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Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? People complaining about low ram sound like the br

Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? People complaining about low ram sound like the bros asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people. Just complain about price, yeah, it is expensive! --- This is coming from someone who does light gaming on an 8gb m1 MacBook Air and has plenty of tabs open. I don't see lag. Then again, I use safari, maybe Chrome it'd be different.

Nursie 4y ago
> Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram The developer for whom a macbook air brings a huge amount of power? I mean, they aren't low-end when compared to the general laptop market, they're awesome!
- dewey 4y ago
  You responded to a comment about the "typical Air buyer". A developer is really not the typical Air buyer and more the target audience for a Pro line product even if that specific model is plenty fast.
  - mrtranscendence 4y ago
    For what it's worth, I bought my partner an 8gb Air a couple months ago. I had reservations about that amount of memory but she insisted on not spending more money. As far as she's told me she's experienced no performance issues whatsoever as a non-developer (she uses her laptop for video conferencing, email, and web browsing).
    - ratww 4y ago
      I use my 8GB one for development (mostly web and Cocoa, but also some 3d stuff w/Metal) and the only issues are with things like Microsoft Teams or some other memory hog, but even my co-workers with 32GB machines suffer with those, so I guess it's alright.
      - CamelRocketFish 4y ago
        I switched to running MS teams in safari as the app was terribly resource intensive. Unfortunately it’s only safari that works with voice/video calls.
        ratww 4y ago
        I might accept your advice and do the same. It's really mind boggling how slow it is for me lately after some upgrades :(
  - adwww 4y ago
    I think the high price actually means that is a typical user. The original casual user type this has been designed for likely use iPads or Chromebooks at this point.
  - Nursie 4y ago
    > A developer is really not the typical Air buyer They may be the target of the pro line, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the performance of the M1 attracted more developers to the Air line. I saw no reason to go to the 'Pro' when I got mine.
eropple 4y ago
Having had an M1 Air with 8GB of RAM--under very light use it was great, but under anything a little more taxing (a good number of tabs, having Discord open, a relatively "light" creative app like Logic or Fusion 360) it would very rapidly not just get bad, but get stop-the-world awful. (edit: and as a sibling poster notes, plugging it into an external monitor made things a lot worse!) I don't know if MacOS's low-RAM behavior has anything particular to it that makes it act so erratically, but it's the only time using a Mac in the last ten years where I've gone "oh, this sucks." Going to 16GB of RAM is a way better spot, I think, for folks who want more than strictly web-browser-and-keyboard. (And those folks are probably better off with an iPad in 2022 I think? The current iPads are great.)
- Aperocky 4y ago
  I have a M1 with 16G ram. I don't think 8GB ram is even feasible - and that's coming from a user whose primary interface is terminal. 16GB is great though, never had a problem with RAM issue.
  - throw34 4y ago
    Usually it’s what’s being run inside the terminal that matters. ssh? no big deal. ffmpeg? can slow a machine down and can have a significant memory footprint. YMMV
  - april_22 4y ago
    Why is that though? I have a ten year old machine at home with 8gigs of ram and it smoothly runs with alot of chrome tabs open?
    - Aperocky 4y ago
      M1 GPU also lives with the same RAM.
- Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
  Fusion is anything but light, and still not optimized for M1 (still a Rosetta app). Even on a beefy Workstation, it’s no fun. Logic is better but not exactly light if you have multiple track, AU plug-in… So that’s not surprising - heck, with 16gb or ram it’s not a walk in the park. I’ve discussed with owner a Mac studio, and they were not happy for Fusion either, that’s with 64gb of ram so…
jmyeet 4y ago
Remember it's not 8gb of dedicated RAM. It's 8gb shared with the video subsystem. Let's see how far that goes when you plug it into a 4K monitor and/or do anything that requires GPU acceleration (which can include simply decoding video). I think 8gb is borderline criminally low in the circumstances. At least this thing has the option for 24gb though. I just wish that was a stocked model so you could just walk into a store and buy one without having to order it.
- eropple 4y ago
  For what it's worth--when I had an 8GB Air, decoding video in a browser didn't seem to really impact performance. Plugging in an external monitor, though, was not a fun time.
  - rolleiflex 4y ago
    I have a 32Gb M1 Pro as a work laptop and connecting a retina 4K external display is not a fun experience for me either. It was very surprising to see it fail to maintain 60fps in the OS’ own animations.
    - phren0logy 4y ago
      That seems like something is wrong - if this is a known issue with such capable hardware I'd find that shocking
    - whynaut 4y ago
      Are you using the built-in HDMI port, or a dongle? I had the same issue before switching off the dongle.
      - rolleiflex 4y ago
        This is through USBC which also charges the laptop.
        4y ago
nightski 4y ago
