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Apple insists 8GB unified memory equals 16GB regular RAM
- uni_baconcat 3y ago8GB unified memory equals to 16GB RAM, then how about VRAM? 8GB > 16GB RAM + 16GB VRAM ?
- 49para 3y agoNarrator : No, it does not. My M1 is normally under memory pressure with 16GB RAM, if I was buying a new MBP, I'd be looking at 64GB RAM.
- amichail 3y agoIs 24GB enough for app development using Xcode and Swift?
- pivo 3y agoI guess it depends on your app, but I’ve never felt like I needed more than 16GB for Swift/app dev.
- elisaado 3y ago16GB is more than enough for me, but make sure you get enough disk space (512GB is not enough for me), as the toolchains are quite big.
- NavinF 3y agoYes, but 32GB is a lot more comfortable. Upgrading my laptop last year was a huge QoL improvement
- trey-jones 3y ago"Enough" certainly. My newest Macbook Pro is 2013, so I have zero insight into the performance of the Apple Silicon devices, but the nature of software development is memory intensive in my experience. The biggest reason claiming "8GB == 16GB" is silly is that Apple doesn't have control over many of the programs that people are using (much as they would like to). Maybe Xcode makes spectacular use of their own hardware, but do we believe that these optimizations are present in Chrome and Photoshop and Docker and Emacs (hahaha) and whatever NodeJS tooling and probably more that many developers are using at all times? I really, really doubt it. Unless the memory compression discussed here is capable of 50% reduction on average, then it's just a dumb thing to say. Ultimately your programs all want to have some readily-available bytes in RAM, and most of them don't just cycle out constantly. 8GB is a hard upper bounds on multitasking, and while it might not be our grandpa's 8GB, I really have a hard time believing that it's comparable to 16GB. All this is is beside the point anyway: I switched to desktop like 5 years ago so I could affordably have 64GB and I could never go back. Turns out I don't actually want to take my work home with me, too.
- franciscop 3y agoI also have an M1 with 16GB, what are you doing that you feel it's "normally under memory pressure"? I don't feel any memory pressure but I might not be able to see the signs, or have a different workflow (if you regularly edit photos, videos, 3D, ML, etc. then _of course_ the more RAM the better, but for normal webdev?)
- wkat4242 3y agoMemory pressure on Mac means you get this popup saying "you must close one of these apps NOW or I'm going to crash". On 8GB that's indeed pretty common.
- digger495 3y agoDocker, docker, always docker. Docker on mac uses emulation and is a gigantic resource hog.
- kamranjon 3y agoThis ^ - use a 32gb model and regularly run out of memory
- stephen_g 3y agoI only use Docker for a compilation environment for Yocto, luckily I was able to find someone who had instructions for recompiling the image to aarch64 which runs super fast and efficiently. It was horrible trying to run emulated, but I was sorting this out using the older version before Rosetta 2 was an option - does that make any difference?
- 49para 3y agoLikely it's my own Safari hygene but leaving too many tabs open for too long will consume memory (some ad heavy sites, youtube etc) But generally I'll have zoom sessions, citrix, IntelliJ, vscode, Safari with a lot of tabs, etc.
- iudqnolq 3y agoIf you open the Activity Monitor and switch to the memory tab you'll see a graph of the memory pressure at the bottom. I think it roughly reflects the degree to which the system is swapping out to the SSD? On M2 16GB I recently accidentally ended up with Firefox, Chrome, Thunderbird, Spotify, Intellij, GoLand, VSCode, and Docker doing heavy builds in a cross-platform VM. Obviously unreasonable, but interestingly the system crashed with an SSD error.
- blueflow 3y ago... and i get pissed at the excessive memory use when Firefox puts my 4GB machines into memory pressure.
- KolenCh 3y agoBe careful when looking at memory pressure and how much it is using. For the same kinds of things I do, it scales well between 128GB of ram to 32 and even 16 GB of ram. If you are using a 32 GB machine and seeing it has high memory pressure or used up most of the memory, it does not necessarily mean it won’t work well on an 8 GB machine. To know if 8GB is enough, you often need to just try it and see. So that’s why I don’t want to put myself in that situation (that I’m running out of memory and the only option is to upgrade an entire machine.) (It is because there’s many things aggressively using more memory to make things faster or more responsive by cache things. But those can be released under high memory pressure without much apparent performance loss. That makes use the memory more opportunistically but making it hard to gauge how much really is needed.)
