5 ms·

Every 8gb mac I’ve used before was fine, and that was with running Xcode, Firefox, photoshop, mail, terminal, and other programs.

Scarbutt 6y ago
4GB MBA user here, don't have any problems either running Chrome or Firefox with 10-20 tabs and iTerm (Safari does feel much faster than other two and my dev enviroment is on a remote server though).
crazygringo 6y ago
Seriously, I'm utterly baffled by all the people claiming that 8 GB isn't enough for the average user. The only situation I ever ran into where it was a problem was in trying to run multiple VM's at once. Otherwise it's just a non-issue. Programs often reserve a lot more memory than they actually use (zero hit in performance) so memory stats are misleading, and the OS is really good at swapping memory not touched in a while to the SSD without you noticing. Yes, sometimes it takes a couple seconds to switch to a tab I haven't touched in Chrome in days because it's got to swap it back in from the SSD. Who cares?
- ianhowson 6y ago
  > people claiming that 8 GB isn't enough for the average user I'm not claiming anything of the sort. My point is that memory consumption seems to be greatly reduced in Big Sur, and that might make 8GB machines much better to use than before. All of my testing is on Intel machines. It's not exclusively an M1 phenomenon. I would still recommend 16GB to anyone, and if the extra $200 was a factor, I would recommend that they buy last year's Intel with 16GB of RAM.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > I'm not claiming anything of the sort. You kind of did: > (a) every 8GB Mac I've used in the past has been unusably slow Personally, I stick to 16GB+ as well. Though my wife's Mac likely has 4GB since it's something like 8 years old and it runs just fine.
- jlokier 6y ago
  For me with 16GB in an MBP, there is currently 20.5GB used + swap, and I haven't even started Firefox today, that would add another ~6GB or so. Usually if I'm running Safari, Firefox and my 4GB Linux VM, that's 16-18GB used up in those. At the moment I have a few other things open, PDF viewer, Word, iTerms, Emacs etc, but nothing huge. Most of the time this level of usage is ok, but I've had times where I've had to wait 30+ seconds for the UI to respond at all (even the Dock or switching workspaces) and wondered if the system had crashed. For that reason I'm generally waiting for the next 32GB model before committing, that's assuming I stick with Apple instead of switching back to Linux (which I used for ~20 years before trying the MBP).
- 3np 6y ago
  I pretty much daily have to do a closing round to not run out of my 24GiB. That’s all web browsers (Usually 100-200 tabs), vs code with some extensions and 2x4k display.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    But what do you even mean "run out"? This is what I don't get. If you have multiple browsers with hundreds of tabs, the majority of those tabs are probably swapped out to your SSD already. With swapfiles and SSD's, physical memory is less and less relevant except when you're performing very specific computational tasks that actually require everything to be simultaneously in memory -- things like highly complex video effects rendering. How do you measure "running out" of your 24 GiB? And what happens when you do "run out"?
    - ianhowson 6y ago
      As a human, when I have many tabs open, I observe that everything gets really slow. All applications get slow, but especially the browser. So I put on my engineering hat and pull up Activity Monitor and further observe (a) high memory pressure, (b) high memory consumption attributed to Chrome or Firefox, (c) high levels of swap usage, (d) high levels of disk I/O attributed to kerneltask or nothing, depending on macOS version, which is the swapper task. I close some tabs. I then observe that the problems go away. Swap isn't a silver bullet, not even at 3Gbytes/sec. It is slow. I haven't even touched on GPU memory pressure which swaps back to sysram, which puts further pressure on disk swap. It's slow.
    - 3np 6y ago
      I don't swap. You can do all your arguments about why I should if you want but yes, there are legit reasons not to and there is such a thing as running out of memory in 2020.
      - crazygringo 6y ago
        That's fine for you, but then it's disingenous for you to post your example without mentioning that. It makes it unrepresentative and doesn't contribute anything useful to the conversation about memory requirements for normal operation.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > Seriously, I'm utterly baffled by all the people claiming that 8 GB isn't enough for the average user. I may be not average, but just my Safari can take up >20GB—at least that's how much my "free" grows in MenuMeters when I quit it.
- woah 6y ago
  It's the never ending mystery of Hacker News- how do the commenters on here get their computers to run so slowly?
  - harrygeez 6y ago
    Docker and a few language servers can seriously drag your MacBook with 8GB RAM. Throw in another Android emulator...
- choicenotchance 6y ago
  A friend of mine who was an iOS dev always used to complain though that his MBP running some 20+ tabs in chrome, and xcode and simulator, would freeze a lot, even with 16GB of RAM.
- bnegreve 6y ago
  > Programs often reserve a lot more memory than they actually use (zero hit in performance) so memory stats are misleading, and the OS is really good at swapping memory not touched in a while to the SSD without you noticing. The stats are absolutely reliable because no physical memory page is allocated until it is actually used to store something. So allocating a large chunk of unused memory wouldn't show in the (physical) memory usage stat.
- _a1_ 6y ago
  > Otherwise it's just a non-issue. Nah, sorry, but you're wrong. I had to upgrade my laptop because I wanted to run Firefox, IntelliJ IDEA and an Android emulator on the same machine. Nothing else. This was not possible on 8GB ram. So it's not like multiple VMs are needed and above scenario is pretty average for a common mobile developer (but still not an average user, I admit) Second thing is, lots of games require 16 GB RAM. Maybe gamers are still not average users, I don't know.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    > an Android emulator Well, that's one (largish) VM.
    - _a1_ 6y ago
      Large? It uses 1.5GB of RAM on average. Common Windows VM uses 6GB if you want it to be able to run a common application on it.
wsc981 6y ago
Have you tried doing Android dev using an Android emulator on an 8 GB Mac? Perhaps in combination with Xamarin? I did and performance was horrible. For just iOS or macOS dev, 8 GB could be fine though.

