There is an important difference between general advice and an individual assessment. The latter may vary over time so the former steps in if you can't forsee the future. Also, my answer concerned models that are not upgradeable when it comes to RAM. Not the model mentioned in the reply I quoted.
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Why is everybody so obsessed with RAM?
- Thread starter iHorseHead
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When you buy a Mac you get a top-notch processor but an amount of RAM more suited for 2014 than for today's world.
Yes, the OS and SSD handle 8GB very well, so you often barely notice your lack of RAM. But this is not really a sustainable situation. We need at least some redundancy if we want to keep on using these Macs until 2027 and beyond.
Yes, the OS and SSD handle 8GB very well, so you often barely notice your lack of RAM. But this is not really a sustainable situation. We need at least some redundancy if we want to keep on using these Macs until 2027 and beyond.
I have several (extended) family members who has MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros and iMacs with 8Gb of RAM without any problems. They are in the age group 65+ (retired) or 17-23 (students).
They use Word, PowerPoint, Teams (the students during the pandemic), Photos, Preview and Safari.
Safari is used for Gmail/Hotmail, Youtube, Facebook (for the older people), e-learning system (the students), and just browsing regular websites for information. Some of the students might occasionally use iMovie for creating a small video for a school project.
The PDFs are not huge or complex. The Office documents are simple. The e-learning system is almost only used to get assignments, texts and store files for the teacher and is not very resource heavy.
None of them have the habits of having tens, if not hundreds, of tabs open in Safari.
The older people close their applications when they're done with them.
You are wrong. SSDs can only write so many times. The more you write to it, the more life you lose. SSDs can have shorter lifespans than spinning disks if they are accessed too frequently. I’ve seen plenty of Macs go into the recycling bin at our office for premature SSD failure. Apple only needs them to last 3 years as that is the lifecycle they operate on.
Impressive. Is it the CPU or BUS speed the limiting factor usually behind ram size limitation?And longevity.
It's not supported by Apple and can't run modern apps. If Apple drops your computer they drop your computer.
Was briefly flirting with the idea of my MBP 5,3 C2D having 16GB (currently 8GB) but OWC has stated in email that it just won't work on my patched system running 10.15.7
MacBook Pro M1 Max 64 GB Gigachad here that uses every byte. This is basically a bait template thread that pops up every few months whether the given OP in rotation intends for it to be or not.
The guy that works with one file open in an editor, 10 browser tabs, and tracking speed set to slow gives their anecdote praising 8GB and the next guy that works with a render, 300 browser tabs open, an IDE, and all manners of software running (desktop and CLI) gives a sermon about 128GB being a minimal requirement (bonus: references to 'futureproofing'). This is often accompanied by each side judging and critiquing each other's workflow for some reason.
Apple are selling 128GB M1 Ultra chips for a reason and it's certainly not just because people like childishly bragging about high RAM counts and system specs to people online, something that I would absolutely never do.
The guy that works with one file open in an editor, 10 browser tabs, and tracking speed set to slow gives their anecdote praising 8GB and the next guy that works with a render, 300 browser tabs open, an IDE, and all manners of software running (desktop and CLI) gives a sermon about 128GB being a minimal requirement (bonus: references to 'futureproofing'). This is often accompanied by each side judging and critiquing each other's workflow for some reason.
Apple are selling 128GB M1 Ultra chips for a reason and it's certainly not just because people like childishly bragging about high RAM counts and system specs to people online, something that I would absolutely never do.
This is standard behavior on Windows though and i haven't heard an uproar of angry users with trashed SSDs.
My old SSD equipped Win 7 laptop served me well from 2010 until now with no problems at all, including the SSD and it could still serve me well for browsing the internet, or photo editing tasks.
I have never seen SSDs fail in numbers at the companies I consult for. In fact, going from HDD to SSD resultated in problems with disks going to almost zero.
I have never seen an SSD fail in a Mac for any person I have known and almost all of them have 8Gb of RAM. I consider them extremely reliable.
A stress test conducted by Heise showed premium SSDs to support 2-9000 Tb written to them. And this was back in 2016/17.
SSD-Langzeittest beendet: Exitus bei 9,1 Petabyte
Am 23. Juni 2016 starteten wir einen SSD-Langzeittest, um zu ermitteln, wie lange die schnellen Flash-Laufwerke wirklich halten. Fast auf den Tag genau ein Jahr später hat sich das letzte Laufwerk verabschiedet – nach 9,1 PByte an geschriebenen Daten.
‘Normal’ people don’t have a problem with 8gb. It’s easily enough for general computing in this day and age. Unless you need more to run hefty apps, at which point you know you need more.
They do fail, but the amount of failures is smaller versus HDD failures.I have never seen SSDs fail in numbers at the companies I consult for. In fact, going from HDD to SSD resultated in problems with disks going to almost zero.
I have never seen an SSD fail in a Mac for any person I have known and almost all of them have 8Gb of RAM. I consider them extremely reliable.
A stress test conducted by Heise showed premium SSDs to support 2-9000 Tb written to them. And this was back in 2016/17.