Sounds like Apple. For a premium price they give you only bare minimum and if you want anything more you can pay thousands of dollars in pure premium and profit for Apple. Of course sheep will keep buying these things.
- thrill 4y ago
  There's no reason to insult people.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nightski 4y ago
    There is when they are paying $200 for 8GB of ram.
ajuc 4y ago
> Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram Typical Air user would be fine performance-wise with any laptop made in last 10 years TBH. It's a premium product that is priced accordingly, so it's fine to complain about substandard specs.
pivo 4y ago
We had to replace my wife’s intel MBP with 8G of memory because it was just not sufficient. She just does simple stuff with her laptop, web browsing, occasional videos, google spreadsheets and email. The thing would just grind to a halt. We bought a 16G MBP and she’s been fine. I’m sure the ARM laptops are better with only 8G but I’m not going to test that idea. 16G is the bottom line for us from now on.
pen2l 4y ago
My super light and thin [1] Carbon X1 Thinkpad from about 5 years ago has 16gb ram, half TB SSD and still runs like a champ with 200 tabs open. It's just strange to see a premium brand product not being able to compete with same-category class products from a half-decade ago. [1]: Lighter, in fact, than this MB Air M2
- boardwaalk 4y ago
  You can spec it with or 16 or 24 GB and the CPU is going to be miles faster than your Thinkpad. Sometimes I think people just want to feel good about their purchases… It’s 5 years old, it’s okay if it’s not top of the line anymore.
pletnes 4y ago
I disagree, RAM is super important. But I went from win10 with 32 GB + dedicated nvidia with 4 GB to M1 on a mbp with just 16 GB. The M1 is still so much faster it’s like swapping a forklift with a fighter jet. I don’t think the numbers are comparable without more analysis of the workload and OS. FWIW I’m doing coding and data analysis with python and 99 tabs in 3 different browsers on both machines.
haliskerbas 4y ago
Yes. In college I had many tabs and many word documents open, a few IDEs, horribly inefficient LMS or video sharing sites, and massive lecture videos. Maybe a few chat apps to keep in touch with classmates. If you’ve used google chrome with messenger dot com, that’s already eating into the ram budget a good amount.
itsoktocry 4y ago
>Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? If we're going to play that game, which college student requires a new MacBook Air at all? I'm an industry professional and do my development on used ThinkPads. Sure there are are some people out there who need more processing power than I do, but not many, and certainly not in college.
2143 4y ago
> Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? How about a college student who contributes to large open source projects? (eg. Chromium or Firefox — I don't know if their memory footprint situation improved so these examples might not be valid today, but they definitely were back in the day). Don't underestimate college students ;) People who complain about 8 GB being too low probably have a good reason. I know I needed more than 8 GB because my 8 GB memory laptop always had it full (and was using swap) whenever I was using it for software development (and this laptop was already an upgrade from 4 GB). However, I also know that I don't need more than 24 GB, because my utilization never reach anywhere close to that in practice. The problem is more pronounced on computers with memory that cannot be upgraded. > asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people. Where I'm at, the F10 BMW 525d used to come with a creamy smooth 6 cylinder straight six motor. Made a little over 200 hp and 460 Nm of torque. Later, they changed the engine to a highly tuned 4 cylinder with nearly identical power and torque (still called "525d"). Infact, the 4 cyl motor has a little over 10 horses more than the 6 cyl, but it came at a higher rpm. The driving experience was noticeably different. The 6 cylinder engine just felt effortless; in-gear acceleration (which matters during overtakes) was simply better. The 4 cyl motor felt strained. Also, there's the other point that you'd know if you're into engines — straight 6 engines are inherently balanced and yadda yadda (=> no engine vibrations => very smooth), while other configurations need balancer shafts (which can't really be perfected), so the straight 6 engines are slightly more "clean" from an engineering perspective. Sure, 120 km/h is 120 km/h regardless of cylinder count, but that's not the point. Environmental considerations are also a different matter.
jandrese 4y ago
My feeling is that 8GB is barely adequate in 2020 for light or medium-light usage, a couple of MacOS updates and a few more apps switching to Electron and you're going to be chugging hard. This wouldn't be a problem except that the RAM can't be upgraded so you have a laptop that would probably last 6-8 years easy likely being kneecapped in 2-4 years instead.
- donny2018 4y ago
  As an owner of an 8gb M1 Air, I now think that a machine for “light usage” that can barely handle a half dozen of open tabs and 1 Docker container shouldn’t cost even half as much. I bought it for about $1700 with 512Gb SSD. In fact, Apple should stop offering 8GB versions at this point as MacOS is very memory hungry compared to Windows. That yellow “memory pressure” graph is irritating.
hajile 4y ago
8GB results in lots of swapping with the SSD which greatly shortens SSD lifespan. That alone was reason enough to have 16GB. I have an air for work with 16GB and frequently bump up against the amount of memory. I'm currently just waiting on reviews to decide between a 24GB Air and a 32GB Pro.

