12 ms·

No it's not. A ton of programs used by regular people (Chrome etc.) are RAM hogs, if you are a dev, then Docker is also an egregious example. If you happen to p

No it's not. A ton of programs used by regular people (Chrome etc.) are RAM hogs, if you are a dev, then Docker is also an egregious example. If you happen to play games (a big thing for average people), that 8GB will be shared between the CPU and the GPU. Even the Steam Deck, admittedly a budget device, comes with 16GB. It's often mentioned that macOS is more frugal with RAM, a claim which I flat out found to be untrue. I regularly saw Dock and Finder leak and eat gigabytes of RAM each. The unfortunate reality is that base Mac models always existed as an upsell. There were a few precious historical exceptions, most recently the M1 Mac, but that doesn't change this rule.

seec 3y ago
The reality is that the exact same hardware uses less RAM on a base install of Windows than it does on a base install of macOS. Having used both hackintosh and real Mac booted on Windows (without bootcamp, as a "real" PC) I am certain of that fact. And in usage I also find macOS and its Apps to more often than not actually take more RAM. It isn't a bad thing pe se, it often means more speed because more things are cached, available fast and the like. However, it is quite annoying when Apple simultaneously pretend the contrary and at the same time upcharge for their soldered RAM in a greedy way. If anything, a "Pro" PC laptop in this price range will have not only at least 16GB as default but is highly likely to have 4-8GB for its dedicated GPU when with Apple Silicon, the RAM advertised has to be shared and any GPU activity lower even more what can comfortably be used as system memory. The more time passes, the more Apple Silicon feels like the ultimate scam. At this you better have a very real need for battery life because it really does not make a lot of sense otherwise. In fact, if it is only autonomy that you need and not true mobility, it would be better to buy cheaper performance equivalent PC and buy one of those large carriable battery.
al_borland 3y ago
If Chrome is the only reason someone feels they need more RAM, maybe what they really need is a new browser. A web browser should never even enter the conversation when talking about hitting hardware limitations.
- sneed_chucker 3y ago
  Once upon a time that was a reasonable position to hold. But nowadays full dynamic applications are shipped in a browser tab, and a huge number of "desktop" applications are written in JavaScript using electron, so they're essentially an isolated chrome instance for running that app. People talk about chrome being a resource hog, and maybe it is, but if you have dozens of JavaScript applications running in different tabs, then chrome is just taking the blame for the fact that it's essentially serving as the user application layer of your OS.
  - LocalH 3y ago
    Putting applications in the browser was a huge mistake that we're still paying for today.
aurareturn 3y ago
>No it's not. A ton of programs used by regular people (Chrome etc.) are RAM hogs, if you are a dev, then Docker is also an egregious example. If you happen to play games (a big thing for average people), that 8GB will be shared between the CPU and the GPU. Even the Steam Deck, admittedly a budget device, comes with 16GB. That's why I said normal office workers and students. I never said 8GB is enough for devs. It wasn't enough for me. It was still manageable for that 1 year before Apple Silicon MBPs got released. But of course I upgraded to an M1 Pro 16GB as soon as it came out. I just gifted a family member an M1 Air 8GB in late 2023. I felt very comfortable that it was enough for the work this person does on the computer. PS. 8GB is perfectly fine for Chrome web browsing. You can have 50 tabs open and it'll still run smoothly. macOS does some magic with paging. Don't know how it does it. But never had an issue with 8GB and Chrome. It was always my IDE, Typescript, and docker that gave me RAM issues on 8GB.
- lpapez 3y ago
  > That's why I said normal office workers and students. Costing 9 hundos a piece, Air is not something a regular company would buy for their employees. They're more likely to buy a budget laptop in the 400-500 range which you can bet will do just fine for office work, and you can always upgrade it if necessary. If a company really does need their employees to work a Mac, they will have to cough out a lot more for the 16GB version, and this is what the article calls corporate greed.
  - aurareturn 3y ago
    When I was in college, I interned as IT support at a large corporation. We were buying $1200 Lenovos for normal office workers and $2000 laptop workstations for the design engineers. You'd be surprised at how much money enterprises spend on each laptop. I happen to think that the enterprise is an untapped market for Macs. Not tech offices. Other industries that run on Lenovos and Dells. If I'm a small business, I still wouldn't buy $500 Windows laptops for my employees. I'd buy $750 M1 Airs. They last longer, "just work", and have fewer support issues.
    - 3y ago
SebastianKra 3y ago
I used a M1 with 16GB, and regularly had ~12GB in swap without noticing anything. Once per day, I maybe got a slight 600ms hang when something was unexpectedly swapped in. So I can imagine that 8GB will work okay, even if Chrome eats 30% of it.
acuozzo 3y ago
> if you are a dev, then Docker is also an egregious example I'm glad I stuck with embedded development. The biggest resource-hog I interact with regularly is GCC. I can be productive on a P3 with 256M of RAM.
solarkraft 3y ago
> I regularly saw Dock and Finder leak and eat gigabytes of RAM each Make sure to view "Real mem" in Activity Monitor. That's the amount of data actually stored in your RAM, the rest being swapped out. That number can be quite small, even for apps that theoretically use a lot of memory. I have found Docker to be an "actual" memory hog with not much of it being swapped out, but could imagine that it would be possible in the case of Finder.
- Delk 3y ago
  I don't know how macOS manages memory or reports its use, but how does the data having been swapped out change anything? If N pages of data of those processes have been swapped out, that means those processes have allocated and used that many pages of memory (plus any that are actually in RAM). The OS heuristics just decided it wasn't worthwhile to keep those particular pages in RAM under current circumstances. If the processes just allocated a lot of memory and never touched it, it might be reasonable to say they don't actually use it because the OS might never actually reserve any physical resources for it. (Happens a lot e.g. in Linux with memory overcommit allowed by default and some processes allocating dozens of gigabytes of virtual memory, most of which they never actually use.) But would those pages then count towards swap use either? Only dirty pages end up in swap. Unless macOS counts allocated but untouched pages towards used swap as committed resources. edit: better wording
- vikramkr 3y ago
  Swap memory use is worse than actual memory use. If it just reserving a big block and not using it then fine whatever but if it's using a lot of swap that means ram is probably bottlenecking you since swap is slow.
  - solarkraft 3y ago
    It's of course slower than real RAM, but Apple are using pretty fast SSDs and possibly a novel model of swapping, making it effectively pretty good (certainly not perfect!).
    - 3y ago
xw3090 3y ago
Do you know of any recent benchmarks to back up this claim? It's entirely quantifiable. Also, it's such a controversial thing you would think if the difference was so stark The Verge, Linus Tech Tips or Max Tech, etc. would, you know, actually measure it. The only kinda objective side-by-side test I could find, on typical workloads, was this 2 year old video on the M1 which stated the 8gb did well on typical multitask workloads. For Chrome tab test the bottleneck was the internet speed, not RAM. Lightroom and Final Cut Export was slower, but typical multitasking workloads basically matched. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h487I_5xOZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h487I_5xOZU Obviously things change so where does this stand today?

