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Watch the M1 Apple Silicon MacBook Air Blaze Through Opening Every Default App
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That’s quite literally what I wrote in my last post,
“You, like everyone, are likely utilizing applications by switching between windows while other applications are running in the background.”
so we’re in agreement! Apps can even do things NOT user instigated, most folks don’t like when that happens, though
Not moving the goal posts, maybe you are because you misunderstood my post? Back to the first message that you replied to:
“Having windows “available” isn’t the same as actually typing into one window while touching up a drawing in another while meticulously fine tuning the color in another while scrolling through a webpage in yet another. I’m not even sure the UI handles multiple targets.” - so I mentioned literally manipulating 4 apps, not two.
You may have read that to mean “applications can’t run in the background”. If so, that’s not what I meant. I explained in detail what I read the original posters “use them all at once” to mean. Even if the original poster intended to mean “having all those apps doing things in the background”, there’s very little that the apps that come with macOS can do in the background that would stress the processor in any meaningful way (though I plan to test that
.Leaving the topic of the thread, though (launching a series of apps that come with macOS), there are users that use VERY MEMORY AND CPU intensive applications day in and day out. These machines were not meant for them. These machines don’t have the RAM the storage OR the processing power to handle anything that many of your top developers, researchers, modelers, video editors would need in their day to day work. For your average person, firing up every application on the system and then flipping between apps, starting downloads in Safari, exporting a Keynote to a video file while playing a track in GarageBand and editing in the Photos app won’t tax the system in any serious way.
Most likely the Mac is using memory differently. For example it may be caching data because there is RAM to do so. In a lower memory environment this may not be the case.
Perhaps everyone involved in this discussion should differentiate "using" from "interacting with". Users typically interact with a single application but they can be using multiple applications at a time.That’s quite literally what I wrote in my last post,
“You, like everyone, are likely utilizing applications by switching between windows while other applications are running in the background.”
so we’re in agreement! Apps can even do things NOT user instigated, most folks don’t like when that happens, though
Not moving the goal posts, maybe you are because you misunderstood my post? Back to the first message that you replied to:
“Having windows “available” isn’t the same as actually typing into one window while touching up a drawing in another while meticulously fine tuning the color in another while scrolling through a webpage in yet another. I’m not even sure the UI handles multiple targets.” - so I mentioned literally manipulating 4 apps, not two.
You may have read that to mean “applications can’t run in the background”. If so, that’s not what I meant. I explained in detail what I read the original posters “use them all at once” to mean. Even if the original poster intended to mean “having all those apps doing things in the background”, there’s very little that the apps that come with macOS can do in the background that would stress the processor in any meaningful way (though I plan to test that
Leaving the topic of the thread, though (launching a series of apps that come with macOS), there are users that use VERY MEMORY AND CPU intensive applications day in and day out. These machines were not meant for them. These machines don’t have the RAM the storage OR the processing power to handle anything that many of your top developers, researchers, modelers, video editors would need in their day to day work. For your average person, firing up every application on the system and then flipping between apps, starting downloads in Safari, exporting a Keynote to a video file while playing a track in GarageBand and editing in the Photos app won’t tax the system in any serious way.
Like my example with Adobe After Effects with a 30 second 1080p video file. On 16GB its taking up 11GB and on 128GB its using 110 GB
That still blurs the lines of what is recommended and how much RAM you truly need. I do not need 128 GB of RAM for just 1080p video production for example, but After Effects likes to use up that RAM. So how can one truly gauge what is needed?
I still don’t know what you’re getting at. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to literally do two things at once, and even if possible through the os, not feasibly possible by a person.That’s quite literally what I wrote in my last post,
“You, like everyone, are likely utilizing applications by switching between windows while other applications are running in the background.”
so we’re in agreement! Apps can even do things NOT user instigated, most folks don’t like when that happens, though
Not moving the goal posts, maybe you are because you misunderstood my post? Back to the first message that you replied to:
“Having windows “available” isn’t the same as actually typing into one window while touching up a drawing in another while meticulously fine tuning the color in another while scrolling through a webpage in yet another. I’m not even sure the UI handles multiple targets.” - so I mentioned literally manipulating 4 apps, not two.
