if i did anything that involved the words "render" or "record", I would probably get 32gb. however i am only doing things that involve "read" "write" "watch" and "refuse to close firefox tabs", so 16gb for me
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People who went with the 16 GB of Ram for the new MPBs, what are you using your computer mainly for?
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Personally I'm run the website for some financial institutions, so I use coding tools, Citrix, a bit of Photoshop, a bit of video editing, and a lot of Football Manager 
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I went with the base 14" with 16gb RAM and it's smashing everything for me so far. I really don't think 32gb is necessary, I've discussed this in other topics too and I've never once had a noticeable difference with extra RAM. Even on my previous 2017 MBP I only had 8gb, I think anything more is overkill on the whole. I played a bit of GTA IV on Parallels and it lags a little on highest settings, so should be completely smooth on normal settings. Bloody good considering it's through a VM.
Just my opinion if it helps anyone. It's really tragic how much I love a bloody laptop, smashing through FM with no noise or slow down is just brilliant. But always bear in mind you can try it, and if it doesn't run what you want within a couple of weeks, just send it back. The only way I'd consider swapping for something better is if it turns out the M1 Max can play games to a much better standard, otherwise I'm more than happy with my base configuration.
.I went with the base 14" with 16gb RAM and it's smashing everything for me so far. I really don't think 32gb is necessary, I've discussed this in other topics too and I've never once had a noticeable difference with extra RAM. Even on my previous 2017 MBP I only had 8gb, I think anything more is overkill on the whole. I played a bit of GTA IV on Parallels and it lags a little on highest settings, so should be completely smooth on normal settings. Bloody good considering it's through a VM.
Just my opinion if it helps anyone. It's really tragic how much I love a bloody laptop, smashing through FM with no noise or slow down is just brilliant. But always bear in mind you can try it, and if it doesn't run what you want within a couple of weeks, just send it back. The only way I'd consider swapping for something better is if it turns out the M1 Max can play games to a much better standard, otherwise I'm more than happy with my base configuration.
It's also Apple Silicon / ARM 64 from 2011-2013, not X86-64 that dates back to 1999 with a lot of backward compatible garbage. Much more specialized / optimized instruction set and architecture.
Worst case when you run out of RAM
If / when it swaps to "disk" there are much wider highways with much higher speed limits, and far shorter distances.
I have an M1 mini with 16 GB of RAM. It typically uses 13 GB with 1 GB swap with my office stuff. I run my production stuff on a Windows desktop with 128 GB of RAM. That system is also good for testing stuff on Virtual Machines. Sure, you can have your system swap stuff in and out. But it's 2021. Why would you want to?
My oldest working computer has 224 steps of RAM and I have a 9-track magtape next to my desk. So I know a little about memory. These days it's so cheap such that it makes little sense to have to bother with swap at all.
I setup a Windows 11 VM through Parallels, had Teams, Word, a few moderate excel sheets, Edge with a series of unorganized tabs and I was in the green for memory pressure.
Most people are going to be just fine. If you want more buffer room than great, but it's unlikely you need it, and if you do need it you already know.
Most people are going to be just fine. If you want more buffer room than great, but it's unlikely you need it, and if you do need it you already know.
Cloud Engineering
- 5/6 terminals windows
- Docker (small VMs for tests)
- Visual Studio
- Citrix VM where most of my heavy workloads will be done
- Microsoft Teams / Zoom
- Outlook & Office 365 apps
- Cisco Any Connect VPn
- 8/10 tabs on main browser and 15 on work browser
- Ansible and Terraform
The rest of the workload that involves HDB, SQL and Oracle workloads are done via Citrix VDI to save up ressources on my local machine.
Here's a print screen from my workloads right now with those things above mentioned. This is from my Macbook Pro 14" with 10/16 CPU/GPU
- 5/6 terminals windows
- Docker (small VMs for tests)
- Visual Studio
- Citrix VM where most of my heavy workloads will be done
- Microsoft Teams / Zoom
- Outlook & Office 365 apps
- Cisco Any Connect VPn
- 8/10 tabs on main browser and 15 on work browser
- Ansible and Terraform
The rest of the workload that involves HDB, SQL and Oracle workloads are done via Citrix VDI to save up ressources on my local machine.
Here's a print screen from my workloads right now with those things above mentioned. This is from my Macbook Pro 14" with 10/16 CPU/GPU
Software development. I'm usually running Xcode, VS, and a couple of docker containers. Plus Slack and some other smaller apps. No problems so far. Coming from a 2019 i9 with 32GB.
I can see a huge use case for more RAM if you need to do a decent amount of virtualization.
I can see a huge use case for more RAM if you need to do a decent amount of virtualization.