- Obscurity4340 3y agoDidn't someone say something about this putting more burden on SSD and possibly causing it to age more quickly as a result of additional writes required to coordinate between the two?
- nullindividual 3y agoThat’s just FUD, regardless of what storage manufacturer we’re talking about.
- smoldesu 3y agoExcessive swapping does wear flash storage. Flash storage has a eventual write limit, and once it breaks there are no paths of recourse for the user. That's common across Windows, Mac and Linux, and isn't FUD whatsoever (especially on a device without serviceable storage).
- nehal3m 3y agoYeah, that’s true. Using flash storage will wear it down. However, probably not during the useful lifetime of the machine: https://www.macworld.com/article/338844/how-worried-should-you-be-about-your-m1-macs-ssd-lifespan.html https://www.macworld.com/article/338844/how-worried-should-y... Personally I’m not worried and if you take decent care of your data you should be fine.
- smoldesu 3y ago> if you take decent care of your data you should be fine. This is the real bottom-line, regardless of what OS you use flash storage on. Make sure you have duplicated backups, because hardware failure is real and it can hurt you.
- nullindividual 3y agoThis is no different from spinning rust. Which is why the assertion that "swap is going to cause my SSD to fail!" crowd just makes no sense and likely lacks the technical knowledge to make that assessment (see this thread for lack of understanding of what 'virtual memory' means).
- s_dev 3y agoThis sort of thing won't convince HNers or iOS Devs or other software devs who heavily use Mac hardware but it will convince tech journalists who aren't as tech savvy as they like to think they are who will spread the 'good news' to enthusiastic Apple buyers. I recall a few years ago calling out a journalist on Twitter who openly stated he was getting a 8GB machine because Apple's new innovations means it was as good as 16GB.
- bombcar 3y agoI could see someone going from a 16gb x86 Mac to a 8gb M3 Mac feeling it was a great improvement. That still doesn’t make 8=16. Now if they had some argument based on system reports showing that RAM use excluding cache is below 8GB for x% of users, that would be a different thing.
- daniel-thompson 3y agoI know Docker isn't something Apple makes, but still, this makes me laugh. I run a fair number of containers as part of my daily workflow and the memory overhead, compared to a generic linux amd64 box running the same thing, is on the order of 10x. So for me it's actually more like, 8GB on an M machine == 1GB "regular" RAM.
- SigmundA 3y agoOf course Docker uses much more resources on a Mac than Linux, Docker is Linux specific containers under the hood so on Mac it runs in a full VM with a Linux distro! Yes if you run docker as part of your regular workflow you probably want more than the base ram config, not sure why this is surprise to anyone unless they don't know how docker works.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- daniel-thompson 3y agoI didn't say it was a surprise; I said the marketing claim made me laugh.
- jodrellblank 3y ago> "Borchers' claim is fair for regular use, like surfing, light image editing and the like. However, there are several professional workflows that we highlighted in our Apple Silicon Mac Pro review from just after WWDC, and will again in our M3 Max MacBook Pro review, that demand the RAM. His comments likely won't hold much water with those users." ... then why can't they buy more RAM? "I wish Apple charged me more for more RAM by default, instead of my having to choose to pay more for more RAM" ?
- wkat4242 3y agoApple is really expensive with their ram, that's part of the problem. It's always been like that but of course now it's no longer possible to just add your own.
- macNchz 3y agoYeah it’d be one thing if their RAM (and disk) upgrades were reasonable, but $200 per 8gb just feels like bad value. I’ve been a Mac user for a long time and fine with paying a premium for a premium device, but the pricing on upgrades (when not DIYable later) has been a major turnoff. I built a Linux machine and just threw 64gb into it because it was cheap, and guess what? It’s great! I love not having to think about it.
- wkat4242 3y agoYeah and you can get 64GB for 100 bucks now - Apple is really asking too much.
- sebtron 3y agoSo, I can load a 12GB file into memory without swapping? Cool!
