5 ms·

Narrator : 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.

by 49para 3y ago

amichail 3y ago
Is 24GB enough for app development using Xcode and Swift?
- pivo 3y ago
  I guess it depends on your app, but I’ve never felt like I needed more than 16GB for Swift/app dev.
  - amichail 3y ago
    I currently have 16GB which is fine but maybe 24GB would be better for future-proofing?
    - bombcar 3y ago
      More is always “better” but futur-proofing is often a bit of a mis-spend, especially given the decent resale value of M-based MacBooks.
- elisaado 3y ago
  16GB 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 ago
  Yes, 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Memory 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 ago
  Docker, docker, always docker. Docker on mac uses emulation and is a gigantic resource hog.
  - kamranjon 3y ago
    This ^ - use a 32gb model and regularly run out of memory
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    I 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 ago
  Likely 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 ago
  If 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 ago
Be 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.)

Narrator : 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.

by 49para 3y ago

Narrator : 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 ago

Is 24GB enough for app development using Xcode and Swift?

pivo 3y ago
I guess it depends on your app, but I’ve never felt like I needed more than 16GB for Swift/app dev.
- amichail 3y ago
  I currently have 16GB which is fine but maybe 24GB would be better for future-proofing?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    More is always “better” but futur-proofing is often a bit of a mis-spend, especially given the decent resale value of M-based MacBooks.
elisaado 3y ago
16GB 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 ago
Yes, 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 ago

I 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 ago
Memory 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 ago
Docker, docker, always docker. Docker on mac uses emulation and is a gigantic resource hog.
- kamranjon 3y ago
  This ^ - use a 32gb model and regularly run out of memory
- stephen_g 3y ago
  I 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 ago
Likely 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 ago
If 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 ago

Be 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.)