Why do all these new 2020 Macs only have 8gb ram?

[Santabean2000]

To be honest, I'm annoyed base level Macs still have 8GB RAM in 2022. Should be 16GB IMHO.

Or at least drop the money grab upgrade prices...

 

[JustAnExpat]

If the RAM is bothering you, 8GB of Apple Silicon RAM is 16 GB of regular RAM because of how fast Swap is. I have MacBook Air, M1, 2020, and I can run Age of Empires II DE, in Windows 11 (ARM version in Parallels, 4GB assigned to the machine), on low setting. Age of Empire II DE is a 64 bit Windows game that's somewhat high graphics and requires 8GB of RAM by itself (per specs) :O

Remember, the game is being emulated (64bit processor) on a virtualized environment (Windows ARM) that's RAM starved (It needs 8GB, it's only getting 4GB). That's absolutely amazing! And if my MacBook Air can handle that without crashing or beach balling, it can handle anything you're throwing at your old 2011 MacBook Pro.

 

[theluggage]

If the RAM is bothering you, 8GB of Apple Silicon RAM is 16 GB of regular RAM because of how fast Swap is.

Swap is somewhat faster and more efficient on Apple Silicon and this can reduce the impact of limited RAM, but can we please can this "8GB on Apple Silicon is 16GB on Intel" nonsense? That seems to be based on a bunch of anecdotal evidence from people from "tests" where RAM usage simply isn't the bottleneck.

Swap is still an order of magnitude slower than RAM - if your M1 Mac is swapping heavily, it's being throttled. End of. If the result is "good enough" then fine - and 8GB probably is good enough for 'personal productivity' (provided you don't leave your browser tabs open), but its 2022 and 16GB of RAM, even LPDDR, isn't an expensive luxury and should be standard on anything past the lowest-end MBA.

As for the game - minimum specs (since you're running on a low setting) from Steam:

​

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64x2 5600+ Memory: 4 GB RAM. Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 420 or ATI™ Radeon™ HD 6850 or Intel® HD Graphics 4000 or better with 2 GB VRAM​

...so not only do you meet the minimum RAM requirements, the game is supposed to run on a 15 year-old processor and 10+ year old GPUs so you're really not asking the M1 to break a sweat.

it can handle anything you're throwing at your old 2011 MacBook Pro.

Probably true - but "as good as your 2011 MacBook Pro" is a pretty low bar for 10 years of progress...

 

[NO🇳🇴]

I'm a regular user and have the 2022 M2 mbp (always wanted Touch Bar for iPhone like spellcheck 😅)

Yesterday I had 7 active desktops running 30 chrome tabs, 5 tabs in both safari and Firefox and editing a 4k video in both LumaFusion and Davinciresolve (B-roll on both) I didn't experience any slowdowns at all. Haven't checked any system monitors on usage. (any recommendations?)

It has 8gb RAM and I figured as long as I got the 512gb (raid 2x256gb ssd) the VM virtual memory wouldn't be any issue. and for normal daily use I haven't had a issue 🙂

I guess this is basically a iPad Pro M2 8gb 512gb running macOS Ventura with a fan, and fun-feature-touch-bar 😛

 

[MauiPa]

8GB is more than adequate for me, my 2014 MBP had 16GB, I never used it, so I went with 8, and everything is fine. I had a 1TB drive, that was excessive for me (they make external drives!) I personally go with 512 - works for me. You actually only need enough of an internal to store all your working files, and then offload the finished ones, so not seeng the problem there for a lot of uses. Of course, if that is not enough, you can always upgrade at purchase

 

[MauiPa]

The whole of my university studies and everything else I've done over the last 6 years on my 2016 base MBP 13".

80 page word documents with tens of graphs and tables, large Excel spreadsheets, Powerpoints, statistical analysis software, FCPX with 1080p footage without proxies, guitar amp software and DAW, photo editing in Lightroom and Darktable.

Google Drive and cheap external SSDs helps me with 256GB. For the 8GB RAM, I've never really had an issue. I'm sure 16GB would speed things up, but with 8GB I'm not left frustrated.

Are you sure, are you really sure? You can view memory pressure on activity monitor. With your usage, I bet you never come close, unless you are one of those leave 100 chrome tabs open all the time (Chrome sucks for memory usage)

 

[YoitsTmac]

Why are people who have less money expected to also be people who don’t know enough about computers to upgrade them? It’s pretty classist if you think about it

It's a pretty big leap to take my statement of people who don't care to learn hardware specs, and assume I'm referring to people with less money. As someone who did B2B and B2C Mac support (Did 4 years exclusively B2C), I can personally attest that people don't care beyond "I want a good computer." Even asking some people, "how much storage do you need?" can draw a massive blank. This has happened to clients of mine asking for computer recommendations at all income levels.

Haha, by gentle you mean like a prostate exam without anesthesia?

Apple has obscene prices on storage & memory upgrades, and their actual costs for those parts are pennies on the dollar, because they don't even buy ram or SSD modules on PCB's like they used to, now its just bare chips soldered on the motherboard, so the production process is cheap.

8GB ram was made standard a long time ago, its time for a bump.