- cesarb 3y ago> So, I can load a 12GB file into memory without swapping? It depends on the file. With memory compression (which the article says they have), as long as the file is compressible enough (for instance, a repetitive text-only log file), you can. If the file is not compressible enough, however, like an already compressed video file, the true memory size is more relevant, and you'll only be able to load a bit less than 8GB (a bit less because the operating system needs some memory for itself).
- The_Colonel 3y agoPeople rarely load 12GB of log files into memory. A much more common example is photo/video which is very difficult to losslessly compress (esp. with a generic compression algorithm like DEFLATE). I don't think this feature would help in such cases. Memory compression is also available in both Windows and Linux, so it doesn't justify the statement 8GB on Mac = 16GB elsewhere.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tjpnz 3y agoThey shipping the new macs with SoftRAM 95 now?
- malfist 3y agoApparently Mac downloads more RAM.
- beardyw 3y agoDiscussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38202871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38202871
- Noe2097 3y agoYeah they integrated a chipset zipping/unzipping content when accessing RAM. As in the 90's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive
- Apreche 3y agoPeople get so mad about this. Who cares if they offer an 8GB model? If that’s not enough for you, don’t buy it. They claim on their site in the section “How much memory is right for you?” >>> 8GB: Great for browsing online, streaming movies, messaging with friends and family, editing photos and personal video, casual gaming, and running everyday productivity apps. That’s not wrong. Someone only doing that stuff can get by just fine with 8GB of RAM. The only thing wrong about that is that the people who fall into that category aren’t pro, so shouldn’t they be getting some other Macbook that isn’t pro? The thing we should be mad about are the prices. They’re charging $200 or more for each step-up in RAM. I understand that their RAM is integrated and special, but an 8GB stick of SD RAM for a PC is like $30. $100 might be understandable, but $200 is obscene. The storage is even worse. Even the M3 MAX defaults to 1TB of storage. To upgrade to 4TB is $1000. A Samsung 990 Pro M2 SSD with 4TB of storage is under $300. I understand the apple storage is different, and that justifies some markup, but over a 300% markup is absurd.
- wredue 3y ago8GB is not enough for electronification and for the even further enshittification on the web today. I would tend to agree that needing 16gb just to browse the web is insane, but it’s where these apps are at right now and we should expect it to only get much much worse at an escalating rate.
- shortrounddev2 3y agoPlus not just the web itself, but all the web based products like slack
- mulmen 3y agoIf enshitification expands to fill available RAM is Apple doing us a favor by offering less? Can a MacBook Pro+ with 4GB of RAM save the Internet? Is a 2GB Pro++ the machine of my dreams?
- binary132 3y agoI’m picking up what you’re putting down.
- tgv 3y agoLooks like you could do with less space for file buffers, but that's it. I suppose that would even come with a performance penalty. Sounds like marketing BS, aka low-effort-lies-that-you-think-you-can-get-away-with.
- marcosdumay 3y agoHow much space you need for your file buffers depends mostly on your disk speed, not on the RAM speed... So no, you can't do with less of them.
- cm2187 3y agoThe last time I remember Apple saying "don't look at the specs" is about powerpc cpu frequency vs intel. And Apple ended up ditching powerpc for intel.
- wredue 3y agoFrequency doesn’t equal performance. If you’ll recall, the Pentium 4s were bumping against 4.0 ghz clock rates and the core processors came along and frequencies dropped to 2 while gaining mucho performance.
- The_Colonel 3y agoBut PowerPCs were inferior to Intel at that time and Apple just wanted to muddle the waters.
- troupo 3y agoSteve Jobs used to say something like we're not in the business of chasing numbers, we're building the best products. It seems that as of late Apple is all about chasing numbers.
- bombcar 3y ago“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.” There are tradeoffs, and the energy efficiency of the M* processors was a huge win for laptops obviously, but anytime there’s a trade off there’s something being traded.
- lukev 3y agoI agree with the prevailing sentiment that 8 != 16 and saying it is, is kind of stupid. However. An 8gb mac with Apple silicon does have higher subjective performance for lightweight office use than a standard 16gb windows machine. I personally would rather have an 8gb Macbook Air than a 16gb Lenovo.
- subsection1h 3y agoIs the MacBook Pro intended primarily for "lightweight office use"?
- jamedjo 3y agoHow much of the speedup comes from more efficient memory usage vs faster memory access times and faster CPU? I wouldn't expect lightweight office use to be primarily limited by the amount of memory available so perhaps that isn't a fair comparison still.
