I have lots of Apple products, but not a laptop yet. And I plan on purchasing one very soon. My usage consists of mostly basic tasks including Youtube, Netflix, Spotify, Safari with multiple tabs open, office documents and light photo editing. I plan to keep this machine, likely an MBA, for five years. Based on my usage and length of time I anticipate to keep my machine, does it make sense to upgrade to 16MG of RAM? I have a limited budget, but will spend the extra money if upgrading to 16GB will help to future proof my purchase. Thank you!
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Upgrade to 16GB RAM to future proof?
- Thread starter Mojer
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According to your usage and your estimated useful life, 16 GB of RAM are absolutely necessary.
You might regret not choosing 16 GB version. Better to have RAM that you don't use, than need more RAM than you can have.
What you described is pretty light usage, people still do that on machines with 4 gigs of RAM with no big issues.
8 gigs would hit the spot for you I believe, but since you'd like to keep the machine for a few years and we don't know what stupid technology becomes fashionable in 2025 that will destroy our RAM just like Electron apps have since 2013, if you can afford it easily, get the 16 GB version. If you can't, don't worry and get the 8 GB one, it will run 100 % today, tomorrow, in a year, and unless your needs change dramatically, it will absolutely be usable after five years.
It's kind of a meme nowadays to go around telling people that your current amount of RAM is the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM, I guess it makes people feel like proper professionals or something, but let me tell you, editing 4K footage from an iPhone once a week doesn't make anyone a power user. Having lots of tabs open in a web browser doesn't make anyone a power user. Starting all apps a person knows how to use at once and pretending like it's their normal workflow doesn't mean they need that much RAM in the machine.
I develop web apps on my Mac and could've gotten the 8 GB model easily and it would work just fine, because my previous dev machine was a 8 GB Dell laptop running Linux (not-so-great RAM management) and it was fine. I only got the 16 GB one because I'm going to make some changes in my workflow that will require more RAM and because the machine is my work tool and pays for it.
8 gigs would hit the spot for you I believe, but since you'd like to keep the machine for a few years and we don't know what stupid technology becomes fashionable in 2025 that will destroy our RAM just like Electron apps have since 2013, if you can afford it easily, get the 16 GB version. If you can't, don't worry and get the 8 GB one, it will run 100 % today, tomorrow, in a year, and unless your needs change dramatically, it will absolutely be usable after five years.
It's kind of a meme nowadays to go around telling people that your current amount of RAM is the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM, I guess it makes people feel like proper professionals or something, but let me tell you, editing 4K footage from an iPhone once a week doesn't make anyone a power user. Having lots of tabs open in a web browser doesn't make anyone a power user. Starting all apps a person knows how to use at once and pretending like it's their normal workflow doesn't mean they need that much RAM in the machine.
I develop web apps on my Mac and could've gotten the 8 GB model easily and it would work just fine, because my previous dev machine was a 8 GB Dell laptop running Linux (not-so-great RAM management) and it was fine. I only got the 16 GB one because I'm going to make some changes in my workflow that will require more RAM and because the machine is my work tool and pays for it.
Well, until the day i need more ram. Userland is dynamic
(E: I have 64 GB RAM on one computer, maxing it out every now and then.)
My daughter has an Air/16. Her typical RAM usage is 7 GB. But she wants the ability to run more things on it down the road. So 16 makes sense. I bought a Late 2009 Core 2 Duo iMac back in 2010. I wish that I had bought the i5 or i7 model today as it would be more useful eleven years later.
So think about your potential future needs as well as your current needs.
So think about your potential future needs as well as your current needs.
8GB is absolutely sufficient for your use case and will be probably still sufficient after couple of years. That said, it's just a $200 premium for 5 years, so if it gives you piece of mind, why not?
Of course. macOS is very good about using available RAM. That doesn't mean that you have too little, or that it's running out.
Additional available RAM is always useful, particularly if you leave your system on for long periods of time.
I have 64 GB of RAM on my desktop. I was thinking about going to 128 GB yesterday. RAM has certainly gone up in the past four months.
Actually it's a Gentoo Linux workstation
What I mean is, what if my user case changes and I'd like to do/learn something that eats RAM to lunch sometime in the future.64 GB is alright for my day to day work. But under heavy load Gentoo goes bananas (don't have swap on that installation) so I've been thinking of upgrading to 128 GB swell (Xeon processor, the RAM limit for that one is 2 TB)
Nonsense. I could easily do all that he described with my old 2012 MacBook Air with 4GB of Ram. 8GB is plenty. That being said, if the OP has money to burn and feels better about it, then 16GB definitely won't hurt.
Apple machines have a long life cycle. For me, they have been indestructible. I have 10-year-old machines that work fine, but are just not as much fun as newer stuff.
Thus I always maximize configs.
Thus I always maximize configs.