seec 3y ago

The reality is that the exact same hardware uses less RAM on a base install of Windows than it does on a base install of macOS. Having used both hackintosh and real Mac booted on Windows (without bootcamp, as a "real" PC) I am certain of that fact. And in usage I also find macOS and its Apps to more often than not actually take more RAM. It isn't a bad thing pe se, it often means more speed because more things are cached, available fast and the like. However, it is quite annoying when Apple simultaneously pretend the contrary and at the same time upcharge for their soldered RAM in a greedy way. If anything, a "Pro" PC laptop in this price range will have not only at least 16GB as default but is highly likely to have 4-8GB for its dedicated GPU when with Apple Silicon, the RAM advertised has to be shared and any GPU activity lower even more what can comfortably be used as system memory. The more time passes, the more Apple Silicon feels like the ultimate scam. At this you better have a very real need for battery life because it really does not make a lot of sense otherwise. In fact, if it is only autonomy that you need and not true mobility, it would be better to buy cheaper performance equivalent PC and buy one of those large carriable battery.

al_borland 3y ago

If Chrome is the only reason someone feels they need more RAM, maybe what they really need is a new browser. A web browser should never even enter the conversation when talking about hitting hardware limitations.

sneed_chucker 3y ago
Once upon a time that was a reasonable position to hold. But nowadays full dynamic applications are shipped in a browser tab, and a huge number of "desktop" applications are written in JavaScript using electron, so they're essentially an isolated chrome instance for running that app. People talk about chrome being a resource hog, and maybe it is, but if you have dozens of JavaScript applications running in different tabs, then chrome is just taking the blame for the fact that it's essentially serving as the user application layer of your OS.
- LocalH 3y ago
  Putting applications in the browser was a huge mistake that we're still paying for today.