SSD-Langzeittest beendet: Exitus bei 9,1 Petabyte
Am 23. Juni 2016 starteten wir einen SSD-Langzeittest, um zu ermitteln, wie lange die schnellen Flash-Laufwerke wirklich halten. Fast auf den Tag genau ein Jahr später hat sich das letzte Laufwerk verabschiedet – nach 9,1 PByte an geschriebenen Daten.www.heise.de
Because people on the internet have issues. Severe issues.
Most of the people who complain about 8 GB of RAM don't even any personal experience. They are just internet whackos looking for an easy target to bitch about.
8 GB is more than enough to power their bitching on the internet. The people who need more than 8 GB...most of them are not spending time commenting on Macrumors.
My 2013 MacBook Air came with 8gb of ram. Can’t imagine buying one a decade later with 8gb, at this price.
I agree completely. I know I will go for 16GB, but I also know it's for nothing but peace of mind and a thinner wallet. I do not need it. My use is real lean, I never, ever run more than three Safari tabs open, often just the one, and always close applications when I'm done with them. I guess I like spending money needlessly. Yup, I'm old. S
bought a base M1 MBA a couple months ago and am perfectly fine with it. but i'm not sloppy and don't have 30+ browser tabs open while doing Blender plus Photo Shop.
having said that: if i didn't already have a main system with 16GB of RAM i would have taken 16Gigs as well in my MBA
on top of that, i'm not sure how much more RAM future OSes will use, so 8Gigs is actually quite tight, but perfectly doable atm even for somewhat more demanding tasks if you are careful what you are doing (and don't plan to render Hollywood quality CGI movies, where indeed as much RAM as possible matters)
having said that: if i didn't already have a main system with 16GB of RAM i would have taken 16Gigs as well in my MBA
on top of that, i'm not sure how much more RAM future OSes will use, so 8Gigs is actually quite tight, but perfectly doable atm even for somewhat more demanding tasks if you are careful what you are doing (and don't plan to render Hollywood quality CGI movies, where indeed as much RAM as possible matters)
That’s our only choice?! 😎
Users are either the type who only run a “few web pages, mail, and YouTube” OR they are heavy-duty pros?
The percentage of Mac owners who “open 100 channels with delay, space designer and EQ in Logic“ has to be tiny.
You've left out several groups of Mac owners who are not casual or light users, but use their Macs in pretty sophisticated ways with just 8 GB of RAM!
Those who do word processing, even of large documents, work with spreadsheets, including pretty sizable databases, and engage in extensive graphing can do just fine with 8 GB.
Even many who do desktop publishing, run stat packages, conduct data analyses, use astronomy programs, etc. have gotten by comfortably with 8 GB of memory on old Intel Macs. They'll do wonderfully well doing the same tasks on 8 GB Silicon Macs.
So, it's simply not the case that anything beyond email, a few web pages, and YouTube *requires* 16 GB! It clearly doesn't!
But, spending an extra $200 to get it is a no-brainer if someone has a concern. Or, they could get a different type of peace of mind and put that money into Apple Care instead! Or, just get both!
It seems that FUD generates a lot of revenue for Apple!
Totally agree.
IOW: You have to know your environment and the applications you need to accomplish your workflow. I've tried practically every operating system, email client, browser, office suite and notes app until I found my OS and set of applications that work like my mind works to do what I need it to do.
EDIT: I can do this in 8 GB of RAM [on a Mac; If I was on Windows 10, I'd need 16 GB].
Another's workflow with the apps he/she needs may take much more RAM. No shame on either side.
Everyone's needs are different, but most people don't have the time, inclination or money to do that level of research. For me, it was a hobby until it had to become a business.
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This much is true. We just get a proper PC and get the job done.
I run both systems. The PC to do heavy lifting and grunt work. The MacBook Air is my mobile offsite machine because of how efficient they are. I'm not going to lock myself into an either or situation when I can use the best of both worlds and use both to their strengths.
That memory pressure is so weird in that it weighs system speed the most. 38GB used by photoshop along with a whopping 18gb swap and only 11% pressure. The OS rather page out tens of gigabytes onto the SSD, potentially shortening its lifespan vs alerting the user that memory is running low and swap is being relied on so heavily.
A friend's macbook SSD died from too many writes as they had 24gb+ of swap on 8gb physical RAM and the memory pressure was still green!
Agreed with your assessment. Normally that's what I recommend. If you are using a Swap above 1GB already on day to day tasks, I'll always recommend you up to the next tier budget allowing.I'm not obsessed with RAM but noticed my 8GB work computer was using 4GB+ of swapFor personal computer, I have a 8 GB M1 Mini and a fairly new 14" M1 w/ 16GB (since it came with it).
100% depends on how much you use it. For normal uses - not a concern...
For power users though - if you have a 1 TB SSD with a TBW of 500, you could burn through that incredibly quickly (in a year or two) if you hit swap a lot. However, if you hit swap that much you can probably afford a bit of extra ram.
6 years on with an 8GB MBP that gets used everyday for hours and always has stuff in swap. Terabytes Written is only 32TB.
Don't worry about using swap lol.
In Activity Monitor? That’s 32TB since your last reboot, not 32TB over the life of the machine.