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

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.