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MacOS Sierra RAM Requirement
- Thread starter nollimac
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It will be 4 GB, almost guaranteed. They took a significant jump in the supported machines from 2007 to 2010. For MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, it's 2010 or newer. Since the 2010 Airs have at most 4 GB RAM, it must be able to run on that.
I don't see them not increasing the requirement from the current 2 GB, and it won't be 3 GB as Apple doesn't/didn't ship the supported models with that amount.
Hence 4 GB minimum.
I don't see them not increasing the requirement from the current 2 GB, and it won't be 3 GB as Apple doesn't/didn't ship the supported models with that amount.
Hence 4 GB minimum.
- Yes. But they could easily have a two-pronged requirement of at least 2010 Air AND at least 4 GB RAM - as they have in the past with different machines.
Do you see them keeping the current 2 GB minimum while at the same time scrapping three years of MacBook Pros?
I wouldn't be surprised to see a 4 GB minimum but it will to piss off a load of people who've had their hopes raised by the list of compatible computers.
- Sure, but Apple doesn't care one bit about pissing off owners of outdated hardware, as we've certainly come to know.
My point is that it would be strange to exclude that many computers but keep the same rather low RAM requirement.
On the other hand, for the Air, people don't have the option of upgrading the RAM, which they did in the past when Apple used these kinds of two-pronged system requirements for OS X on other machines.
This is exactly why I asked the question because if 4GB RAM the minimum what could be the reason to exclude late 2007 - late 2008 MBP's...retina display...track pad?
- Neither of those two that's for sure. Lots of non-Retina machines are allowed, and trackpad is the same between 2009 and 2010.
It does seem a bit arbitrary, especially considering they're allowing the Late 2009 plastic Unibody MacBook but not the Mid 2009 MacBook Pro, which is superior in all aspects.
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/13/list-of-macos-sierra-compatible-macs/
Looks like it is time to upgraded my 2009 mac mini. With 4 GB it sometimes struggles with El Cap. I imaging adding all that Siri junk has bloated the OS even more.
Just learning from IOS 9 and iphone 4s here in my opinion.- Sure, but Apple doesn't care one bit about pissing off owners of outdated hardware, as we've certainly come to know.
My point is that it would be strange to exclude that many computers but keep the same rather low RAM requirement.
On the other hand, for the Air, people don't have the option of upgrading the RAM, which they did in the past when Apple used these kinds of two-pronged system requirements for OS X on other machines.
Sierra will work on models of the MacBook Air and they do not have a Retina display. And iMacs and Mac Pros do not come with trackpads as standard.
No matter what the "minimum" is, the reality will be that you are going to need 4 GBs to do much. El Cap on my 2009 Mac Mini is using up 1.5 GB with almost nothing running. Now they are adding Siri and other stuff and memory foot print will grow even larger.
- The thing is that you can't really use the amount of used memory on a machine to say that that must then be how much the OS requires. Activity Monitor reports 14 GB used on mine right now, and I don't have much of anything open.
OS X will pretty much use the memory that's available no matter how much you have.
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Another note on the supported models controversy: I guess I could sort of see the reason for excluding 2009 MacBook Pros while including 2009 MacBooks. The 2009 MBPs don't have automatic graphics switching between their two GPUs, and I could see Apple not wanting to support those machines any longer. Now, the 13" only has one GPU, so why isn't that supported? Probably because Apple doesn't want to discriminate between screen sizes (which would confuse a lot of users).
It looks like Apple chose a very arbitrary cutoff of exactly 7 years on the day that Sierra is released. The late 2009 iMac and late 2009 MacBook were the only releases in 2009 after September.
Hmmm, I wonder what this means for the non-retina MBP that Apple is still selling. It had a release date of June 2012. If Apple keeps releasing OS's around September, and keeps the 7 year cutoff, then the last OS supporting that machine will be the 2018 release.
I have an early 2008 MBP 17" and if it's not the bios/firmware, although I doubt it, I surely attempt to install...after all Apple says my machine only supports 4GB of RAM...yet I am running 6GB RAM.
Macs which support 4 GB RAM are "outdated hardware"!?- Sure, but Apple doesn't care one bit about pissing off owners of outdated hardware, as we've certainly come to know.
I guess you mean only 4GB RAM as lots of Macs support 4GB and some even more.
- No. Machines which are on the list but do not have at least 4 GB RAM (such as a lower end 2010 MacBook Air or a 2009 MacBook) are.
I bloody well hope not - they're still selling them now - 3 years of OS support (from date of purchase) would be a new low for Apple.
Arbitrary cut offs are stupid.
Since Apple's requirements don't list memory but models it should work with any of those models regardless of the amount of memory. I doubt that Siri uses more memory than voice dictation, and probably much less, which runs fine on a 2GB MBA with El Capitan (and is also qualified for Sierra).
- Well, Apple hasn't published the requirements on its site yet, so we won't really know until they do. They have quite frequently in the past had minimum memory requirements in addition to other system requirements for OS X versions (most recently the shift from 1 GB required for Snow Leopard to 2 GB for Lion).
Yes easily. I think I read somewhere that all the Macs which had El Capitan support but not Sierra support had some sort of legacy 32bit subsystem. Sierra represents the completion of the move to 64bit for all aspects of the Mac. It's not about RAM/CPU specs.
They were still selling MBA in 2011 with 2GB of RAM and these will be supported.
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- I'm going to say that that's wrong. The Late 2009 MacBook and the Mid 2009 13" MacBook Pro have literally the exact same C2D P7550 Penryn processor as well as the exact same 9400M iGPU. Hard to see why one would be supported and not the other based on that.