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8GB RAM? When I was buying my Yoga 2 Pro with 8GB RAM I already hesitated, it is a bare minimum these days. Browsers alone can eat it all with ease. Today I wou

8GB RAM? When I was buying my Yoga 2 Pro with 8GB RAM I already hesitated, it is a bare minimum these days. Browsers alone can eat it all with ease. Today I wouldn't buy a new laptop without more RAM or at least upgrade options.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
8GiB RAM sounds like luxury to me with my 4GiB RAM MacBook Air. Which Apple still sells.
- dineshp2 11y ago
  Apple finally offers 8GB RAM as standrard with 13 inch Macbook Airs[1] from this year. [1] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2016/04/19Apple-Updates-MacBook-with-Latest-Processors-Longer-Battery-Life-New-Rose-Gold-Finish.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2016/04/19Apple-Updates-MacB...
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    Thank goodness for that.
- Keyframe 11y ago
  I still run an Air (mid 2011) with 4GB of RAM and 256GB. Still great for browsing, lots and lots of text (Word and FadeIn), lots of Adobe Premiere editing on the go and occasional Photoshop and After Effects. I've been eyeing for a new laptop for quite some time now, but I am not in a hurry. This thing just keeps going and I can't justify new purchase yet.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    My Air can survive with 4GiB of RAM, but if I watch YouTube videos in Firefox for long periods of time, the thing starts to use 3GiB+ of swap and I have to quit the browser.
    - Keyframe 11y ago
      I'm on chrome, absolutely no issues at resolutions up to 1080p. Haven't bothered with higher since screen res isn't. I throw video and AE rendering on the machine when I'm out with it, occasional compile with gcc.. damn thing is great. I would love to see newer generation Air come to light. I'd buy one immediately.
EduardoBautista 11y ago
Browsers are designed to use more ram than they really need.
ghshephard 11y ago
On OS X, with a good flash drive, 8 GiB of ram is perfect. I never recommend average people get more - I've got 31 Apps, the entire office suite (Excel/Word/Power Point), VMware running OpenBSD + Windows XP, and Aperture, chrome with god knows how many tabs (at least 60) - and the system isn't slow in the slightest. OS X really does work miracles with virtual memory - my 16 GiB Windows 7 machine starts spinning up and swapping if I leave google earth running in it overnight. And next morning - there is always a 60 second pause while everything swaps back in...
- scholia 11y ago
  Yeah, the 2009 version of Windows really should perform as well as the 2016-update Mac OS X ;-)
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    I'm running 10.8.5 - so circa 2012 OS X.
    - scholia 11y ago
      Fair point! Only 3 years difference, not 6-7 years ;-)
kennywinker 11y ago
You could always buy an 8gb model. They just bumped the base model to 8gb.
- mehrdada 11y ago
  MacBook has always had only one RAM option and came with it: 8gb. No 4gb or 16gb ever. The article is incorrect: they made an orthogonal change to MacBook Air (13" only) in making 8GB standard (which used to be an option).
fpoling 11y ago
OS X uses memory compression that compresses browser memory rather well which alleviates at least some pain points of using machines for development.
leejoramo 11y ago
As someone who upgraded my own 13" MacBook Pro to 16GB RAM, I would NEVER recommend 16GB to anyone except those who can justify it. The extra RAM has some big disadvantages: 1. As I recall, I lost about 40 minutes run time on batteries. 2. It decreases battery sleep time. Prior to the upgrade, I could go for 4 or 5 days in sleep, and still have useful enough battery life. Now it is more like 2 or 3 days. 3. It dramatically increases time to sleep and wake from sleep. 4. It eats valuable SSD space. You need 16GB to sleep. And you swap files will be bigger. You likely need a bigger SSD to support the RAM 5. RAM does cost money up front. If you do need 16GB, you know it and should be ready for these trade offs. As someone who regularly runs 2 or 3 browsers, Mac and Linux development tools, MS Office, Adobe, Linux and Windows VMs, etc, I am in the class of people who need the extra RAM. Most people do not.
- ghshephard 11y ago
  Interesting - I had never thought about the Sleep Time impact - but that kind of makes sense. Does OS X still have a hibernate option?
  - leejoramo 11y ago
    Yes, Mac OS X does have hibernate. However, "Sleep" on MacBooks is a combination of what people commonly refer to as Sleep and Hibernation I believe that the current method is to Sleep the system with both keeping the RAM powered AND write RAM to the drive. If there is enough battery, the system will wake fast by using the current RAM, if the battery dies, it recovers from the RAM image stored on drive. This works well for most people using base configurations. For those of us using the limits of the hardware, it might not give the preferred results. There are various GUI and CLI tools such as SmartSleep to control Sleep and Hibernate based on your preferences and taking into consideration the current battery level. https://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html https://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html
    - ghshephard 11y ago
      Thank you so much - this is the application that I've been looking for so long. It does everything that I've ever wanted, and, in particularly, with the insomnia plugin, lets me disable sleep (Mail.app craps out if you return from sleep, a bunch of my VPN stuff goes nuts) when you close your lid. This avoids the insanely awkward dance I have to do holding a laptop 2" open and hoping I neither drop it, or accidentally close the lid. And, as another bonus, I have a "Click to Hibernate" feature that I've been wanting for a long time. My return from hibernation is very fast, and, in theory, the battery loss should be fairly minimal while in a hibernate state.
orbitur 11y ago
I don't understand why everyone keeps banging this drum. At 4GB, I'd agree with you. But I'm still running my 2009 (!!!!!!!) MBP with 8GB RAM, and it's fine. And no doubt, the new MacBook is a bajillion times faster than my somehow-increasingly-heavier-each-year-brick-of-aluminum MBP and will handle memory pressure like a champ. And speaking of memory pressure, for it's intended use, even with 30 Chrome tabs, 8GB is fine. Plus, given Apple's track record of device support over the last 7 or 8 years, Apple intends this machine to be usable for at least 3 years.
- stock_toaster 11y ago
  Just so you don't feel so alone, I am also still running a 2009 mbp with a matte screen. :) Seriously thinking it may finally be the year I upgrade -- I will miss the matte screen though.
Scarbutt 11y ago
On a MBA with 4GB RAM I'm running Chrome with 9 tabs (some are google docs,gmail and incognito), iTerm2, Emacs, a vmware fusion linux VM with 768MB RAM and I don't have any lag or slowness whatsoever, still I can open safari, firefox, microsot rdesktop, sketch and it won't choke a bit. I don't know if this is OS X being very good a managing memory. Of course, some people get crazy and have like 60-70 tabs open, that's just not my flow.
wodenokoto 11y ago
As someone who is still on 4GB. No, 8GB is not a bare minimum. Bare minimum for a pleasant day-to-day browsing, movie watching, coding and office style work is an SSD.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
It's really not. Maybe for you it is, but no, not in general... 4gb is working just fine, yes you can browse, have netflix open, your photos app and some music in the background while you're primarily working on a paper with a few PDFs on a few screens. My gf is on her MBA 4gb, no issues with the above (and she has a LOT more crap open than me, she never closes... at least until I showed her what it does to her cycles and what that means) I' m on a rMBP 8gb, similar experience. Running multiple VMs is not the norm.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

