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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

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…
- eropple 4y ago
  In my experience, Fusion and Logic both quite well on M1s with 16GB of RAM, no other changes. One variable makes a ton of difference.

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…

eropple 4y ago
In my experience, Fusion and Logic both quite well on M1s with 16GB of RAM, no other changes. One variable makes a ton of difference.