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Why do you need more than 8 GB RAM in a MacBook Pro?
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While there is some truth to that, that is not a universal truth. It's hard for people to know something until they've actually tried it.
Also, your statement gets repeated every single year in these forums, although the number is different. People used to say "Those who really need 8 GB will already know it. Those that are wondering if they do probably do not need it."
I know you said "probably", but it should be noted Apple does sell a few 4 GB non-laptop Macs and 4 GB refurbs. Whether they know they need 8 GB or not, I would never recommend any new user buy a 4 GB Mac in 2017.
I mean completely different RAM technologies, significantly faster BUS speeds, significantly faster SSD's, just everything. You're looking at a single metric instead of the overarching improvements. To say 8GB is a functional minimum is just wrong, 2GB would be the minimum required for the system, 8GB is the minimum for a professional grade computer. I get if you don't understand and stuff and I kind of can't be bothered to argue or anything. What I said isn't misleading, it's trying to simplify a complicated subject, if you can simplify it better then please go ahead. If you don't fully understand the topic beyond your own observation based on a 10 year old system having 4GB/8GB of RAM then maybe someone can post some links to help you if you're willing to learn.
Otherwise I'm bailing, not wanting to go around in circles or get geeky about RAM. Suffice to say 8GB is absolutely plenty.
I personally do not, as my laptop work isn’t very intensive and doesn’t require VM’s or anything like that. The most intensive tasks I do are maybe using Thinkorswim (unoptimized 
) and matlab. For 90% if people, 8GB will be fine but if 16GB is standard or a cheap option it would still make sense if you are keeping the machine for a while. I’ve had my 13” MBPr for 3.5+ years now and it’s still running great. That said, I did get the 8Gb instead of the standard 4Gb at the time. It’s got another 2-3 years left in it as my main laptop.
) and matlab. For 90% if people, 8GB will be fine but if 16GB is standard or a cheap option it would still make sense if you are keeping the machine for a while. I’ve had my 13” MBPr for 3.5+ years now and it’s still running great. That said, I did get the 8Gb instead of the standard 4Gb at the time. It’s got another 2-3 years left in it as my main laptop.8gb is the sweet spot of ram amount that is good enough for any productivity or gaming etc. Even you stick with 8gb, it will last you for 5 years or more easily.
if u do run VMs or edit videos or photos then 16gb is good as well.
if u do run VMs or edit videos or photos then 16gb is good as well.
You're digging the hole here deeper for yourself here, 2 GB is just functionally unusable in the real world with the current version of macOS. Just about anyone with any experience with these machines and current OSes will tell you the same thing of course. Improvements in various technologies does not change this truth.
The simple answer, which also happens to be the truth is you want 8 GB minimum and that 8 GB is also good for most users, but there is a significant chunk of users that can benefit from 16 GB, whether they know it or not. I would never recommend a 4 GB Mac for anyone in 2017 unless they were broke and the RAM were user upgradable, even though Apple still sells a few 4 GB Macs.
I am on the verge of buying a MBP and having a dilemma on whether I should get 16GB RAM. I am doing coding, music production, and some graphic editing. I think the activity that demands more RAM for me is browsing using Chrome (Safari seems faster nowadays? I am on ElCapitan) and music production.
I kinda believe that 8GB nowadays might be a little bit than 8GB 5 years ago. What about DDR3 vs DDR4? Is 8GB DDR3 == 8GB DDR4? What about bus speed? Is 8GB 1333MHz RAM == 8GB 800MHz RAM?
Latency is x1000. Actual sustained read/write is closer to x30 currently. While having adequate physical RAM to maintain optimal system performance is just as important as ever, the SSD is able to step in using VM, and with SSD speeds getting 2GB/s and higher, you can move a lot of memory around very fast.