- seec 3y agoOffice use is actually where you are highly likely to have a lot of applications open at once (lots of web tabs, mail client, document editor, excel and maybe some PDF views) but do not need a whole lot of performance either in single thread (for blocking UI change/computations) of multithread for parallel tasks. You just need to be able to load all the apps at once in RAM and let them sit there as long as possible. The actual computation needed for those workflows is pretty low once the apps are loaded. It's all a trickle of mini task depending on the user interaction. Sometimes you need to export/convert something, and it takes longer but it is not very problematic. In fact, RAM is a pretty big determining factor in your experience, especially if you use the office suite or google tools. Apples knows this, and it is exactly why they sell such a low amount of RAM at entry level. They want people to pay up or use their (inferior) tools. Their entry level MacBook are a terrible choice for office, in fact you are unlikely to either need or use all the computer power they sell in the marketing, but you are highly likely to feel the pain of too little RAM with the relentless message asking to close some apps. The fact they came out to justify their choice is just the hammer driving the nail. It is all expected behavior from the greediest corporation on earth...
- bluejekyll 3y ago8gb does seem a little light, but the headline is misquoting what Apple said it seems, "Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems," “Analogous to” is not them saying it is equivalent. Now why are they shipping computers with such little ram in the first place? Is that still such an expensive component that they can’t stick in a more reasonable amount? It definitely seems like this is done as a way to put a lower more competitive price on something that anyone who actually needs to do “real” work on these computers will recognize they need a lot more ram than that. Easy way for them to squeeze more profit from their consumers. That said, their iPhones are 6gb of ram and the pro models are 8gb, and this is not configurable. So is it enough for basic day to day tasks, running the software that comes with the Mac out of the box? The answer is clearly yes.
- hospitalJail 3y ago>“Analogous to” is not them saying it is equivalent. HN gives Apple sooo much slack, they are the Nintendo of the Tech industry. Anyway, I'm sure these computers are just fine. I got a $100 craigslist laptop without a video card 6 years ago, and my kid is still able to play minecraft at ~15FPS. Internet and Office are perfect. What else could I need? My $800 laptop has a 3060 for things that actually need power.
- ubermonkey 3y ago>HN gives Apple sooo much slack Are you reading a different HN than I do? The Apple Hate is very, very strong here.
- bluejekyll 3y agoHow am I giving them slack? They are clearly doing this as a way to increase profit margins on their products.
- thejohnconway 3y agoI went from a 2013 MBP with 16GB of RAM to a M1 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM. The Mini does perform better, but it seems to start to slow down at about the same point in terms of my workflows. The slowdown isn't as bad (faster SSD for swap?), but there's no way is it equivalent to 32GB.
- askiiart 3y agoSo what the hell is this actually supposed to mean? Is it just that macOS is better optimized than Windows? Even if we're being generous, last I checked Windows itself doesn't use anywhere close to 8GB of RAM on a 16GB system. And that's not to mention Linux.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hospitalJail 3y agoIts just marketing nonsense, really don't think about it too hard.
- fghorow 3y agoCan somebody please explain to me why a VP of Marketing is talking about engineering problems? Simple declarative sentences with pictures will do.
- PedroBatista 3y agoThe capacity for shameless bullshit and reality distortion from Apple has long been documented, but I feel under Tim's it has reached new levels. The absurdity of saying 8GB is the new 16GB, I mean.. What's can we say other than: no ?
- ubermonkey 3y agoI think the 8GB model probably exists as much to hit a price point as anything else, but I absolutely noticed that memory usage on the Apple Silicon Mac I'm typing this one has been drastically better than it was on the Intel Mac it replaced. Enough to claim 2:1? That seems fishy. But! I bought this machine with half the RAM of its Intel predecessor, and I haven't noticed a problem despite my ongoing tab-and-app packrat tendencies.
- ldb 3y agoMaybe Apple competitors should start a campaign: "Only RAM can". (paraphrasing the famous car industry’s slogan "There is no replacement for displacement")
- NoGravitas 3y agoFaster RAM is good, and more RAM is good, but faster RAM is not the same as more RAM.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38202871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38202871
- fgsfds028374 3y ago[dead]