in that case you need ram, i got 45 tabs open plus electron apps like zoom, team, slack. on top of that ms office, right now i'm pushing 53gb ram.
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Why do people still say that MacBook Air is not good for serious work?
- Thread starter bearinthetown
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I can absolutely do “serious work” on a Macbook Air - and have done so in the past (I have an older Intel model and now I’m thinking about this M2 version).
The major limitation to me is not the performance of the machine, which is good, but the size of its screen. Now with Sidecar I can also use my big iPad for a dual-monitor setup, but I still find it better to use a larger primary screen.
The major limitation to me is not the performance of the machine, which is good, but the size of its screen. Now with Sidecar I can also use my big iPad for a dual-monitor setup, but I still find it better to use a larger primary screen.
Well, then you have a problem since very few laptops in the enterprise is bought with 64Gb of RAM.
I can do my professional work on Macs and Windows machines with 8Gb of RAM, although 16Gb is better. Even with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and a web browser open, my memory pressure is till green with 16Gb of RAM and I have more than 3 Gb of free memory. If I had less memory, the applications would also have used less memory.
The enterprise I consult for has about 3000 PCs and Macs in their network. Until this year, about 80% of the PCs had 8Gb of RAM. Only this year, you can get models with 16Gb of RAM without applying for an exception. And still the default low-end model being a Lenovo T14 Gen 3 with 8gb of RAM.
This is leaning more towards an example of poor resource management, rather than a reason to buy a machine with max RAM.
Oh yeah you know my job so much better than me right? 😂
You can call it whatever you want, I call it making efficient use of my time, rather than closing and reopening tabs every time I go into a different meeting, 64gb allows me the option to just switch different window when I meet with different departments
My entire office has 8-16gb, only me and one other senior management has 32gb + since I use this for my work and personal, 64gb makes the most sense
Doesn't really matter what your job is. But judging from your reply, or lack thereof, you already knew that.
45 tabs open is just laziness. No other explanation.
lack of reply for what, you didn't give much to reply to, but you already knew that.
sure buddy sure, just because you never had a gig that covers alot of fields and department, doesn't mean these of us who has that workflow automatically falls under your presumptuous category.
also, its not nice to come off with such arrogant tone, you are literally judging on face value 😂
edit: btw, 45 tabs is nothing, when i was in law school half of my class regularly had 50-60 tabs, even more before finals week.
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Just because a person can use up over 32gb ram doesn't mean they need it? Usually that is for specific work flows not browser tabs but I have nonidea what you do and am not judging your use case. It is certainly nice to have and not worry about it though.
Maybe a person who justifies their use of ram and applications can get by with less?
I have no idea. Just an observation.
Anyway it is good you and the other manager are afforded such privileges.
Have a great day.
You've still yet to explain why someone who says they work primarily with Word/Excel documents & Teams, like the above poster stated, would need a machine maxed out with RAM. That's just flat out inaccurate, no matter how you try to spin it.
Touting your own workflow as a reason, doesn't mean anything to the other poster. Having the available RAM to have 50 tabs open, doesn't mean it's a good use of resources & would be a complete waste for most people, including the person you initially responded to.
There are numerous programs/apps for organization, maybe you should try one. Sounds like you're just extremely unorganized & trying to pass off having max RAM as a need to mask the issue.
you need better reading comprehension, i said more ram, not max ram.
thanks but i'll be the judge of my own workflow, if it means i get to work more efficiently and get stuffs done faster by having tabs open instead of closing and opening it, i can live with that.
sounds like you don't know what you're talking about and trying to pass off as someone more knowledgeable than me at my own job, which is hilarious to me 😂
unorganized? thats the best you got for insult? mate i got my tabs organized by date relevance follow by departments.
...which is why it's pointless to act like there's something called "serious" or "professional" work that defines how many CPU and GPU cores, how much RAM, how many Thunderbolt ports you need etc.
It's ridiculous that browser tabs eat as much resources as they do but that's the reality - complaints on a postcard to modern web design. Personally, I think I could contrive not to have 50 open tabs (which sounds like using tabs to do the job of bookmarks) - but I can see how some workflows could end up that way, especially if you're dealing with sites that don't allow accurate bookmarking.
It's relatively rare for a task to be flat impossible with more modest specs - just slower - so if you think having 64GB of RAM to do your job efficiently - for whatever reason - then you can look up the price of getting that (quite high with Mac now since you need a M1 Max) and decide for yourself whether the efficiency justifies the expenditure.
...but then that assumes that you have the money to spend (or adequate credit) and don't have to convince a bean counter (...and if you work in an organisation of any size, that will be the bean counter from procurement and won't give a fig about how much of payroll's budget you waste by having inadequate equipment). So being able to justify equipment costs based on time savings isn't a luxury that everybody enjoys.
I think the reality of the MacBook Air is that - unlike the ultra-low-power Intel chips used in previous Airs - it is quite well-endowed with CPU power, even with reasonable multi-threaded performance, and the GPU is "good enough" to have a go at most tasks (it's not spectacular, but blows away any other low-power integrated GPU). It can certainly do a lot more than previous Airs. However, it doesn't improve the RAM capacity, external display support and number of I/O ports (OK - better Thunderbolt bandwidth, still only 2 ports) which are the other reasons that you might need a so-called "pro" machine.
With Intel there was always a progression of raw single-core performance as you "upgraded" from the ultra-mobile chips (Air etc.), through the regular mobile ones (MBP) to the desktop chips - and also as you want from i3 to i9 within any of those ranges. With M1, there's only really one single-core CPU performance across the range from MacBook Air to Studio Ultra - same for GPU (...and this will probably still be true once the M2 cores have rolled out across the range) apart from slightly better performance on models with better cooling. The "M1pro/max/ultra" model performance is much more about how many cores (...and not all workflows can take advantage of more cores) - so the other "pro/max/ultra" features - more RAM, more ports, more displays - are a bigger part of the equation. I'm sure that there are workflows that really need the 128GB RAM capacity of the Ultra yet leave 3/4 of the 20 cores sitting idle.
bean counter approve only 32gb cost, for 64gb they will cover for 50%, i decided to just purchase it under my llc so i save more than what my company will give me. after tax deduct i'm looking at 2300 usd.
yes you are correct, i have several tabs open as a bookmark since some of the tabs aren't exactly websites, but directories, in the past bookmarking these directories always send me to the wrong place so i decided just keep them open for convenience sake. and yes, my workflow is quite unique within my company, only one other senior management, who manages R&D and logistics, has similar workflow as i do.
similarly i had the same workflow on my 64gb pc, and i was only using 20gb of ram. i didn't have this ram ballooning issue until i updated to monterey, while on catalina my 45 tabs only clocked in at 14gb.
90% of time i don't need the m1 max processing power, however i do need it when i overview the marketing materials when they send me something that i want to edit on the fly, thats when the m1 max really comes in clutch.
Takes quite a bit longer to render some things compared to bigger stations. And the base 8GB model isn't suitable for having a lot of different adobe apps with multiple projects each open at the same time, also base 256GB isn't enough scratch disc for that long term either.
A comprehensive and concise review that touches all the bases.