aurareturn 3y ago

>No it's not. A ton of programs used by regular people (Chrome etc.) are RAM hogs, if you are a dev, then Docker is also an egregious example. If you happen to play games (a big thing for average people), that 8GB will be shared between the CPU and the GPU. Even the Steam Deck, admittedly a budget device, comes with 16GB. That's why I said normal office workers and students. I never said 8GB is enough for devs. It wasn't enough for me. It was still manageable for that 1 year before Apple Silicon MBPs got released. But of course I upgraded to an M1 Pro 16GB as soon as it came out. I just gifted a family member an M1 Air 8GB in late 2023. I felt very comfortable that it was enough for the work this person does on the computer. PS. 8GB is perfectly fine for Chrome web browsing. You can have 50 tabs open and it'll still run smoothly. macOS does some magic with paging. Don't know how it does it. But never had an issue with 8GB and Chrome. It was always my IDE, Typescript, and docker that gave me RAM issues on 8GB.

lpapez 3y ago
> That's why I said normal office workers and students. Costing 9 hundos a piece, Air is not something a regular company would buy for their employees. They're more likely to buy a budget laptop in the 400-500 range which you can bet will do just fine for office work, and you can always upgrade it if necessary. If a company really does need their employees to work a Mac, they will have to cough out a lot more for the 16GB version, and this is what the article calls corporate greed.
- aurareturn 3y ago
  When I was in college, I interned as IT support at a large corporation. We were buying $1200 Lenovos for normal office workers and $2000 laptop workstations for the design engineers. You'd be surprised at how much money enterprises spend on each laptop. I happen to think that the enterprise is an untapped market for Macs. Not tech offices. Other industries that run on Lenovos and Dells. If I'm a small business, I still wouldn't buy $500 Windows laptops for my employees. I'd buy $750 M1 Airs. They last longer, "just work", and have fewer support issues.
  - 3y ago

SebastianKra 3y ago

I used a M1 with 16GB, and regularly had ~12GB in swap without noticing anything. Once per day, I maybe got a slight 600ms hang when something was unexpectedly swapped in. So I can imagine that 8GB will work okay, even if Chrome eats 30% of it.

acuozzo 3y ago

> if you are a dev, then Docker is also an egregious example I'm glad I stuck with embedded development. The biggest resource-hog I interact with regularly is GCC. I can be productive on a P3 with 256M of RAM.

solarkraft 3y ago

> I regularly saw Dock and Finder leak and eat gigabytes of RAM each Make sure to view "Real mem" in Activity Monitor. That's the amount of data actually stored in your RAM, the rest being swapped out. That number can be quite small, even for apps that theoretically use a lot of memory. I have found Docker to be an "actual" memory hog with not much of it being swapped out, but could imagine that it would be possible in the case of Finder.

Delk 3y ago
I don't know how macOS manages memory or reports its use, but how does the data having been swapped out change anything? If N pages of data of those processes have been swapped out, that means those processes have allocated and used that many pages of memory (plus any that are actually in RAM). The OS heuristics just decided it wasn't worthwhile to keep those particular pages in RAM under current circumstances. If the processes just allocated a lot of memory and never touched it, it might be reasonable to say they don't actually use it because the OS might never actually reserve any physical resources for it. (Happens a lot e.g. in Linux with memory overcommit allowed by default and some processes allocating dozens of gigabytes of virtual memory, most of which they never actually use.) But would those pages then count towards swap use either? Only dirty pages end up in swap. Unless macOS counts allocated but untouched pages towards used swap as committed resources. edit: better wording
vikramkr 3y ago
Swap memory use is worse than actual memory use. If it just reserving a big block and not using it then fine whatever but if it's using a lot of swap that means ram is probably bottlenecking you since swap is slow.
- solarkraft 3y ago
  It's of course slower than real RAM, but Apple are using pretty fast SSDs and possibly a novel model of swapping, making it effectively pretty good (certainly not perfect!).
  - 3y ago

xw3090 3y ago

Do you know of any recent benchmarks to back up this claim? It's entirely quantifiable. Also, it's such a controversial thing you would think if the difference was so stark The Verge, Linus Tech Tips or Max Tech, etc. would, you know, actually measure it. The only kinda objective side-by-side test I could find, on typical workloads, was this 2 year old video on the M1 which stated the 8gb did well on typical multitask workloads. For Chrome tab test the bottleneck was the internet speed, not RAM. Lightroom and Final Cut Export was slower, but typical multitasking workloads basically matched. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h487I_5xOZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h487I_5xOZU Obviously things change so where does this stand today?