You may have read that to mean “applications can’t run in the background”. If so, that’s not what I meant. I explained in detail what I read the original posters “use them all at once” to mean. Even if the original poster intended to mean “having all those apps doing things in the background”, there’s very little that the apps that come with macOS can do in the background that would stress the processor in any meaningful way (though I plan to test that
Leaving the topic of the thread, though (launching a series of apps that come with macOS), there are users that use VERY MEMORY AND CPU intensive applications day in and day out. These machines were not meant for them. These machines don’t have the RAM the storage OR the processing power to handle anything that many of your top developers, researchers, modelers, video editors would need in their day to day work. For your average person, firing up every application on the system and then flipping between apps, starting downloads in Safari, exporting a Keynote to a video file while playing a track in GarageBand and editing in the Photos app won’t tax the system in any serious way.
Nobody can draw with one hand and type with the other, for example. So using two apps at the same time in the manner you describe even if possible has NEVER been a use case for the normal person, surely?
It’s a strange point of view you’re coming from.
If you’re trying to say the op doesn’t have a feasible use case, then obviously not. They don’t. But it’s another metric into the power of the thing. The actual application of such a use case has never existed or even being asked for?
Regardless. Your assertion was wrong. It’s possible to use multiple apps at the same time. All at once in the manner you describe was never implied intentionally I don’t think.
What size is the 30 second 1080p video file?Like my example with Adobe After Effects with a 30 second 1080p video file. On 16GB its taking up 11GB and on 128GB its using 110 GB
That still blurs the lines of what is recommended and how much RAM you truly need. I do not need 128 GB of RAM for just 1080p video production for example, but After Effects likes to use up that RAM. So how can one truly gauge what is needed?
At 60MB in size this file is essentially useless in comparing different systems which have multi-gigabyte memory configurations.
Yes but AE, and all Adobe programs, are configured to use as much memory as possible. So that same file takes up 110GB of RAM out of 128GB while AE is running compared to 11GB out of 16GB of RAM on another system.
8GB is enough for now and for your use cases it's probably fine for the next 3 years. If you do decide to get 16GB though, you can probably use it for at least 5 years or longer. I made the mistake of getting the 4GB MBA back in 2012. It lasted me just over 5 years but I would definitely have gotten 2 more years out of it if I upgraded to 8GB. It was just as fast as this MBA was at launching system apps back when it was released. Keep in mind that app launch times rely more on SSD speed than RAM capacity. When the computer runs out of hardware RAM it will start stuffing things into the much slower virtual ram on the SSD. Loading things back and forth from the virtual RAM is what usually causes slow downs and freezes. The real RAM hogs these days are websites like Youtube or Google Docs (regardless of your browser). With web apps getting more complex much faster, this will only get worse over time. When I retired my old MBA, the only thing it couldn't handle was multiple heavy websites.
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In general, MacOS/iPadOS/iOS are more memory efficient than others (be it ARM or Intel), the iPhones and iPads are a statement of that where with tiny system memory smokes in general use cases other tablets and phones.
The M1 Macs
To acknowledge how good the new M1 Macs are — and I am here to tell you they are *astonishingly* good — you must acknowledge that certain longstanding assumptions about how computers should be designed, about what makes a better computer *better*, are wrong.
daringfireball.net
I would add though, that because of specific hardware compression, there are some resources that can fit there, like one guy was saying that it could be able to fit 3D scenes with 100GB+ worth of floating point textures in those 16GB. If devs get to it, we do not that dissimilar things with games already (not 100GB though, granted).
All in all, credit where credit is due. It does behave like a cpu loaded, ram loaded system powerhorse... an M1 8GB MacBook Air (the lowest M1 system available, the base model) can handle ~95 concurrent instruments in Logic Pro while the same previous generation Air from early 2020 can handle like five.
Very unlikely that AE would expand the size of that file to 11GB let alone 110GB. If AE is consuming 11GB or 110GB of RAM it's not doing so because it needs to based on the size of this file.
EDIT: Have you examined the memory settings as described here: Memory and storage. It appears AE will attempt to utilize all available memory except for an amount you specify with the "RAM Reserved For Other Applications" setting. This would explain the behavior you've described.
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Go back and read your statement keeping in mind the highlighted words and how they relate to allegation ARM is significantly more memory efficient then x64.