Scarbutt 6y ago

4GB MBA user here, don't have any problems either running Chrome or Firefox with 10-20 tabs and iTerm (Safari does feel much faster than other two and my dev enviroment is on a remote server though).

crazygringo 6y ago

Seriously, I'm utterly baffled by all the people claiming that 8 GB isn't enough for the average user. The only situation I ever ran into where it was a problem was in trying to run multiple VM's at once. Otherwise it's just a non-issue. Programs often reserve a lot more memory than they actually use (zero hit in performance) so memory stats are misleading, and the OS is really good at swapping memory not touched in a while to the SSD without you noticing. Yes, sometimes it takes a couple seconds to switch to a tab I haven't touched in Chrome in days because it's got to swap it back in from the SSD. Who cares?

ianhowson 6y ago
> people claiming that 8 GB isn't enough for the average user I'm not claiming anything of the sort. My point is that memory consumption seems to be greatly reduced in Big Sur, and that might make 8GB machines much better to use than before. All of my testing is on Intel machines. It's not exclusively an M1 phenomenon. I would still recommend 16GB to anyone, and if the extra $200 was a factor, I would recommend that they buy last year's Intel with 16GB of RAM.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > I'm not claiming anything of the sort. You kind of did: > (a) every 8GB Mac I've used in the past has been unusably slow Personally, I stick to 16GB+ as well. Though my wife's Mac likely has 4GB since it's something like 8 years old and it runs just fine.
jlokier 6y ago
For me with 16GB in an MBP, there is currently 20.5GB used + swap, and I haven't even started Firefox today, that would add another ~6GB or so. Usually if I'm running Safari, Firefox and my 4GB Linux VM, that's 16-18GB used up in those. At the moment I have a few other things open, PDF viewer, Word, iTerms, Emacs etc, but nothing huge. Most of the time this level of usage is ok, but I've had times where I've had to wait 30+ seconds for the UI to respond at all (even the Dock or switching workspaces) and wondered if the system had crashed. For that reason I'm generally waiting for the next 32GB model before committing, that's assuming I stick with Apple instead of switching back to Linux (which I used for ~20 years before trying the MBP).
3np 6y ago
I pretty much daily have to do a closing round to not run out of my 24GiB. That’s all web browsers (Usually 100-200 tabs), vs code with some extensions and 2x4k display.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  But what do you even mean "run out"? This is what I don't get. If you have multiple browsers with hundreds of tabs, the majority of those tabs are probably swapped out to your SSD already. With swapfiles and SSD's, physical memory is less and less relevant except when you're performing very specific computational tasks that actually require everything to be simultaneously in memory -- things like highly complex video effects rendering. How do you measure "running out" of your 24 GiB? And what happens when you do "run out"?
  - ianhowson 6y ago
    As a human, when I have many tabs open, I observe that everything gets really slow. All applications get slow, but especially the browser. So I put on my engineering hat and pull up Activity Monitor and further observe (a) high memory pressure, (b) high memory consumption attributed to Chrome or Firefox, (c) high levels of swap usage, (d) high levels of disk I/O attributed to kerneltask or nothing, depending on macOS version, which is the swapper task. I close some tabs. I then observe that the problems go away. Swap isn't a silver bullet, not even at 3Gbytes/sec. It is slow. I haven't even touched on GPU memory pressure which swaps back to sysram, which puts further pressure on disk swap. It's slow.
  - 3np 6y ago
    I don't swap. You can do all your arguments about why I should if you want but yes, there are legit reasons not to and there is such a thing as running out of memory in 2020.
    - crazygringo 6y ago
      That's fine for you, but then it's disingenous for you to post your example without mentioning that. It makes it unrepresentative and doesn't contribute anything useful to the conversation about memory requirements for normal operation.
throw0101a 6y ago
> Seriously, I'm utterly baffled by all the people claiming that 8 GB isn't enough for the average user. I may be not average, but just my Safari can take up >20GB—at least that's how much my "free" grows in MenuMeters when I quit it.
woah 6y ago
It's the never ending mystery of Hacker News- how do the commenters on here get their computers to run so slowly?
- harrygeez 6y ago
  Docker and a few language servers can seriously drag your MacBook with 8GB RAM. Throw in another Android emulator...
choicenotchance 6y ago
A friend of mine who was an iOS dev always used to complain though that his MBP running some 20+ tabs in chrome, and xcode and simulator, would freeze a lot, even with 16GB of RAM.
bnegreve 6y ago
> Programs often reserve a lot more memory than they actually use (zero hit in performance) so memory stats are misleading, and the OS is really good at swapping memory not touched in a while to the SSD without you noticing. The stats are absolutely reliable because no physical memory page is allocated until it is actually used to store something. So allocating a large chunk of unused memory wouldn't show in the (physical) memory usage stat.
_a1_ 6y ago
> Otherwise it's just a non-issue. Nah, sorry, but you're wrong. I had to upgrade my laptop because I wanted to run Firefox, IntelliJ IDEA and an Android emulator on the same machine. Nothing else. This was not possible on 8GB ram. So it's not like multiple VMs are needed and above scenario is pretty average for a common mobile developer (but still not an average user, I admit) Second thing is, lots of games require 16 GB RAM. Maybe gamers are still not average users, I don't know.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  > an Android emulator Well, that's one (largish) VM.
  - _a1_ 6y ago
    Large? It uses 1.5GB of RAM on average. Common Windows VM uses 6GB if you want it to be able to run a common application on it.

wsc981 6y ago

Have you tried doing Android dev using an Android emulator on an 8 GB Mac? Perhaps in combination with Xamarin? I did and performance was horrible. For just iOS or macOS dev, 8 GB could be fine though.