If you know why RAM vs SWAP is a factor in what you do then you are not complaining you are purchasing appropriately. Otherwise, everyone else is just complaining.
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Why is everybody so obsessed with RAM?
- Thread starter iHorseHead
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If you know why RAM vs SWAP is a factor in what you do then you are not complaining you are purchasing appropriately. Otherwise, everyone else is just complaining.
It's even a. factor on servers with 64GB. Even with 16GB MBP's and it'll take years to use all of the swap.
I still love my 2015 13" though, it does only have 8Gb but it works fine. I have a 8Gb M1 and I have never noticed it preforming slow even when pressure gets it into yellow and it starts swapping. My next machine will be 16Gb tho, I think 8 as a base has run its course.
If thats what you using and it serves your need, you’re lucky, but average projects with 100 channels is normal for me… sure you can bounce channels, but it kill the work flow.
You can also try it in garageBand, im guessing the result will be the same…
As for swap, this should be use in emergency cases, not in day to day usage.
With the M2 MBA prices, 16GB should be standard, while keeping the old M1 MBA with 8GB.
8GB is still more than enough for a lot of people who use their MacBooks for "a bit of everything". Especially now given the power of Apple Silicon and speed of the SSDs.
There was a really good post on here which went in to great detail to explain exactly how you could understand the different information your Mac can give you about memory usage as there is more to it than meets the eye.
More memory is always good, but not everyone needs 16GB RAM or will even see the benefit of it depending on their workload.
Go back 5/6 years to the release of the TouchBar Macs and you'll see the same posts there from people saying 8GB RAM is unacceptable and your MacBook will be useless in a few years time.
There was a really good post on here which went in to great detail to explain exactly how you could understand the different information your Mac can give you about memory usage as there is more to it than meets the eye.
More memory is always good, but not everyone needs 16GB RAM or will even see the benefit of it depending on their workload.
Go back 5/6 years to the release of the TouchBar Macs and you'll see the same posts there from people saying 8GB RAM is unacceptable and your MacBook will be useless in a few years time.
Nice try, Tim Cook, but you won’t convince me £1250 M2 MBA with 8gb ram is acceptable.
A friend of mine bought 8gm M1 MBP 13 when it just became available and when watching a movie a message in safari came up saying this tab is using too much ram and can slow done the computer.
Some time ago, there was thread here about a guy not able to do his law exam because it kept crushing while on his 8gb machine. His dads much older and less powerful 16 gb machine worked fine. Sure, it’s an optimisation problem, but from user perspective it does not matter why something is not working. When paying £1.5k for a laptop I expect it to work flawlessly for every task.
That’s exactly the problem, you can probably survive with 8gb, but it should not be the case with devices as expensive as macs. When even basic tasks like watching a movie or doing an exam strain a 8gb computer, not to mention heavier workloads, getting 16 gb is very reasonable.
A friend of mine bought 8gm M1 MBP 13 when it just became available and when watching a movie a message in safari came up saying this tab is using too much ram and can slow done the computer.
Some time ago, there was thread here about a guy not able to do his law exam because it kept crushing while on his 8gb machine. His dads much older and less powerful 16 gb machine worked fine. Sure, it’s an optimisation problem, but from user perspective it does not matter why something is not working. When paying £1.5k for a laptop I expect it to work flawlessly for every task.
That’s exactly the problem, you can probably survive with 8gb, but it should not be the case with devices as expensive as macs. When even basic tasks like watching a movie or doing an exam strain a 8gb computer, not to mention heavier workloads, getting 16 gb is very reasonable.
That doesn't mean anything. I remember my teacher had a MacBook with 16GB of RAM and he got the same message on Safari.
I haven't received such message awhile. That doesn't mean absolutely anything.
You do know I was talking about my MacBook Pro mid 2010 and the problem was the ancient CPU rather than RAM.
I just checked my memory usage:
Good thing I've got 32GB ram! Except.... this is what it looks like on my mac after CLOSING ALL APPS! (except for some taskbar processes going on).
The machine had not been rebooted for 8 days, so I rebooted and waited for a couple of minutes. Now it looks like this, again with no apps open yet...
So it's not surprising that people are worried about RAM if they have not been advised to pay attention ONLY to the memory pressure chart, and not much else.
Good thing I've got 32GB ram! Except.... this is what it looks like on my mac after CLOSING ALL APPS! (except for some taskbar processes going on).
The machine had not been rebooted for 8 days, so I rebooted and waited for a couple of minutes. Now it looks like this, again with no apps open yet...
So it's not surprising that people are worried about RAM if they have not been advised to pay attention ONLY to the memory pressure chart, and not much else.
Several reasons.
1. People like to complain especially about something Apple does.
2. Most of the people giving advice here are tech nerds or a few are just repeating what they've heard/ read. Many are giving advice based on their use case.
If my mom was to make an account here asking how much RAM she needed for the new MacBook Air people would instantly say 16 GB or more. They wouldn't ask what she does with it. She might have five tabs open at once on Safari and that's it! Buying 16 GB of RAM for her would be like taking two $100 and setting them on fire. It's the same with the PC gaming community. If you ask they will say 32 GB of RAM minimum. No just no
8GB baseline is laughable, good on apple for keeping the "starting from" price lower and pocketing that extra two hundred for the inevitable ram upgrade.
Considering most software is written within everso high and higher level frameworks, that bring forth quite the overhead, as soon as you venture outside of software written by apple (who actually have to optimize stuff) you'll see the performance cost add-up quite quickly.
That being said, I do share the complacency displayed by some of the 8GB heralds.
In the era of tech youtubers using benchmarks to milk yet another generic piece of "content", one could get cynical really fast. Moreso when the general public comes to accept certain requirements based on subjective bias driven by monetary incentive.
