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> With how memory hungry things are this day, 16gb is the least amount of ram most people will find usable. I see people saying this all the time but it doesn'

> With how memory hungry things are this day, 16gb is the least amount of ram most people will find usable. I see people saying this all the time but it doesn't match my experience at all. I currently have an m1 iMac and an m1 MacBook Air, both with 8gb of RAM, and have never run into a memory related slowdown or issue. 8GB of RAM is not only usable, it provides a great experience that is indistinguishable from the M1 air with 16gb that I used to have. Obviously as software developers, sometimes we need more for large projects in IDEs, docker, VMs, etc. but the base models of the iMac, MacBook Air, and Mac Mini are not intended for that purpose.

mwint 4y ago
To strengthen this even more - I have an 8GB M1 Air that I use for development when I don’t want to carry my 64GB M1 Max machine somewhere. My usual dev stack is a few Docker containers, PHPStorm and RubyMine (at the same time, don’t ask…), and the usual bunch of tabs. And… yeah, it’s a bit slower on the 8GB machine, but by no means unusable. It’s hard to tell how much is just perceived lag due to 60hz v. 120hz screen. It’s certainly not enough to make me want a 16GB model for my pseudo-disposable machine. If I had to go a couple months on just the 8GB machine, I’d survive.
genmud 4y ago
My wife has a 32gb Intel MBP from 2018 and regularly uses 12-16gb just browsing the internet, checking email, playing with her photos and watching TV shows. Just because the newer stuff has fast SSDs and can page/unpage memory quickly doesn't mean it isn't memory constrained. I actually want to go to an apple store and see what the base OS sits at memory wise. I just did a reboot with nothing started other than my standard startup apps/services (Creative Cloud helper, Dropbox, 1Password, SnagIt, Rectangle) and my m1 is sitting at 8.02 GB memory used, with NO apps running.
- mwint 4y ago
  macOS heavily caches basically everything; it’s allergic to unused memory. If there’s space it’ll find something to put there in the off chance it’s useful. You really have to go off memory pressure, not the naive used/free numbers.
awill 4y ago
You must not be using any electron-based apps :) j/k

mwint 4y ago

To strengthen this even more - I have an 8GB M1 Air that I use for development when I don’t want to carry my 64GB M1 Max machine somewhere. My usual dev stack is a few Docker containers, PHPStorm and RubyMine (at the same time, don’t ask…), and the usual bunch of tabs. And… yeah, it’s a bit slower on the 8GB machine, but by no means unusable. It’s hard to tell how much is just perceived lag due to 60hz v. 120hz screen. It’s certainly not enough to make me want a 16GB model for my pseudo-disposable machine. If I had to go a couple months on just the 8GB machine, I’d survive.

genmud 4y ago

My wife has a 32gb Intel MBP from 2018 and regularly uses 12-16gb just browsing the internet, checking email, playing with her photos and watching TV shows. Just because the newer stuff has fast SSDs and can page/unpage memory quickly doesn't mean it isn't memory constrained. I actually want to go to an apple store and see what the base OS sits at memory wise. I just did a reboot with nothing started other than my standard startup apps/services (Creative Cloud helper, Dropbox, 1Password, SnagIt, Rectangle) and my m1 is sitting at 8.02 GB memory used, with NO apps running.

mwint 4y ago
macOS heavily caches basically everything; it’s allergic to unused memory. If there’s space it’ll find something to put there in the off chance it’s useful. You really have to go off memory pressure, not the naive used/free numbers.

awill 4y ago

You must not be using any electron-based apps :) j/k