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What some of you keep missing is that you're the 5% who notice these things. Most users just aren't that finely tuned to a moments latency when switching apps, etc. I work in offices and with many people using computers out in the field, and hardly anyone knows anything about their computer. That's what makes all of this so laughable to people who are actually out in the real-world seeing how typical users and "pros" actually use their computers. It's like if everyone here thought that delivery truck drivers spent all their time discussing the nuances of truck engines.
So if people want to discuss specs all day long, have at it. And when someone comes to a computer forum seeking advice, that already puts them into a niche of users who would even bother posting on a computer forum, so you've got to figure they're a little more sensitive/concerned about it then most people (most people just seek advice from friend/colleague/Apple employee or are just taking what's given to them at work). But "pros" who literally make a living with their Mac shouldn't be wasting their time on a computer forum over $200 - just get the RAM.
However, most of the people who post these questions have limited funds (mostly students posting, or people in areas of the world where tech is still relatively expensive) and so you try to find a reasonable recommendation based on reality. Sometimes that means you really need 16GB, but most of the time, they'll be fine with 8GB.
That's a pretty big and inaccurate assumption on your part. Just because someone asks the question doesn't mean s/he's a poor student who can't spend $200 more for twice the RAM. Many just don't know, including pros, and even pros don't like spending money if it's not necessary. For example, I had a friend who has designed websites for companies like Nike and Pizza Hut who used to me ask me spec questions like this all the time. He doesn't anymore now because now he knows better, but he didn't always have that knowledge.
Instead of just making such assumptions, it's more reasonable to actually find out what they plan on doing with their laptops, and how long they will keep them.
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Reading comprehension fail 101. I guess you just like to argue and lecture people.
The ironic thing is that I agree with a lot of what you've been saying (you're the one who keeps suggesting were at such odds), but what really got me started was how you kept putting down car analogies.
Latency is only one aspect, and latency issues will depend on the data sizes/types random vs sequential.
There is no one answer i think thats what most of us are pointing out, but SSDs be that SATA, NVME, 3DX point are not a replacement for RAM. Same can be said with fusion drives, they don't solve the issue of HDDs, they simply use a cache to have the cheap capacity benefits of traditional rotational drives while providing some of the benefits of SSDs performance.
All systems have 4 bottle necks and the trick is to balance those 4, in order to provide optimal value and performance.
4GB might seem tight today, but you will be surprise what 4GB can do.
I had an 11" Macbook Air with just 4GB of RAM. I managed to run it with a cinema display, and have Chrome with dozens of tabs open, and also multiple instances of Excel, without skipping a beat. And this is an old 2013 machine. Oh, and I have run Lightroom and also FCPX on this thing. I would think a more normal usage scenario would find 8GB to be adequate.
I feel like most users still have bad memories of Windows machines with the less efficient use of RAM (Remember Vista?).
I know exactly what 4 GB can do. I'm typing on a High Sierra 4 GB MacBook right now.
However, I would never recommend 4 GB on a new/refurb Mac purchase, esp. if the memory couldn't be easily upgraded, because 4 GB can be quite limiting even for relatively light users.
Heh. Funny you should mention that though. I will likely buy another iPhone when it gets 4 GB RAM.With 4GB you could nearly run an iPhone
Theres a reason apple don't sell laptops with 4GB anymore.. and its nothing to do with windows.
1 GB is a big problem. 2 GB is OK but not ideal. 3 GB is pretty good for iOS 11, but if I'm buying a new phone I may as well get one that will last me without significant memory-related lag for a few years. For a hypothetical iPhone XI Plus, that would mean 4+ GB RAM to replace my current iPhone 7 Plus with 3 GB RAM.
otoh if you give it to a dev he will take it. Remember text editors that ran in 20k? Of course you don't.
Speaking of which, I was just surfing MacRumors right now on this 4 GB machine, and doing nothing else except checking some other websites at the same time, and all of a sudden I started getting beachballs. I was like "WTF? I'm just surfing". I had a bunch of Safari windows open, but not a huge number of them - single digit number.