I am moving up from an Intel Mac with 16gb but given it will be hooked to an XDR Display and the VRAM is unified now, 32gb seemed like a better choice.
So how much does SOC ram cost in comparison to the sticks we are throwing into our PC Systems?
Does your M1 throttle way down, suffer kernel panics or kill applications when you tap out all the RAM?
RAM living within the SOC isn't the same as the stuff sitting on our motherboards within PC systems. I have a similar setup, a PC with 128GB RAM, 2 2080 Super GPUs and NVME storage. It is a screamer of a system, and does a killer job at editing 4K video and work in playing around with 3D rendering, and manages to keep my DVR and iTunes library online and serving various Apple TV / HomePods in my house.
In my use case, My 13" M1 can also run all of those processes, and while it does render, and export 4K slower (not by that much oddly), it doesn't skip a beat, run into kernel panics, or crash apps with a similar workload, all with a measly 16gb of RAM. What's more? It can do it all on Battery while it is sitting on my kitchen counter.
Why would I want to save money, and live with less RAM? Because M1 seems to do okay with less than the Intel counterparts for what I have used / tested so far. But I also (as a general rule) don't tend to stare at Activity monitor on a Mac as much as I have Taskman open on my PC system.
All that said,
As a general rule however, I am with you on the subject of getting as much RAM as possible. Not an option on the M1 I own, but when I take the plunge on a newer laptop it will have mid or full spec RAM. The main reason in my case, isn't because I worry about maxing it out now, it is because I tend to hold onto my systems for ages. I still daily drive a 2008 MBP, 2015 MBP, and even some older PowerPC systems.
I don't know what the manufacturing cost is. I usually look at commodity retail prices to get an idea on profit margins but that's imprecise.
My M1 mini can't run my production workload as one of the programs runs under Rosetta 2 and it uses about 300% CPU. What I like from my systems is consistent, smooth performance. When you have a ton of RAM, you get that. Not only are all of your programs in RAM, but your files are cached as well so you have buttery performance, even with storage operations.
My 2007 MacBook Pro died in 2018 but my 27 inch iMac from 2009 with 16 GB of RAM is on my backup desk. It has a HDD but it still performs well because of all the RAM. Anything that touches the HDD is slow. Bootup is really painful. But once everything is in RAM, it runs well.
I like to play with Virtual Machines. It is nice to be able to run five of them concurrently to run experiments (a lot of time working with VMs is setting them up).
I think people will need to recalibrate their spec "needs" after the M1 was introduced.
You have to admit that your use case is really quite specific, and indeed does need a ton of RAM. I just don't think your situation applies to most people using Laptops on this forum / or even in this thread.
Agreed on swapping to disk being slower, but this system is MUCH faster at it than anything else I have ever owned, tested, or dreamed up. I just wish I had some way to measure, quantify it in any reasonable method.
It's a toy for me, I don't need this level of computer at all. It's to share with my wife though, and she does some light graphic design/photography stuff. Still likely overkill. I'll go with a super light/small matte black air/macbook if they ever do it.
Lots of people use virtual machines these days. It might be for database use, cloud use, research work where certain tools only run on certain platforms. Apple Silicon really complicates things because a lot of tools haven't been ported yet but that's getting better. It's a minority of computer users but there are a lot of people doing professional work that need the memory.
It's like using the MacBook Pro 13 for Zoom with the fans spinning up. It runs Zoom but not in an ideal way. Then along comes Apple Silicon and it runs without the fans, especially on the MacBook Air. You don't specifically need Apple Silicon but it makes an improvement in quality of life. And that's what more RAM does.
Yeah I run VMs as well to test software for my BMS / Automation at datacenters I manage. VM on M1 isn't quite there yet, and I tend to still use my 2015 model for this work (Mostly because it is on my company profile and the M1 isn't).
Trust me, I know what RAM does. I was running applications on my RAM disk on my Quadra 840av way back when the iPhone wasn't even in Steve Job's Dreams. RAM will always be important, we just appear to disagree with the advances M1 has made in how it is used.
I have no data to back this opinion, but I feel totally fine running 16GB on this system where I wouldn't dare have less than 32GB on my Mac Pro doing the same tasks.
Will you feel comfortable running with 16 GB in a decade? I keep my systems for that long. My oldest working computer was purchased around 1977.
It likely means that since it was 16 GB in 2014, it should come with 24 GB now and by 2028 it should be 32 GB.
I would have been happy with 24. The rumored M2 MacBook Air adds a bunch of the stuff from the 2021 MacBook Pros which looks to make it really attractive. 24 GB of RAM and I would have picked it over the MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro is a rather insane laptop and I don't need the CPU nor GPU of this thing. But more RAM is good.