8GiB RAM sounds like luxury to me with my 4GiB RAM MacBook Air. Which Apple still sells.

dineshp2 11y ago
Apple finally offers 8GB RAM as standrard with 13 inch Macbook Airs[1] from this year. [1] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2016/04/19Apple-Updates-MacBook-with-Latest-Processors-Longer-Battery-Life-New-Rose-Gold-Finish.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2016/04/19Apple-Updates-MacB...
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Thank goodness for that.
Keyframe 11y ago
I still run an Air (mid 2011) with 4GB of RAM and 256GB. Still great for browsing, lots and lots of text (Word and FadeIn), lots of Adobe Premiere editing on the go and occasional Photoshop and After Effects. I've been eyeing for a new laptop for quite some time now, but I am not in a hurry. This thing just keeps going and I can't justify new purchase yet.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  My Air can survive with 4GiB of RAM, but if I watch YouTube videos in Firefox for long periods of time, the thing starts to use 3GiB+ of swap and I have to quit the browser.
  - Keyframe 11y ago
    I'm on chrome, absolutely no issues at resolutions up to 1080p. Haven't bothered with higher since screen res isn't. I throw video and AE rendering on the machine when I'm out with it, occasional compile with gcc.. damn thing is great. I would love to see newer generation Air come to light. I'd buy one immediately.

EduardoBautista 11y ago

Browsers are designed to use more ram than they really need.

ghshephard 11y ago

On OS X, with a good flash drive, 8 GiB of ram is perfect. I never recommend average people get more - I've got 31 Apps, the entire office suite (Excel/Word/Power Point), VMware running OpenBSD + Windows XP, and Aperture, chrome with god knows how many tabs (at least 60) - and the system isn't slow in the slightest. OS X really does work miracles with virtual memory - my 16 GiB Windows 7 machine starts spinning up and swapping if I leave google earth running in it overnight. And next morning - there is always a 60 second pause while everything swaps back in...

scholia 11y ago
Yeah, the 2009 version of Windows really should perform as well as the 2016-update Mac OS X ;-)
- ghshephard 11y ago
  I'm running 10.8.5 - so circa 2012 OS X.
  - scholia 11y ago
    Fair point! Only 3 years difference, not 6-7 years ;-)

kennywinker 11y ago

You could always buy an 8gb model. They just bumped the base model to 8gb.