I looked at my dock and I saw that I had iTunes, Activity Monitor, and Photoshop CS6 loaded as well, but none of those apps were actually being actively used. For Photoshop, there were no images loaded. I had quit the window but hadn't actually closed the application down.
Turns out I as using over 1 GB of swap, and one website - TechRadar - was using over a GB of RAM:
http://www.techradar.com/how-to/com...ss-test-your-mac-with-the-yes-command-1305734
Maybe it was a memory leak involving one of the ads or something, but I didn't have the page open that long actually.
In any case, some of this may be related to coding issues on the page visited, and if there hadn't been issues with it, then I wouldn't have encountered this problem. OTOH, with 8 GB RAM and this type of usage, I won't hit the swap and I won't get the beachballs regardless. Having more RAM hides a lot issues with bloated / leaky code or whatever.
When I put 4 GB of RAM into my 2011 Early MacBook Pro and start up the machine Activity Monitor shows yellow memory pressure. But I am using 8 GB and I see yellow in memory pressure only when using too much applications.
I think everyone should be forced to use the Raspberry Pi for a month with it's 1Gb RAM for general computing. After that experience in religious browser tab management, 8Gb will seem like a total luxury!
Kidding aside, 8Gb should be fine for most tasks, outside of development, heavier video/image editing, or pro music. Having said that, if you have the money, and are planning on keeping the laptop for a while, 16Gb makes more sense because it will simply support newer software/OSes better, and because of resale value. If it was upgradable, it would've been a moot point, unfortunately what you buy is what you get.
Kidding aside, 8Gb should be fine for most tasks, outside of development, heavier video/image editing, or pro music. Having said that, if you have the money, and are planning on keeping the laptop for a while, 16Gb makes more sense because it will simply support newer software/OSes better, and because of resale value. If it was upgradable, it would've been a moot point, unfortunately what you buy is what you get.
RAM is one of those that does not help if you get more if you DONT NEED IT. A computer with 8 GB of RAM just using Microsoft Office will NOT benefit from having 16-128GB. My work desktop only has 6 GB of RAM. My work laptop has 16 GB of RAM. There is no difference for what I use at work.
Now my side job I have 128 GB due to Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and dozens of windows open. .
Now my side job I have 128 GB due to Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and dozens of windows open. .
There has been a lot of cruft removed from both Windows and MacOS in the past 10 years, however you can’t optimise requirements down zero and the size of DATA has exploded. CPUs also have more cores which means you can run more at a time which needs more RAM.
Having my OS take 1-2 GB to run properly instead of 3-4 GB or whatever is a drop in the ocean when i’m running 30+ gigabytes (RAM consumption) of virtual machines, router simulations, dealing 4k video, etc. One of my applications (VIRL) requires 8 GB as a bare minimum.
The whole “but macOS is more efficient! i have no idea how you could need more than X GB of RAM!” thing needs to die.
If you don’t need more than 4-8 GB you could most likely get away with an iPad.
Some people do stuff that needs plenty more RAM than what apple offer.
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Very much doubt that. As far as gaming goes, star citizen ran like a total dog with only 8 GB of RAM.
Given price vs performance, vs system total BOM, 16 GB is currently the sweet spot - if you’re able to buy your own RAM modules.
Having my OS take 1-2 GB to run properly instead of 3-4 GB or whatever is a drop in the ocean when i’m running 30+ gigabytes (RAM consumption) of virtual machines, router simulations, dealing 4k video, etc. One of my applications (VIRL) requires 8 GB as a bare minimum.
The whole “but macOS is more efficient! i have no idea how you could need more than X GB of RAM!” thing needs to die.
If you don’t need more than 4-8 GB you could most likely get away with an iPad.
Some people do stuff that needs plenty more RAM than what apple offer.
[doublepost=1506648719][/doublepost]
Very much doubt that. As far as gaming goes, star citizen ran like a total dog with only 8 GB of RAM.
Given price vs performance, vs system total BOM, 16 GB is currently the sweet spot - if you’re able to buy your own RAM modules.