He said his usage consists also of photo editing. (I assume Photoshop CC)
Personally on my iMac 21.5 late 2009 (E8600) (macOS High Sierra) with Chrome multiple tabs open, Spotify, office suite and Photoshop CC I need always more than 8 GB of Ram (in that machine in fact I have installed 16 GB).
I have no idea how you can do all the things with only 4 GB of Ram.
Firefox on my systems can take 5 GB of RAM on its own.
I have a Late 2009 Core 2 Duo iMac 27 which I upgraded from 4 to 16 GB of RAM. It runs reasonably well in 16 GB, as long as I don't load too many CPU-intensive things at the same time. Rebooting or launching a program takes a while as it still as a HDD. The nice thing about those old machines is that you could add RAM after purchase. That's why my main consideration for a Mac right now is the 27" iMac.
Yeah, the same for me. The major bottleneck is CPU.
I have switched to SSD but speed is limited due to SATA II interface.
Configurable Apple machines are the best.
It's even now a great computer.
No such thing as too rich, too thin, or too much RAM. I'd have paid for 32GB in the MBA had it been an option--I'm nervous about being limited to 16, but needed something now, not in 6-9 months. Been at this a lot of years, and have never regretted maxing out a system's RAM. I've often told clients to budget for the maximum as part of the initial purchase, and then never think about it again for the life of the system.
People grossly underestimate how much RAM browsers alone take these days. That "light usage" is probably more memory intensive than you think it is if there is a browser involved. Then there's the myriad of Electron apps that are also memory hogs.
MacOS is glitchy right now. I've put my 16GB MBA M1 to sleep for a few days and when woken with just one browser tab it was using like 10GB cache plus ~5GB with a small swap. That's crazy just for one browser tab when Linux and even Windows 10 can run one browser tab on a device with only 4GB with ram left over. Wait for gen 2 otherwise if you need it now definitely go with 16GB minimum.
Just to clarify I have run a similar set of apps on my iMac 21.5 late 2009 (E8600) with macOS High Sierra.
This is the ram usage with the following apps opened:
10 Chrome tabs (YT tab included), Photoshop CC 2020 (two projects), Mail, Office suite (Outlook, Excel), Adobe Reader (some pdf), Spotify, Telegram and WhatsApp.
Memory Used 9,26 GB
Physical Memory 16,00 GB
@Mojer go for the 16 GB version without any doubt and enjoy your machine!
This is the ram usage with the following apps opened:
10 Chrome tabs (YT tab included), Photoshop CC 2020 (two projects), Mail, Office suite (Outlook, Excel), Adobe Reader (some pdf), Spotify, Telegram and WhatsApp.
Memory Used 9,26 GB
Physical Memory 16,00 GB
@Mojer go for the 16 GB version without any doubt and enjoy your machine!
That's like telling somebody a HDD is "plenty" and upgrading to an SSD is nonsense, because you have a 10 year old computer that works "fine". Will a M1 MBA with 8GB of ram work? Yes, most of the time, (except if do some heavy editing in Adobe suite and similar, then the OS will literally close the program for you with an error). But it definitely won't work as well as it could outside of absolutely light use. With a dozen heavier tabs in safari, just the browser can use >4GB of RAM and a single Netflix tab can easily be >1.5GB. Now add some electron apps like spotify, Word and the ~4GB the OS uses by itself and you are well into the spinning wheel territory and some lags when swiping between desktops and apps, even with the lightning fast swap on M1 Macs. If you are upgrading from an older mac, this might still be a greatly superior experience, but it definitely could be better with more RAM. And this is today, in 2021. Now add even hungrier apps and websites over the span of a couple of years and a behemoth like Microsoft Teams or some other software you might need or get into and you are seeing slowdowns in normal, daily, light use.
Go check how many youtubers who praised the 8GB model swapped them for the 16GB ones a week or 2 after release, do some scrolling through the "is 8GB enough for M1" threads on here, with people being unhappy after the initial glow wears off and actually using the laptops, and think why 16GB MBA and MBP models have a multi-week delivery time, but the 8GB models are discounted an extra $50 every week at every retailer.
To be honest, at least the absolutely brain-dead "8GB RAM on M1 == 16GB on Intel" misinformation campaign seems to have died out, with not even a single mention in this thread, thank god for that.
P.S.
@usagora One of my favorite phenomena on this forum is seeing people rave about the lightening speed of their 10 years+ old macbooks, where 4GB RAM is PLENTY, 2 cores, 1.8GHz is MORE THAN ENOUGH and lags DO NOT EXIST, but inexplicably their old laptops become overheating slow pieces of garbage the moment they touch a shiny new AS computer. I'll be awaiting your inevitable posts
16GB makes the most sense, but OP please understand that there's no such thing as "future Proofing" a computer. You can have the highest specs and Apple could suddenly flip the switch and the next OS and your super specked out Mac lacks functionality with the upcoming OS or even not be supported. Just get the specs you will need.