It's concerning that he apparently does a lot of editing with those files...yet doesn't know if he needs 16GB or not?
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What do we need 16GB for?
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It's concerning that he apparently does a lot of editing with those files...yet doesn't know if he needs 16GB or not?
The thing to ask is, how many photos do you usually process in a single session in your normal work flow?
With my DX camera I have processed upwards of 50 photos at a time in camera raw --> Photoshop with my old machine and 8GB memory with no issues. But if you have say 200 RAW photos from a single session, I'm not sure what would happen.
But at any rate with a $2200 laptop and a $3000 camera for the body alone then the extra $200 for 16GB should be a non-issue. Just get it.
With my DX camera I have processed upwards of 50 photos at a time in camera raw --> Photoshop with my old machine and 8GB memory with no issues. But if you have say 200 RAW photos from a single session, I'm not sure what would happen.
But at any rate with a $2200 laptop and a $3000 camera for the body alone then the extra $200 for 16GB should be a non-issue. Just get it.
Another vote for 16GB - if you only get 8 and find it's not enough the only thing you can do is sell your MBP and buy a new one 
Using Aperture with 10Mpx CR2 files and simultaneously running XP in VMWare Fusion I've had Free RAM down to <1GB on my 16GB rMBP.
Using Aperture with 10Mpx CR2 files and simultaneously running XP in VMWare Fusion I've had Free RAM down to <1GB on my 16GB rMBP.
* how many web browser windows do you have running, especially if it's Firefox being the browser?
* do work on virtual machines?
* graphic design work with many multi-layered 300DPI Photoshop and/or Illustrator documents open?
* all at once?
16GB comes much in handy if you do all that and don't want to close one just to make room for another, and if you need all of it up at once, so go for it. They offer it, the upgrade price isn't half-bad, and it will be guaranteed to work - unlike all the problems people had upgrading 2011 MBPs to 16GB and who never ran proper burn-in tests multiple times to ensure the upgraded RAM wasn't flaky... many who did and claimed to not have problems probably wouldn't have needed that much RAM to begin with and probably ended up with defective modules that WILL come back to haunt them when they least expect it one day...
Do you look at Activity Monitor with your current setup at all? To see if the new model with more RAM would really be worth the expense?
This is why I'm upgrading to a 16GB rMBP from my Mid-2010 15". Need to run a couple of VM's for work, and one of them is happiest if it has 8 GB all to itself.
get 16gbs or ram, period. Even that in 3-4 years times will be nearing bottleneck.
OS X isn't effective in managing ram at all. 4gbs are the absolute minimum nowadays, try it yourself, with just word and excel with 3-4 documents each (and now os x makes it even better for us since it perpetually re-opens files since it remembers the state...), preview with 5-6 pdfs, chrome and safari with about 20 tabs each (very normal scenario after browsing for a while) and tell me what your activity monitor reads. And that's not running anything really very demanding on it, it's just a very rudimentary scenario. With 4gbs or mem on a mac mini for instance (soon to be 16gbs of mem, oh the joys of upgrading with your own ram...), no vm running, clean memory app from the app store is my best friend and frequently force quitting the ever leaking safari my habit. Press clean memory, kill safari, 5 hours onwards, press clean mem, kill safari, that's not much of a computing life. Thanks apple, great job with lion.
OS X isn't effective in managing ram at all. 4gbs are the absolute minimum nowadays, try it yourself, with just word and excel with 3-4 documents each (and now os x makes it even better for us since it perpetually re-opens files since it remembers the state...), preview with 5-6 pdfs, chrome and safari with about 20 tabs each (very normal scenario after browsing for a while) and tell me what your activity monitor reads. And that's not running anything really very demanding on it, it's just a very rudimentary scenario. With 4gbs or mem on a mac mini for instance (soon to be 16gbs of mem, oh the joys of upgrading with your own ram...), no vm running, clean memory app from the app store is my best friend and frequently force quitting the ever leaking safari my habit. Press clean memory, kill safari, 5 hours onwards, press clean mem, kill safari, that's not much of a computing life. Thanks apple, great job with lion.
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get 16gbs or ram, period. Even that in 3-4 years times will be nearing bottleneck.
OS X isn't effective in managing ram at all. 4gbs are the absolute minimum nowadays, try it yourself, with just word and excel with 3-4 documents each (and now os x makes it even better for us since it perpetually re-opens files since it remembers the state...), preview with 5-6 pdfs, chrome and safari with about 20 tabs each (very normal scenario after browsing for a while) and tell me what your activity monitor reads. And that's not running anything really very demanding on it, it's just a very rudimentary scenario.
My GF has a 2011 MBA with 2GB ram and it runs just fine. Never had a problem....she does all basic things.
is she on lion or sl? If all basic things is a word doc, skype, itunes, mail and 6-7 tabs in safari yes sure you can do all that with no problem.
But that's not basic usage for most people. That's really minimal usage.is she on lion or sl? If all basic things is a word doc, skype, itunes, mail and 6-7 tabs in safari yes sure you can do all that with no problem.
2011 MBA only runs Lion. Yup thats basically it. What I'm saying is 4GB is not needed to run a Mac. Only if you are doing more intense applications.
Your 2011 mba can run sl justs fine, and it will perform better than on lion too. Your gf's usage scenario is the minimum of the minimum, you really can't run much less, the next step is sleep mode. To say that 4gbs are not needed on the mac then is simply wrong. Most people will open preview with 4-5 items, safari and/or chrome and firefox with 20+ tabs and have 2-3 excel and word documents open. That again is a minimum usage scenario, it's not even starting to have anythings heavy like adobe cs, dev. applications, cad software, specialized software of any kind, games, etc.