Nursie 4y ago

> Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram The developer for whom a macbook air brings a huge amount of power? I mean, they aren't low-end when compared to the general laptop market, they're awesome!

dewey 4y ago
You responded to a comment about the "typical Air buyer". A developer is really not the typical Air buyer and more the target audience for a Pro line product even if that specific model is plenty fast.
- mrtranscendence 4y ago
  For what it's worth, I bought my partner an 8gb Air a couple months ago. I had reservations about that amount of memory but she insisted on not spending more money. As far as she's told me she's experienced no performance issues whatsoever as a non-developer (she uses her laptop for video conferencing, email, and web browsing).
  - ratww 4y ago
    I use my 8GB one for development (mostly web and Cocoa, but also some 3d stuff w/Metal) and the only issues are with things like Microsoft Teams or some other memory hog, but even my co-workers with 32GB machines suffer with those, so I guess it's alright.
    - CamelRocketFish 4y ago
      I switched to running MS teams in safari as the app was terribly resource intensive. Unfortunately it’s only safari that works with voice/video calls.
      - ratww 4y ago
        I might accept your advice and do the same. It's really mind boggling how slow it is for me lately after some upgrades :(
- adwww 4y ago
  I think the high price actually means that is a typical user. The original casual user type this has been designed for likely use iPads or Chromebooks at this point.
- Nursie 4y ago
  > A developer is really not the typical Air buyer They may be the target of the pro line, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the performance of the M1 attracted more developers to the Air line. I saw no reason to go to the 'Pro' when I got mine.

eropple 4y ago

Having had an M1 Air with 8GB of RAM--under very light use it was great, but under anything a little more taxing (a good number of tabs, having Discord open, a relatively "light" creative app like Logic or Fusion 360) it would very rapidly not just get bad, but get stop-the-world awful. (edit: and as a sibling poster notes, plugging it into an external monitor made things a lot worse!) I don't know if MacOS's low-RAM behavior has anything particular to it that makes it act so erratically, but it's the only time using a Mac in the last ten years where I've gone "oh, this sucks." Going to 16GB of RAM is a way better spot, I think, for folks who want more than strictly web-browser-and-keyboard. (And those folks are probably better off with an iPad in 2022 I think? The current iPads are great.)

Aperocky 4y ago
I have a M1 with 16G ram. I don't think 8GB ram is even feasible - and that's coming from a user whose primary interface is terminal. 16GB is great though, never had a problem with RAM issue.
- throw34 4y ago
  Usually it’s what’s being run inside the terminal that matters. ssh? no big deal. ffmpeg? can slow a machine down and can have a significant memory footprint. YMMV
- april_22 4y ago
  Why is that though? I have a ten year old machine at home with 8gigs of ram and it smoothly runs with alot of chrome tabs open?
  - Aperocky 4y ago
    M1 GPU also lives with the same RAM.
Arcanum-XIII 4y ago
Fusion is anything but light, and still not optimized for M1 (still a Rosetta app). Even on a beefy Workstation, it’s no fun. Logic is better but not exactly light if you have multiple track, AU plug-in… So that’s not surprising - heck, with 16gb or ram it’s not a walk in the park. I’ve discussed with owner a Mac studio, and they were not happy for Fusion either, that’s with 64gb of ram so…

jmyeet 4y ago

Remember it's not 8gb of dedicated RAM. It's 8gb shared with the video subsystem. Let's see how far that goes when you plug it into a 4K monitor and/or do anything that requires GPU acceleration (which can include simply decoding video). I think 8gb is borderline criminally low in the circumstances. At least this thing has the option for 24gb though. I just wish that was a stocked model so you could just walk into a store and buy one without having to order it.

eropple 4y ago
For what it's worth--when I had an 8GB Air, decoding video in a browser didn't seem to really impact performance. Plugging in an external monitor, though, was not a fun time.
- rolleiflex 4y ago
  I have a 32Gb M1 Pro as a work laptop and connecting a retina 4K external display is not a fun experience for me either. It was very surprising to see it fail to maintain 60fps in the OS’ own animations.
  - phren0logy 4y ago
    That seems like something is wrong - if this is a known issue with such capable hardware I'd find that shocking
  - whynaut 4y ago
    Are you using the built-in HDMI port, or a dongle? I had the same issue before switching off the dongle.
    - rolleiflex 4y ago
      This is through USBC which also charges the laptop.
      - 4y ago

nightski 4y ago

Sounds like Apple. For a premium price they give you only bare minimum and if you want anything more you can pay thousands of dollars in pure premium and profit for Apple. Of course sheep will keep buying these things.

thrill 4y ago
There's no reason to insult people.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nightski 4y ago
  There is when they are paying $200 for 8GB of ram.