The OP has a good point. the base model machines are a joke in terms of specs in 2022. It should be minimum 512gb SSD and 16GB ram for these things to be usable into the future without being tossed into a landfill because they can't be upgraded.

I think comments like these are by enthusiasts who can't comprehend the general consumer. The general consumer doesn't go "oh I use 700GB of storage, none of these Apple laptops will work, I have to custom order one!" That customer does exist, but Apple also recognizes a large portion of their customers are businesses looking for the cheapest option or consumers who don't know anything about specs and will grab "a MacBook." Again, there are a ton of people who just stream movies, browse the web and edit documents. My friend is a prime example of this.

Are the prices obscene by most standards? Yes. Are people on this forum still buying them? Yes. I bought (secondhand) an M1 MBA 16/512. At work, I have an M1 16/256. It sounds like the business model works. Everyone here is raging about the SSD and RAM prices, completely ignoring how the M1 and board can be in an iPad Air with a metal shield and touch screen but is suddenly $1k in MacBook Air form.

As for "needing a bump," several people have spoken out that the base configuration is quite fast. And they are somewhat right, that the SSD is now reasonably quick for swap memory for instances where people need to go over 8GB.

If you're upset with the model and the pricing, vote with your wallet. Apple has a clear path, and the writing has been on the wall for over half a decade. They're not reversing course.

 

[coffeemilktea]

I thought the reason a lot of Macs start with tiny 256GB storage was to not-so-subtly push people towards paying for iCloud storage 💸

 

[jdb8167]

I thought the reason a lot of Macs start with tiny 256GB storage was to not-so-subtly push people towards paying for iCloud storage 💸

I'm guessing Apple would much prefer you upgrade to a 512 GB SSD for $200 rather than $2.99/month for 200 GB of iCloud storage. It takes 5 1/2 years to make the same revenue for the iCloud option.

 

[Marsikus]

Moore's law is no more a thing )

 

[Bug-Creator]

I'm guessing Apple would much prefer you upgrade to a 512 GB SSD for $200 rather than $2.99/month for 200 GB of iCloud storage. It takes 5 1/2 years to make the same revenue for the iCloud option.

Sure, but maybe they see iCloud as the entry drug for other subscriptions.

 

[orionquest]

Oh another clickbait, troll post, dump and post for reactions, best of all it's 2 years late.

 

[Falhófnir]

While I'm generally scornful of the idea of 'future-proofing' with computers, at this point I do think it's worth giving some consideration to more RAM if you plan on trying to max out it's useful lifespan. It does feel like we are now in the period where 8GB could become a limitation within the lifetime of these computers.

 

[HiVolt]

If you're upset with the model and the pricing, vote with your wallet. Apple has a clear path, and the writing has been on the wall for over half a decade. They're not reversing course.

I did, I haven't bought a Mac Laptop since the original Intel MacBook, in which I upgraded the hard drive and memory, and replaced a battery.

 

[h.gilbert]

Are you sure, are you really sure? You can view memory pressure on activity monitor. With your usage, I bet you never come close, unless you are one of those leave 100 chrome tabs open all the time (Chrome sucks for memory usage)

Am I sure about what? And what do you bet I've never come close to?

Sorry, don't understand what you're asking here.

 

[Queen6]

I thought the thread title was interesting referring to 2020 Macs as new? Actually it's because of memory bandwidth in AS based Macs such as the M1, the soldered on RAM can cache swap with the soldered on SSD at almost the same speed. So your 8GB RAM if it caches from the SSD is almost same access speed, so you can do most everything only with 8GB. A 256 GB SSD is enough to get by if you don't store much, as 200 GB will hold a lot including the MacOS.

M1 = 68 GB/s
M1 Pro = 200 GB/s
M1 Max = 400 GB/s
M2 = 100 GB/s

I think this is what can drive some be over concerned about necessary memory.

Intel from 2012 around 12.8 GB/s
Intel from 2020 around 29.8 GB/s

Very significant differences, let alone other performance/efficiency improvements with Apple SOC's. Those coming from Intel Mac's don't need to dwell on it too much unless you have a very heavy workflow and RAM hungry Apps, but then you'll know already.

Another factor is if you need to spec up a 13" MBP to get things done you might as well seek out a 14" on a deal. Air's a little different as some just want a passively cooled notebook.

In short if your current Intel Mac is running reasonably on 8GB/16GB the base M1/M2 will be significantly faster. Even in the extreme of a Base M1 8GB Air compared to an Intel 16" i9/64GB which is hardly an everyday comparison, the Air fares very well.

M1 MacBook Pro vs. Intel i9 MacBook Pro - Ultimate Data Science Comparison | Towards Data Science

M1 vs. i9-9880H - performance comparisons with synthetic benchmarks, Python, Numpy, Pandas, and Scikit Learn.

towardsdatascience.com

Q-6

 

[ZebedeeG]

I wonder how many saying that 8gb memory isn't enough in an M1 Mac have actually used one..?

Sure, for some applications and uses it's simply not going to cut it - in which case you can upgrade or get a Pro or Studio with options up to 128gb memory. But I'm finding that for my use case (Lots of applications and tabs open at once) my M1 Air is handling with ease workloads which bought previous intel Macs to their knees with "just" 8gb RAM.