mehrdada 11y ago
MacBook has always had only one RAM option and came with it: 8gb. No 4gb or 16gb ever. The article is incorrect: they made an orthogonal change to MacBook Air (13" only) in making 8GB standard (which used to be an option).

fpoling 11y ago

OS X uses memory compression that compresses browser memory rather well which alleviates at least some pain points of using machines for development.

leejoramo 11y ago

As someone who upgraded my own 13" MacBook Pro to 16GB RAM, I would NEVER recommend 16GB to anyone except those who can justify it. The extra RAM has some big disadvantages: 1. As I recall, I lost about 40 minutes run time on batteries. 2. It decreases battery sleep time. Prior to the upgrade, I could go for 4 or 5 days in sleep, and still have useful enough battery life. Now it is more like 2 or 3 days. 3. It dramatically increases time to sleep and wake from sleep. 4. It eats valuable SSD space. You need 16GB to sleep. And you swap files will be bigger. You likely need a bigger SSD to support the RAM 5. RAM does cost money up front. If you do need 16GB, you know it and should be ready for these trade offs. As someone who regularly runs 2 or 3 browsers, Mac and Linux development tools, MS Office, Adobe, Linux and Windows VMs, etc, I am in the class of people who need the extra RAM. Most people do not.

ghshephard 11y ago
Interesting - I had never thought about the Sleep Time impact - but that kind of makes sense. Does OS X still have a hibernate option?
- leejoramo 11y ago
  Yes, Mac OS X does have hibernate. However, "Sleep" on MacBooks is a combination of what people commonly refer to as Sleep and Hibernation I believe that the current method is to Sleep the system with both keeping the RAM powered AND write RAM to the drive. If there is enough battery, the system will wake fast by using the current RAM, if the battery dies, it recovers from the RAM image stored on drive. This works well for most people using base configurations. For those of us using the limits of the hardware, it might not give the preferred results. There are various GUI and CLI tools such as SmartSleep to control Sleep and Hibernate based on your preferences and taking into consideration the current battery level. https://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html https://www.jinx.de/SmartSleep.html
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    Thank you so much - this is the application that I've been looking for so long. It does everything that I've ever wanted, and, in particularly, with the insomnia plugin, lets me disable sleep (Mail.app craps out if you return from sleep, a bunch of my VPN stuff goes nuts) when you close your lid. This avoids the insanely awkward dance I have to do holding a laptop 2" open and hoping I neither drop it, or accidentally close the lid. And, as another bonus, I have a "Click to Hibernate" feature that I've been wanting for a long time. My return from hibernation is very fast, and, in theory, the battery loss should be fairly minimal while in a hibernate state.

orbitur 11y ago

I don't understand why everyone keeps banging this drum. At 4GB, I'd agree with you. But I'm still running my 2009 (!!!!!!!) MBP with 8GB RAM, and it's fine. And no doubt, the new MacBook is a bajillion times faster than my somehow-increasingly-heavier-each-year-brick-of-aluminum MBP and will handle memory pressure like a champ. And speaking of memory pressure, for it's intended use, even with 30 Chrome tabs, 8GB is fine. Plus, given Apple's track record of device support over the last 7 or 8 years, Apple intends this machine to be usable for at least 3 years.

stock_toaster 11y ago
Just so you don't feel so alone, I am also still running a 2009 mbp with a matte screen. :) Seriously thinking it may finally be the year I upgrade -- I will miss the matte screen though.

Scarbutt 11y ago

On a MBA with 4GB RAM I'm running Chrome with 9 tabs (some are google docs,gmail and incognito), iTerm2, Emacs, a vmware fusion linux VM with 768MB RAM and I don't have any lag or slowness whatsoever, still I can open safari, firefox, microsot rdesktop, sketch and it won't choke a bit. I don't know if this is OS X being very good a managing memory. Of course, some people get crazy and have like 60-70 tabs open, that's just not my flow.

wodenokoto 11y ago

As someone who is still on 4GB. No, 8GB is not a bare minimum. Bare minimum for a pleasant day-to-day browsing, movie watching, coding and office style work is an SSD.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

It's really not. Maybe for you it is, but no, not in general... 4gb is working just fine, yes you can browse, have netflix open, your photos app and some music in the background while you're primarily working on a paper with a few PDFs on a few screens. My gf is on her MBA 4gb, no issues with the above (and she has a LOT more crap open than me, she never closes... at least until I showed her what it does to her cycles and what that means) I' m on a rMBP 8gb, similar experience. Running multiple VMs is not the norm.