ajuc 4y ago

> Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram Typical Air user would be fine performance-wise with any laptop made in last 10 years TBH. It's a premium product that is priced accordingly, so it's fine to complain about substandard specs.

pivo 4y ago

We had to replace my wife’s intel MBP with 8G of memory because it was just not sufficient. She just does simple stuff with her laptop, web browsing, occasional videos, google spreadsheets and email. The thing would just grind to a halt. We bought a 16G MBP and she’s been fine. I’m sure the ARM laptops are better with only 8G but I’m not going to test that idea. 16G is the bottom line for us from now on.

pen2l 4y ago

My super light and thin [1] Carbon X1 Thinkpad from about 5 years ago has 16gb ram, half TB SSD and still runs like a champ with 200 tabs open. It's just strange to see a premium brand product not being able to compete with same-category class products from a half-decade ago. [1]: Lighter, in fact, than this MB Air M2

boardwaalk 4y ago
You can spec it with or 16 or 24 GB and the CPU is going to be miles faster than your Thinkpad. Sometimes I think people just want to feel good about their purchases… It’s 5 years old, it’s okay if it’s not top of the line anymore.

pletnes 4y ago

I disagree, RAM is super important. But I went from win10 with 32 GB + dedicated nvidia with 4 GB to M1 on a mbp with just 16 GB. The M1 is still so much faster it’s like swapping a forklift with a fighter jet. I don’t think the numbers are comparable without more analysis of the workload and OS. FWIW I’m doing coding and data analysis with python and 99 tabs in 3 different browsers on both machines.

haliskerbas 4y ago

Yes. In college I had many tabs and many word documents open, a few IDEs, horribly inefficient LMS or video sharing sites, and massive lecture videos. Maybe a few chat apps to keep in touch with classmates. If you’ve used google chrome with messenger dot com, that’s already eating into the ram budget a good amount.

itsoktocry 4y ago

>Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? If we're going to play that game, which college student requires a new MacBook Air at all? I'm an industry professional and do my development on used ThinkPads. Sure there are are some people out there who need more processing power than I do, but not many, and certainly not in college.

2143 4y ago

> Which typical Air buyer needs 16gb ram, the college student with 50 tabs open and Spotify in the background? How about a college student who contributes to large open source projects? (eg. Chromium or Firefox — I don't know if their memory footprint situation improved so these examples might not be valid today, but they definitely were back in the day). Don't underestimate college students ;) People who complain about 8 GB being too low probably have a good reason. I know I needed more than 8 GB because my 8 GB memory laptop always had it full (and was using swap) whenever I was using it for software development (and this laptop was already an upgrade from 4 GB). However, I also know that I don't need more than 24 GB, because my utilization never reach anywhere close to that in practice. The problem is more pronounced on computers with memory that cannot be upgraded. > asking how many cylinders a car has. Doesn't matter for most people. Where I'm at, the F10 BMW 525d used to come with a creamy smooth 6 cylinder straight six motor. Made a little over 200 hp and 460 Nm of torque. Later, they changed the engine to a highly tuned 4 cylinder with nearly identical power and torque (still called "525d"). Infact, the 4 cyl motor has a little over 10 horses more than the 6 cyl, but it came at a higher rpm. The driving experience was noticeably different. The 6 cylinder engine just felt effortless; in-gear acceleration (which matters during overtakes) was simply better. The 4 cyl motor felt strained. Also, there's the other point that you'd know if you're into engines — straight 6 engines are inherently balanced and yadda yadda (=> no engine vibrations => very smooth), while other configurations need balancer shafts (which can't really be perfected), so the straight 6 engines are slightly more "clean" from an engineering perspective. Sure, 120 km/h is 120 km/h regardless of cylinder count, but that's not the point. Environmental considerations are also a different matter.

jandrese 4y ago

My feeling is that 8GB is barely adequate in 2020 for light or medium-light usage, a couple of MacOS updates and a few more apps switching to Electron and you're going to be chugging hard. This wouldn't be a problem except that the RAM can't be upgraded so you have a laptop that would probably last 6-8 years easy likely being kneecapped in 2-4 years instead.

donny2018 4y ago
As an owner of an 8gb M1 Air, I now think that a machine for “light usage” that can barely handle a half dozen of open tabs and 1 Docker container shouldn’t cost even half as much. I bought it for about $1700 with 512Gb SSD. In fact, Apple should stop offering 8GB versions at this point as MacOS is very memory hungry compared to Windows. That yellow “memory pressure” graph is irritating.

hajile 4y ago

8GB results in lots of swapping with the SSD which greatly shortens SSD lifespan. That alone was reason enough to have 16GB. I have an air for work with 16GB and frequently bump up against the amount of memory. I'm currently just waiting on reviews to decide between a 24GB Air and a 32GB Pro.