3 ms·

OS X is pretty good about sharing memory, so 8 GB is fine. I routinely run about 15-20 Apps on my MacBook Air, including a VMware instance with Windows XP, Ape

OS X is pretty good about sharing memory, so 8 GB is fine. I routinely run about 15-20 Apps on my MacBook Air, including a VMware instance with Windows XP, Aperture, Google Earth, Excel/Word/Powerpoint/Outlook/Mail.app. The only people who require more than 8 GB on OS X are those who have Apps that specially require a lot of memory to perform - Image Processing, Databases, etc... I used to be in the "Buy as much memory as you can afford" - but I really would never buy more than 8 GB on a Mac (with the caveat about memory hungry apps above)

calinet6 12y ago
It got a lot better in Mavericks with compression and better subsystems, but I'm sorry, I still push the limits with 16GB. 8 isn't enough for OSX at this point.
- blister 12y ago
  I just bought a 32GB iMac because my Air with 8GB was sluggish with Unity3d and Flash (needed for work). I'm glad I did. This is the best system I've ever owned.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  Ironically - I'm still on 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) - My system is rock solid, no longer kernel faults, and I rarely have to reboot it more than once every two-three weeks because of a system hang. Only specialists, or people with massive, massive data sets require more than 8 GB on OS X - I push my system really, really hard, and I rarely (if ever?) come close to maxing out memory. This isn't to say there isn't a subset of people who can make do with more than 8 GB - but 95%+ of the average knowledge worker running the Office Apps, Google Earth, Safari, etc... will be fine for several years with that much memory.
  - calinet6 12y ago
    Correct, 95% of the average knowledge worker will be fine with 8GB, but only 5% of the skilled knowledge workers who run specialized software, development stacks, VMs, etc. In a software company I wouldn't stick anyone with an 8GB mac. But then, that is a specialist application technically.

calinet6 12y ago

It got a lot better in Mavericks with compression and better subsystems, but I'm sorry, I still push the limits with 16GB. 8 isn't enough for OSX at this point.

blister 12y ago
I just bought a 32GB iMac because my Air with 8GB was sluggish with Unity3d and Flash (needed for work). I'm glad I did. This is the best system I've ever owned.
ghshephard 12y ago
Ironically - I'm still on 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) - My system is rock solid, no longer kernel faults, and I rarely have to reboot it more than once every two-three weeks because of a system hang. Only specialists, or people with massive, massive data sets require more than 8 GB on OS X - I push my system really, really hard, and I rarely (if ever?) come close to maxing out memory. This isn't to say there isn't a subset of people who can make do with more than 8 GB - but 95%+ of the average knowledge worker running the Office Apps, Google Earth, Safari, etc... will be fine for several years with that much memory.
- calinet6 12y ago
  Correct, 95% of the average knowledge worker will be fine with 8GB, but only 5% of the skilled knowledge workers who run specialized software, development stacks, VMs, etc. In a software company I wouldn't stick anyone with an 8GB mac. But then, that is a specialist application technically.