16GB usage clarification and longevity

[raythompsontn]

EDIT: ArtIsRight on Youtube is a credible photographer and Mac hardware tester. This video shows that in a 1000 photo export test in Lightroom Classic, the 8 GB model is half the processing speed of the 16 GB model, so 2x slower.

Which is significant and why I recommend at least 16 GB for anyone doing creative output. So I agree with you overall. But note that its 2x slower and not 5x slower like MaxTech is saying.

Why this hangup on Lightroom? Photo apps are known to be fairly significant resource intensive and CPU intensive. Especially Lightroom when exporting several hundred photographs with multiple edits to each image along with format conversion.

For most people that is irrelevant. I would venture to guess that 90% of Mac users have little to do with photographs other than what they have taken on their phone. To use Lightroom or other resource intensive apps as a metric to justify everyone getting 16GB is not valid. Their use of resource intensive apps is probably non-existant.

Those that use resource intensive apps know who they are and will generally purchase a system to support those needs. I am a very heavy user of Lightroom and Photoshop. That is why I configured my last system with 64GB of memory and two multi TB high speed SSDs. For the average user extreme overkill.

Benchmarks that stress a system to show how a system will perform under maximum workload is probably good to rate systems. Very helpful for the heavy users. That average consumer that buys a Mac has probably never seen a benchmark and if asked would say it's the print their butt leaves when the bench has just been painted.

 

[Torty]

I bet 8GB is enough for Tim Cooks productive machine. 😊 And he is a pro and does serious work isn’t he?

 

[chmania]

How about 4GB RAM?
How come Acer Swift 1 on Pentium N6000 with just 4GB runs heavy Windows 11 with many Edge tabs open, Youtube and Word and/or Excel without getting slow and sluggish? After all, macOS is a smallish OS derived from BSD, of course, without the eye-candy. Not everyone is video editing for Youtube, by the way.

 

[6749974]

Why this hangup on Lightroom? Photo apps are known to be fairly significant resource intensive and CPU intensive. Especially Lightroom when exporting several hundred photographs with multiple edits to each image along with format conversion.

Lightroom is a popular app. Photo editing is a popular computing task.

And the person I'm responding to had a MaxTech screenshot depicting a test in Lightroom, which I took issue with, so I found another Lightroom test I think is more fair to the 8 GB model.

For most people that is irrelevant. I would venture to guess that 90% of Mac users have little to do with photographs other than what they have taken on their phone.

It's relevant if one is having a discussion with someone else who is considering a Mac for the purposes of sustained processing.

It's also relevant in the larger, general discussion of "What Mac to Buy?" because a person should learn, in that process, "Am I going to be running sustained processes longer than 5 minutes? Do I care to compress that process to be an even shorter duration? If YES, buy this; if NOT, buy that."

To use Lightroom or other resource intensive apps as a metric to justify everyone getting 16GB is not valid. Their use of resource intensive apps is probably non-existant.

I'm not justifying everyone get 16 GB.

Whether an 8 GB model is 2x slower or 5x slower in a Lightroom export test, it should be explained with context—as I did in my post—that "bad is relative" because if a person is using Lightroom once per day or once per week, so what if it takes 6 minutes when it could have taken 3 minutes to export some photos? Is that really worth a $400 difference when base models are on sale? Can't a person do something else like check their socials, or grab a coffee, for those 6 minutes?

While I wish Apple would move to 16 GB defaults, I regularly recommend 8 GB models to people if their use case doesn't call for 16 GB. It's all about product-buyer fit, and price is the ultimate consideration also.

Benchmarks that stress a system to show how a system will perform under maximum workload is probably good to rate systems. Very helpful for the heavy users. That average consumer that buys a Mac has probably never seen a benchmark and if asked would say it's the print their butt leaves when the bench has just been painted.

I come to the same conclusions. Benchmarks are good for gaging improvements year to year, and what the maximum headroom you're purchasing is, but for casual users we've long surpassed their headroom with the M1 chip. And while I hate 8 GB is the base model default most people will buy, for casual use, swap performance is good enough that it will suffice for any overuse of RAM.

