnily enough the Acer special for $499 will have 16/512, because cost is negligible.

Granted, everything else about that laptop will suck, but they want to advertise the memory and storage.
 
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It wasn't enough in 2020. It's ****ing stupid in 2024.

dricci said:
For a Walmart PC? Yes.
For a Mac at Apple's pricing? No.
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Yeah, a laptop that's literally only running Chrome as an OS can get away with 8GB. A real-ass computer really shouldn't have less than 16. I mean, FFS, Best Buy has sub-$700 laptops with 16GB of RAM. Sub-$400 if you're shopping refurbs.
 
Shared RAM too. It's fine I guess if you're doing nothing that requires the GPU.

Playing devils advocate, Apple probably knows a majority of users are just using their mac for content consumption. They probably just make sure Safari uses less than 8GB with 50 tabs open ;)
 
I don't think the issue is 8gb of ram, I think it is the price for that combination. 8GB / 256 SDD should start at 599 or 699. It should not be $1k for that spec. 8GB is ok for very casual users like my wife. She has no complaints with her base m1 air, where as I easily bogged down a 16" M1 Max with 16gb ram and had to send it back.

Apple is trying to offer a budget device without a budget price, and the result is a weird mixture of specs and price. The baseline simply needs to go up, or the price needs to come down.
 
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People keep commenting on the longevity of the SSD due to swapping. For entry level users, this is a complete non-issue. In fact, it's very likely that light users with 8 GB RAM on average put significantly less wear on their SSDs than heavy users with 32 GB RAM.

The problem arises when you have moderate to heavy users with 8 GB RAM. But those are the users who need 16 GB RAM or more. The light users are not the issue here.
 
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It really should have been 12GB baseline. And 24GB Step up. As soon as you have Multiple Apps ( Not two Apps as some talks about Editing and opening up a Notepad ). And a Browser with Multiple Tabs you immediately runs into paging mode. Which is OK if you have a pretty fast SSD. But that extra 4GB from 8GB would have made that paging happens much less often even casual users.

If we have to argue about only using browser with one or two tabs and another app running at the time may be they should get an iPad instead an not a proper computer.
 
For the base configuration, yes, 8 GB of RAM is enough. The real problem is the price of the RAM upgrade. I think this should be discussed here. $200 more for an additional 8 GB is criminal in the year 2024. You can get 8 GB of RAM for under $20 for mercy's sake.
 
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