Yeah it uses memory compression and swaps like crazy, but who cares if it smoothly and quickly gets the job done?

I'd bet that a lot of M1 owners have never looked at Activity Monitor or would even know what it's telling them. All they care about is if their machine works.

(My M1 Air SSD TBW after a couple of months use is still less than 1TB. So I don't think it's going to expire anytime soon... Despite a good thrashing!)

 

[sifpilsen]

The speed of the M1 Max ram makes me feel I have double if not 4x of actual(32GB) amount. I have no issues with recommending not going above 32Gb unless you have 8K video workflows or work with software that isn't so well optimised and need to brute force instead.

 

[maxoakland]

It's a pretty big leap to take my statement of people who don't care to learn hardware specs, and assume I'm referring to people with less money. As someone who did B2B and B2C Mac support (Did 4 years exclusively B2C), I can personally attest that people don't care beyond "I want a good computer." Even asking some people, "how much storage do you need?" can draw a massive blank. This has happened to clients of mine asking for computer recommendations at all income levels.

My point is, why are low end consumers expected to just accept the hardware as it is when they purchase it? Low end consumers aren’t given credit for wanting to upgrade, even though that would be best for low end consumers. It used to be possible to upgrade your Mac’s RAM and storage after purchase and it was a lot cheaper

 

[Yebubbleman]

Can’t fix my 2011 mac. Might be forced to buy new or used.

Why do the 2020/21 Macs only have 8gb ram and 256gb drives? What on earth can you do with 8gb and 256gb.
My 2011 has 16gb and 1tb.

Can all Of these new models be upgraded easily?

The only 2020 Mac model that you can upgrade the RAM on easily is the 2020 27-inch iMac. Find one of those with 8GB of RAM and then go to your favorite aftermarket RAM vendor and up that sucker as high as your wallet can afford.

Otherwise, yeah, all M1 and M2 Macs start with a base RAM capacity of 8GB. You CAN get by on 8GB of RAM on an M1 Mac. I never recommend anyone do that for their primary Mac, but for secondary Macs, it's plenty fine. I have an army of M1 Macs (mainly MacBook Airs, but there's one iMac in the mix too) that all have the 7 GPU core variant of M1 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. I mainly use them for testing purposes. Totally fine for those use cases. However, on the M1 13" MacBook Pro that I'm actually serious about using, I'm rocking the 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD combo (and the full 8 GPU cores since Apple Silicon versions of the 13-inch MacBook Pro don't seem to give you any GPU options other than the maximum amount).

 

[VaruLV]

Apple being Apple, I wouldnt be surprised their next step up in RAM would be 12GB of base level. SSD, could be either 512 or 384GB.

 

[Queen6]

My point is, why are low end consumers expected to just accept the hardware as it is when they purchase it? Low end consumers aren’t given credit for wanting to upgrade, even though that would be best for low end consumers. It used to be possible to upgrade your Mac’s RAM and storage after purchase and it was a lot cheaper

Easy the meaning of numbers has changed as has the design and production process. Even the base models are devastatingly fast...

Q-6

 

[NO🇳🇴]

Easy the meaning of numbers has changed as has the design and production process. Even the base models are devastatingly fast...

Q-6

The only "crime" committed by apple is the decision to deliver the base air/pro with 1x250gb instead of 2x128 in RAID halving the speed of the base model SSD. But then again they just started delivering products with binned processors so was probably going to happen eventually lol.

And honestly its been pretty fun maxing out the machine and not really noticing it! Intel days are over...
8gb ram and Virtual Memory is enough for most imo.

 

[Queen6]

The only "crime" committed by apple is the decision to deliver the base air/pro with 1x250gb instead of 2x128 in RAID halving the speed of the base model SSD. But then again they just started delivering products with binned processors so was probably going to happen eventually lol.

And honestly its been pretty fun maxing out the machine and not really noticing it! Intel days are over...
8gb ram and Virtual Memory is enough for most imo.

I initially thought the same, but unless you're coming from a very heavily utilised M1 13" MBP/Mini very much doubt the average user will see any slowdown. Duel Nand is a factor.... I don't like it but is overall ok for the expected usage of the base model Air.

Being seeing posts from all the "experts" that 8GB is inadequate for over a decade, memory bandwidth; Intel MBP from 2012 around 12.8 GB/s, Intel MBP 2020 around 29.8 GB/s, Apple Silicon 2022 68 GB/s LOL, hence why 8GB remains the standard...

All this 16GB minimum is sheer nonsense propagated by those who know no better the math proves. This W10 17" has 32GB RAM as it runs complex engineering applications for that reason. 2021 base model 13" MBP easily shows it up in day to day use...

Q-6

 

[maxoakland]

Easy the meaning of numbers has changed as has the design and production process. Even the base models are devastatingly fast...

Q-6

They don’t have adequate storage or RAM, especially not for the kind of long term use someone with less income will need

Stop trying to defend these bad practices. You clearly don’t have any experience with this and you’re just trying to shill for no good reason