I was simply butting into someone else's discussion about how Lightroom is 5x slower on 8 GB model than a 16 GB model. I was pointing out that to arrive to that conclusion one has to severely impact RAM usage first, before even opening Lightroom, and that such a test is not fair to describe 8GB Macs as slower—especially without said context. That is why I supplied what I think is a more fair test result showing 8 GB Macs are 2x slower and not 5x slower (in Lightroom export tests) like the original comment I was responding to.

 

[6749974]

I bet 8GB is enough for Tim Cooks productive machine. 😊 And he is a pro and does serious work isn’t he?

Tim Cook does zero work outside of the following tasks

• Check email

Near 100% of his needs are delegated to smarter people than him.

 

[raythompsontn]

Lightroom is a popular app. Photo editing is a popular computing task.

My experience says otherwise. Most of the people I encounter have no idea about Lightroom. Photo editing is relegated to simple photo editing apps with people doing some cropping, maybe clone stamping and exposure correction. These people are not going to be paying Adobe each month for something they do not do often.

Most of the people I encounter with Macs also have an iPhone. The overwhelming majority of their photos are from their iPhone or images people texted. These people are not going to be using Lightroom or Photoshop.

Maybe I just don’t run with the right crowd.

 

[za9ra22]

Tim Cook does zero work outside of the following tasks

• Check email

Near 100% of his needs are delegated to smarter people than him.

Aside from being unnecessarily insulting to a person I suspect you know nothing at all worthwhile about, I would say that one of the things I have heard taught on management courses over and over again is that the smartest person in the room is the one who delegates.

I think it's perfectly ok to have frustrations with Apple, their products, their policies, pricing, whatever, but stooping to personal insult is incredibly cheap.

 

[6749974]

How about 4GB RAM?
How come Acer Swift 1 on Pentium N6000 with just 4GB runs heavy Windows 11 with many Edge tabs open, Youtube and Word and/or Excel without getting slow and sluggish? After all, macOS is a smallish OS derived from BSD, of course, without the eye-candy. Not everyone is video editing for Youtube, by the way.

If one sticks to browsers and office documents, and with a bit of swap magic, 4 GB would work. But then its limited to that narrow use case.

How is Apple to promote to visual creatives, musicians, film makers, and so on? The Air needs to be an aspiring product, something that feels like "If I buy this, I can do so much, even in a thin and silent package." 4 GB would prevent that from happening for so many people.

Also, 4 GB is unified, which means the GPU is using it, and so are the neural engines. That Acer Swift 1 is low-res, and only supports one external monitor at 4K @ 30Hz is convenient to its low amount of RAM, but MacBook Airs are promoted as being much more capable from a GPU support standpoint, and that is partly due to having at least 8 GB RAM the GPU can access.

 

[6749974]

My experience says otherwise. Most of the people I encounter have no idea about Lightroom. Photo editing is relegated to simple photo editing apps with people doing some cropping, maybe clone stamping and exposure correction. These people are not going to be paying Adobe each month for something they do not do often.

Most of the people I encounter with Macs also have an iPhone. The overwhelming majority of their photos are from their iPhone or images people texted. These people are not going to be using Lightroom or Photoshop.

Maybe I just don’t run with the right crowd.

The point isn't so literal, its conceptual. Whether Lightroom or any other app, the point is that anything that saturates RAM during a sustained process will slow down the CPU. That needs to be part of the discussion if we're taking note of what the advantages are of 16 GB vs 8 GB RAM. A person can decide for themselves whether that matters or not.

 

[6749974]

Aside from being unnecessarily insulting to a person I suspect you know nothing at all worthwhile about, I would say that one of the things I have heard taught on management courses over and over again is that the smartest person in the room is the one who delegates.

I think it's perfectly ok to have frustrations with Apple, their products, their policies, pricing, whatever, but stooping to personal insult is incredibly cheap.

Tim Cook is running a global 2.61 trillion USD company. He doesn't have time to waste on anything but delegation. That was my point.