Yes that is my point. it will use as much as I specify. But in no way does that mean I need 128 GB of RAM for 1080p 30 second video processing. It provides no benefit over my 16GB of RAM system. Video professionals and educators agree that 8GB of RAM is more than enough. 16GB of RAM is nice for 4K footage.
In general, MacOS/iPadOS/iOS are more memory efficient than others (be it ARM or Intel), the iPhones and iPads are a statement of that where with tiny system memory smokes in general use cases other tablets and phones.
There’s a section on this review about memory. It also says that yes, if you need 32GB of static actual solid space for a resource in RAM (in contrast to dynamic objects being referenced-counted in and out constantly), then there’s no way around that.The M1 Macs
To acknowledge how good the new M1 Macs are — and I am here to tell you they are *astonishingly* good — you must acknowledge that certain longstanding assumptions about how computers should be designed, about what makes a better computer *better*, are wrong.
Ok, so I said "the forums are full of these people trying to tell technical people that clearly know what they're talking about, that they do not know what they're talking about and will be fine with 8GB/16GB RAM" and if I'm interpreting your post correctly, you're trying to argue with me by posting comments from somebody who is technical and clearly knows what they're talking about, and who is in agreement with me. Is that what's going on here?
Hmmm, I didn't realize that you and I were on the same page regarding this.
Hah! Yeah. But, for my case, 1080p video editing we can agree that 128GB of RAM is completely overkill? Yes, the Adobe apps will use as much as it wants, but it doesn't mean its required or that is really a benefit. As I can do the same thing and have the same experience with another computer at 16GB of RAM.
As I mentioned before I do tend to overbuy on my products. I would rather get too much of something than not enough. So even though it is quite a common statement with professionals that if you are just dealing with 1080p footage that 8GB of RAM is more than enough, I will still get 16GB.
I can't say if 128GB is overkill or not. It is when the size of the file you're working on is only 60MB in size. I can't imagine any workflow on such a small file (I have to chuckle at this as I have a few hard drives which would not be capable of storing this one file) that would consume 128GB of RAM. However perhaps there are other, much larger 1080p video files which would require a large amount of RAM. Whether there are some that would need 128GB I cannot say as I do not work with video (outside of transcoding it from one format to another).
That said I can see where some people may erroneously reach the conclusion the Apple Silicon macs are significantly more memory efficient than their Intel counter parts. If one using using a 32GB or 64GB system and they look at their memory consumption they may, if they don't understand what they're looking at, erroneously conclude they need that much memory. When that same workflow is compared to an Apple Silicon based Macintosh with 8GB or 16GB of memory I can see how they would conclude these systems are much more memory efficient.
Lemme jump in here. Editing h264 mobile shot video today is like making a power point presentation, it became the everyday task in the office. I remember the days i was selling power point designs to companies, it was nice quick money but even back then i advised them to move up with presentation cause PP is so amateurish. Fast forward few years office rat requirements started listing PowerPoint alongside Word and email. So offices started doing in-house work which looked even worse. I remember when i pushed that pos PP so far that i had to bring in our tower to doctors convention and when session ended people were asking for a template. I had to rationally explain it to them they would not be able to run that on their computers.
Same thing is happening with video edits today. People are doing ins and outs and other light work stuff on h264 but soon enough they see this cool AE template for motion graphics to be their intro, then they fiddle with it and it takea them days to output it as intended. Then they want to apply luts and color correction over it just because software allows it to do so. DaVinci Resolve users are the worst in that because they keep on adding just because software allows them and then computer craps out. And then they call me, hey Vladi you got good enough computer could you please compile this work i did and then i get hell of a Resolve project with 4K files. Does your boss require you to use 4K? No but i did it cause that's how we shot it...
Believe it or not i did such favor for a friend of mine just a month back, they couldnt render out 3D motion graphics and final video delivery for Hulu ad. His client was Hulu and we rendered out freakin Hulu commercial cause they didn't have horsepower because THEY GOT NO CLUE WHAT THEY WERE DOING. Same trap office video editors fall in when they see all the things their software of choice can do. And then they need better computers, suddenly office laptops don't cut it.
Yeah that can be frustrating! For the work I do on my Macs, I am my own boss so that is a non issue for me! There will be very small chance I will get into 4K video editing soon, so I am just dealing with 1080p. Most of my clients don't have fast enough internet for 4K footage still and it really doesn't make sense in my situation to make it 4K.