2gbs will not under any stretch of the imagination be enough, and the air might mask it by paging out to the ssd but that will wear the ssd much, much faster, and impact future performance there too.
4gbs of ram is the absolute minimum for a mac these days.
16Gb
I've had my 2.6/16/512 rMBP for less than a week. It was only an extra $200 for the extra RAM. If you're already spending that much for a laptop, get the extra RAM since you will not be able to upgrade it later.
I was running a 8Gb Virtualbox VM running Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010 and saw no degradation in performance in anything I was going.
Don't waste any more time deciding, get the 16 gigs.
I've had my 2.6/16/512 rMBP for less than a week. It was only an extra $200 for the extra RAM. If you're already spending that much for a laptop, get the extra RAM since you will not be able to upgrade it later.
I was running a 8Gb Virtualbox VM running Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010 and saw no degradation in performance in anything I was going.
Don't waste any more time deciding, get the 16 gigs.
Actually, she is the average user. Most people need no more. If you are on a forum discussing it, you are not an average user.
I didn't claim my usage scenario is that of the average users. I claimed the average user has a 2-3 pdfs in preview, 2-3 docs in excel and word open at the same time, as well as 20 tabs in their browsers, plus a few extras like their mail, ical, itunes, iphoto etc. That's what an average user has. Someone who opens facebook, a couple of news sites, skype and a document on their mac is the below average user. They too might need to run a program at some point on a vm because it's not available on the mac though, or play a game, or watch a movie too, and then 2gbs won't be enough.
Anyway you cut it 2gbs these days is not the minimum ram for a mac, it's 4gbs. 2gbs is a configuration that should always be run at a very very bare minimum otherwise it's not enough.
I ordered mine with 16GB for roughly this same line of thinking. I have a 2007 black MacBook now, and it only has two. Lion, Office '11, PS, and all 4 major browsers (with multiple tabs) give me issues, and I regret not having gotten more RAM back when this machine was young (and worth upgrading).
2GB was fine and dandy back in the days of Leopard. But anything under 8GB is circumspect now, and as a grad student I gotta question whether or not 8 will cut it until I finish up in the next 3 years (and possibly a little longer after that). If you plan on keeping the machine for more than 2-3 years (as I tend to do) then you're gonna want to futureproof it with more RAM now. Especially since it isn't upgradeable after the fact.
Interesting that 16GB is getting more votes while most users recommend this only as a precaution of future demands. It seems to me that the majority of users will be more than happy with 8GB and could never tell the difference. But I suppose this majority is operating outside the macrumors forum ..
It is a joke. Like that guy and his 8GB won't sync a mouse, needs CPU lubricant and hinge leaking memory jokes.
is she on lion or sl? If all basic things is a word doc, skype, itunes, mail and 6-7 tabs in safari yes sure you can do all that with no problem.
What do you think 'average users' use their computers for? Exactly what you listed. 6-7 tabs is actually more than what I see many people using.
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It makes sense if you judge based on experience.
Though there is one thing that doesn't get enough merit. An SSD that can read back randomly and fast at up to 400+ MB/s makes swapping much less of a problem than what it used to be.
The logic that each OSX requires more might change. As far as Windows 7 goes that still runs very well with just 2 GB, 4GB is more than enough. OSX needs way more RAM to be snappy. Windows 8 seems to do quite a bit better than Windows 7 and gets more RAM management still.
It might be Apple figures out that they are developing bloat ware and the follow up on ML will be put on a diet. There really is a lot of RAM waste and some of the best things about Win8 might be the priority RAM. An App can use low priority RAM to make things faster but can yield it to Apps that need it more desperately.
The entire mobility trend can also help bring RAM use down again.
RAM need is already slowing. I think it is a bit of a logarithmic curve. OSX and Browser are the bad examples but in general many apps RAM use grows slower. The Eclipse IDE is hovering between 200-400MB for years now. Most office software didn't change too much either.
Though there is one thing that doesn't get enough merit. An SSD that can read back randomly and fast at up to 400+ MB/s makes swapping much less of a problem than what it used to be.
Applications use more RAM too every iteration. µtorrent being the worst example. That used to run on Windows with pretty much exactly the same speed and funcationality using some 5MB now it sucks 50-60 MB under OSX. What for?
The logic that each OSX requires more might change. As far as Windows 7 goes that still runs very well with just 2 GB, 4GB is more than enough. OSX needs way more RAM to be snappy. Windows 8 seems to do quite a bit better than Windows 7 and gets more RAM management still.
It might be Apple figures out that they are developing bloat ware and the follow up on ML will be put on a diet. There really is a lot of RAM waste and some of the best things about Win8 might be the priority RAM. An App can use low priority RAM to make things faster but can yield it to Apps that need it more desperately.
The entire mobility trend can also help bring RAM use down again.
RAM need is already slowing. I think it is a bit of a logarithmic curve. OSX and Browser are the bad examples but in general many apps RAM use grows slower. The Eclipse IDE is hovering between 200-400MB for years now. Most office software didn't change too much either.
That's your opinion, it's not what I see them use. You want to rationalize that the base offer of 2gb on some airs is enough, it's not, not with the integrated memory taking up around 384gb, not with kernel task and the rest of lion on start up taking 750gb, and not with anything other than bare minimum.