When I said he delegates to people smarter than him, I obviously meant in the specialized field those tasks require. Tim Cook hires genius marketers, pricing strategists, managers, schedulers, designers, etc. Hiring smart(er) people and delegating to them is the job. Not being the bottleneck to any one business function is the CEO's job.

 

[raythompsontn]

How did your brain interpret what I said as an insult?

Saturated the CPU because the RAM was insufficient causing unnecessary swap file usage. 🤪🤪🤪🤪

 

[6749974]

Saturated the CPU because the RAM was insufficient causing unnecessary swap file usage. 🤪🤪🤪🤪

Ha. I removed that in a quick edit because I realized my words can be misinterpreted as "Tim Cook hired smarter people than him because he's dumb" which is not at all what that means when its recommended in business to hire people smarter than you—and I'm pretty sure Steve Jobs said that a hundred times in interviews—but not everyone knows that context.

 

[chmania]

How is Apple to promote to visual creatives, musicians, film makers, and so on?

They buy specialised computers with enough power, enough RAM etc, etc. For normal users, 8GB is quite enough even with word processing, few tabs on Safari, some photo editing with Preview, or even with GIMP. I have a 16GB i7 dual graphic MBP, and for 8 hours, there are few websites open where I edit stuff, add stuff, add/edit/change images etc. Sometimes Excel is open, Youtube is open, Preview, GIMP are open and so on. I can't get the RAM to peak. For 8 hours, it is my work machine.

The MBP has the RAM, and macOS uses that as it wishes. And, being derived from BSD, it knows how to manage the memory. After all, one massive company works on one macOS at a time, so it can be taken care of. The majority of the MacBook users are normal people, who uses it for day to day normal work. 8GB should be enough, otherwise macOS would be bad. But it is not, it is a very good OS.

Those specialised people, such as "visual creatives, musicians, film makers" should buy specialised computers.

 

[leifp]

Then this is not what you posted?

You missed it AGAIN. A Gb and a GB are not the same thing. There are 8 bits in a byte, thus there are 8 Gb in a single GB…

 

[za9ra22]

Tim Cook is running a global 2.61 trillion USD company. He doesn't have time to waste on anything but delegation. That was my point.

When I said he delegates to people smarter than him, I obviously meant in the specialized field those tasks require. Tim Cook hires genius marketers, pricing strategists, managers, schedulers, designers, etc. Hiring smart(er) people and delegating to them is the job. Not being the bottleneck to any one business function is the CEO's job.

You have a rather odd way of making a point, which appears not to be serving your needs quite as well as it might.

 

[raythompsontn]

You missed it AGAIN. A Gb and a GB are not the same thing

True, they are not. I never trust abbreviations on this place. To remove ambiguity spell it out. In a discussion about 16GB versus 8GB, bits are not a consideration. Clever he was Master Yoda.

 

[6749974]

They buy specialised computers with enough power, enough RAM etc, etc. For normal users, 8GB is quite enough even with word processing, few tabs on Safari, some photo editing with Preview, or even with GIMP. I have a 16GB i7 dual graphic MBP, and for 8 hours, there are few websites open where I edit stuff, add stuff, add/edit/change images etc. Sometimes Excel is open, Youtube is open, Preview, GIMP are open and so on. I can't get the RAM to peak. For 8 hours, it is my work machine.

The MBP has the RAM, and macOS uses that as it wishes. And, being derived from BSD, it knows how to manage the memory. After all, one massive company works on one macOS at a time, so it can be taken care of. The majority of the MacBook users are normal people, who uses it for day to day normal work. 8GB should be enough, otherwise macOS would be bad. But it is not, it is a very good OS.

Those specialised people, such as "visual creatives, musicians, film makers" should buy specialised computers.

For some perspective—assuming your i7 MBP is the 16-inch from 2019—the M3 MacBook Air is 2x faster than it:

Geekbench	16-inch Intel MacBook Pro (2019)	M3-chip MacBook Air/Pro (2023)
Single-Core	1405	3150
Multi-Core	6349	12100
Metal GPU	31572	47200

So how can the MacBook Pros from 2019 be for "visual creatives, musicians, film makers" but then the MacBook Air isn't considered for "visual creatives, musicians, film makers"—despite being 2x faster than it?