Considering most software is written within everso high and higher level frameworks, that bring forth quite the overhead, as soon as you venture outside of software written by apple (who actually have to optimize stuff) you'll see the performance cost add-up quite quickly.
That being said, I do share the complacency displayed by some of the 8GB heralds.
In the era of tech youtubers using benchmarks to milk yet another generic piece of "content", one could get cynical really fast. Moreso when the general public comes to accept certain requirements based on subjective bias driven by monetary incentive.
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I worked at Adobe 20 years ago. Everyone knew that Adobe refused to optimize its apps, and that Photoshop and Premiere could run on much slower systems if they would just trash the old code. It was never worthwhile to the company, they preferred to add new features. So? Yes, coders should optimize their code for lower-end machines. They often don’t. End users have no control over that end of the production line. So folks are forced to buy more powerful machines. I don’t love it when people in threads are challenging other folks’ strategies for using their computers, it really doesn’t matter how I use my machine, or how many tabs I have open. The problem is that seeing how long Apple has been stuck at 8GB is frustrating. Especially given how much they charge for RAM, and the impossibility of upgrading the machine post–facto.
Very dirty. So unimaginable I haven't had a single issue on 8GB so far.
It’s an old marketing tagline carried over from the 1990s. Memory upgrades used to make a difference, I maxed out my old iMac 1999 SE to 1GB and it blew away my parents 2004 eMac (USB 2.0) model. My dad was pissed. Upgrading our old PowerMac Performa 6400/180 to 64MB made a difference too.
Fast forward to today. My Mac mini i7 is running 32GB of RAM, but without an eGPU to take the graphical load of multiple displays, the machine struggles. Hell, it still has random moments where it throws fits. Not chewing up much RAM from daily processes, but it doesn’t behave like a machine running 32GB.
Before I parted with it, my late 2012 iMac 21” was upgraded to a 500GB SanDisk Ultra SSD. What a difference too! It still ran its standard 8GB too. Hard drives will make a bigger difference than just RAM, especially from standard 2.5” mechanical to SSD.
My AMD Ryzen 5 3600 build has 16GB and it spanks my mini. I blame Intel and they’re previous generation junk. Apple should’ve switched to AMD when the Ryzen’s hit their second generation. However, these newer machines are very nice with their own designs. It has a WD M.2 SSD running Windows 11. I have a 256GB Team SSD running Ubuntu.
To each their own I suppose, I’ll be equipping any M-powered Mac with 16GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage… when I figure out which one I want. Prepping my i7 mini to be a server.
I call BS. Every time I compare an Apple silicon Mac to a comparably built and specced windows machine, the windows machine ends up higher. That’s because the base processors are slow, the base screens are horrible (350 nits, seriously?), slow SSDs, crappy speakers. So you update to a higher i7 or an I9, upgrade the screen to a minimum 400 nits and 264 ppi, and hopefully can get a decent speed SSD (ever notice Dell never tells you how slow their SSDs are?). By then, you are better off with the Mac in the first place
To your argument, maybe the base should be upped to 512 and 16, possibly, and Mayer higher volumes and consolidating models could lower the cost. I use 8, no issues, but I prefer 512 for my SSD
I gotcha. Got the same dirty trick on my 8 gb MBP. IT WORKS GREAT
Lost a LOT of respect for this kid. He got royally spanked by a Linux engineer, who said those slots on the Mac Studio weren’t for M.2, but raw NAND storage keys. Him and MaxTech went into full meltdown over it with zero understanding how these new machines work.
Any time someone sent those two the Tweets from the guy building a Linux based OS for M1, they quickly blocked it. Guess those clicks are more important.
I liked my 2015 MBP 13”, but these new machines destroy it. They weren’t perfect either. People were complaining about the soldered RAM and proprietary hard drive connector too. They were better than the MBPs that came after them until the 2019 (or 2020) models.
i live on a 12" macbook from 2016 (8/246), and still have 140gb available. i can (simultaneously) run safari (10-20 tabs), pages, affinity photo, mail, calendar, etc etc, and have never once had a memory issue.
but for logic & final cut, the 16gb ram on my imac matters. i think it just really depends on what you use your computer for...
but for logic & final cut, the 16gb ram on my imac matters. i think it just really depends on what you use your computer for...
Ok, maybe those message don't mean much. What about being unable to do a law exam? It would be disappointing to realise your £1.5k devise is incapable of doing such basic task.
If watching a movie is straining an 8GB computer, I'd say it's broken...
Some folks here are too young to remember when computers with 1GB of RAM were seen as powerhouses yet some of you talk about 8GB RAM like it's barely enough to light a power-on LED.
Some folks here are too young to remember when computers with 1GB of RAM were seen as powerhouses yet some of you talk about 8GB RAM like it's barely enough to light a power-on LED.
Why would someone go and take a loss by selling it, only to go and give more money to the only one selling the over priced RAM? That’s kind of nonsensical, no?
And no, it’s not case closed. I think there is a lot more to be said about this type of thing, and at the end of the day, I suspect Apple will be motivated to change its approach to this…
Oh, I remember… and your point is legitimate, but in the other direction. Why does it take so much RAM to run these applications these days? I can remember when all of Microsoft office fit on 3-4 floppy disks (1.4 MB each) and only required something like 2MB of RAM to run it…. Why is the minimum requirement so high now? Is it all added features, or poor programming/coding that just doesn’t get cleaned up, but just piled onto creating a bloated mess? Bloatware???
Whats broken is the software coding methods… IMHO
As a software person, this.
Yeah, they're right. Coders are just worse than they used to be.