That's just not making any sense. The Air is now a capable computer for creatives.

Before Apple Silicon, one had to start their considerations at the entry-level MacBook Pro; but thanks to Apple Silicon, creative types can now start their considerations at the MacBook Air level and go up from there depending on specific application needs and budget.

We just need to remove the previous stigma of the name "Air" to properly see what this Mac really is. This is no longer an email machine. For that, we have the Acer Swift 1 with 4 GB of RAM.

Back to your original comment and why I responded—I was simply giving context as to why 4 GB is not a good idea for an Air—and explaining why 8 GB is much more appropriate for the use cases that encompass its capabilities. Obviously a person can upgrade RAM even further than 8 GB, to better support multitasking or large projects. I was not arguing against 8 GB but saying that 4 GB is too low.

 

[6749974]

You have a rather odd way of making a point, which appears not to be serving your needs quite as well as it might.

What was that you said to me?

"I think it's perfectly ok to have frustrations with Apple, their products, their policies, pricing, whatever, but stooping to personal insult is incredibly cheap."​

LOL. You should be embarrassed you thought I was insulting the intelligence of one of the greatest CEOs of all time because I explained that a CEO's job is to hire and delegate. Go drink your coffee.

 

[geta]

For some perspective—assuming your i7 MBP is the 16-inch from 2019—the M3 MacBook Air is 2x faster than it:

Geekbench	16-inch Intel MacBook Pro (2019)	M3-chip MacBook Air/Pro (2023)
Single-Core	1405	3150
Multi-Core	6349	12100
Metal GPU	31572	47200

So how can the MacBook Pros from 2019 be for "visual creatives, musicians, film makers" but then the MacBook Air isn't considered for "visual creatives, musicians, film makers"—despite being 2x faster than it?

That's just not making any sense.

The Air is now a capable computer for creatives. Before Apple Silicon, one had to start their considerations at the entry-level MacBook Pro; but thanks to Apple Silicon, creative types can now start their considerations at the MacBook Air level and go up from there depending on specific application needs and budget.

We just need to remove the previous stigma of the name "Air" to properly see what this Mac really is. This is no longer an email machine. For that, we have the Acer Swift 1 with 4 GB of RAM.

MBA is super capable machine and having plenty of power, but because it’s fan-less, it will have problem to sustain it’s power for long term, something that these creative apps need.

 

[za9ra22]

What was that you said to me?

"I think it's perfectly ok to have frustrations with Apple, their products, their policies, pricing, whatever, but stooping to personal insult is incredibly cheap."​

LOL. You should be embarrassed you thought I was insulting the intelligence of one of the greatest CEOs of all time because I explained that a CEO's job is to hire and delegate. Go drink your coffee.

Ah yes... "Tim Cook does zero work outside of the following tasks

• Check email"

and "Near 100% of his needs are delegated to smarter people than him."

How could I have got your meaning wrong?!

 

[chmania]

We just need to remove the previous stigma of the name "Air" to properly see what this Mac really is. This is no longer an email machine. For that, we have the Acer Swift 1 with 4 GB of RAM.

I didn't know that there is stigma of the name "Air", by the way.

On the matter of 4GB in Acer Swift 1, which is supposed to run on a weaker Intel Pentium chip, but runs the much heavier Windows 11, and still pulls ~ 13 hours on battery after 5 years tells something about the manufacturers. It has quite small battery and originally would run 17 hours. And, weighs 1.09Kg!

The thing is, we buy computers that we need, or actually we should do so. Today, rarely any manufacturer would make a 4GB laptop. Practically all Windows laptops have 8GB as a standard. Some of them are much more expensive than the M2 MacBook Air at the stationary shops. They even look lovelier than the MacBook. Knowing that Linux runs quite well on a 4GB laptop, I'm quite sure macOS (derived from BSD) would run on a 4GB MacBook very well. But the so-called entry level MacBook has 8GB RAM, and that's just business, a marketing matter. It is just the same as saying that macOS 14 cannot run on a 2017 MacBook. Just a marketing gimmick. Apple takes something off Sonoma that was in Ventura to do that. The OCLP people adds them back.

There is no such thing as "entry level", 8GB RAM is quite good enough for a MacBook.

 

[6749974]

MBA is super capable machine and having plenty of power, but because it’s fan-less, it will have problem to sustain it’s power for long term, something that these creative apps need.

For sure, but whether or not that is an issue, and how much of an issue, is up to the use case—and use case frequency—of the buyer.

For instance, I'm a graphic designer that works in print mostly. I do sustained processes like exporting and batch effects on hundreds of photos. I sometimes do video, or a little 3D. I'm aware that my CPU will slow down to 80% of original speed after several minutes. I'm ok with that. Because, for instance, going from 2x to 1.8x the speed of a 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro—due to throttling—is still fast as heck. It's still faster than Intel Macs.

Theres a nuance here that I'm trying to make, that even if the Air isn't the best Mac a creative user can buy—we have an M3 Max and soon an M3 Ultra—the M3 chip is still 8 cores, its still faster than Intel Macs, it still does music production and video editing and creative arts—its not limited to web browsing or email.

And the creative process is a nuanced thing. Maybe a user is spending 99% of their creative process in EDIT mode where they are designing, editing, cutting and splicing and making creative decisions. The Air is usually more than capable there. Its only the 1% of the process that is exporting or saving or rendering—that needs to sustain CPU/GPU. How crucial that exporting time is, is up to the user. If time and frequency is a factor, because they are exporting 100 times per day, then they should invest in the most amount of performance and GPU cores, and active cooling. But if they are exporting once or twice per day, maybe an Air with passive cooling is more than sufficient. Use cases vary.

My overall point and I think you agree is that the Air is now elevated in consideration for creative types and I think with sufficient RAM, most could use one happily.

Of course there will always be those workstation level tasks that an Air can't even dream of doing well, like some LLM/AI stuff. I tried scaling a 720p movie to 4K using open-source AI processes, using the best quality algorithm, and the estimated time was 48 hours on my MacBook Air. I gave up after an hour and a half when its showed me that. No, that task is better left to the M3 Ultra chip with 80 core GPU. But most common creative applications run wonderfully on Apple Silicon MacBook Airs, provided RAM is sufficient and won't cause swap.

Sorry for writing a novel but this is a nuanced topic I don't know how to summarize further.

 

[chmania]

Sorry for writing a novel but this is a nuanced topic I don't know how to summarize further.

I am actually glad that you did!
Sometime in the future, I'd have to buy a M chip MacBook. Your explanation tells me that for myself and my work, a 8GB M2 or M3 Air would be good enough. 👌

 

[6749974]

I didn't know that there is stigma of the name "Air", by the way.

You're right, stigma is the wrong word. I should say "reputation."

I see posts on Reddit all the time: "I need to browse 20 tabs and edit a few photos, which MacBook Pro should I buy?" Its like people think the Air can't do awesome work. People are stuck in the "I need a MacBook Pro" mentality. Famously, IT departments get requests for MacBook Pros when all they're users are doing is logging into Google Calendar. They don't know specifics, they just want a MacBook Pro. That is why Apple kept the old MacBook Pro design around. Had they gotten rid of it in 2020, they would have lost more than half their enterprise sales.

Those people should have gotten Airs—if they understood the specs—but thats not what they wanted because they only know the name due to a decade of Apple marketing.

The thing is, we buy computers that we need, or actually we should do so. Today, rarely any manufacturer would make a 4GB laptop. Practically all Windows laptops have 8GB as a standard. Some of them are much more expensive than the M2 MacBook Air at the stationary shops. They even look lovelier than the MacBook. Knowing that Linux runs quite well on a 4GB laptop, I'm quite sure macOS (derived from BSD) would run on a 4GB MacBook very well. But the so-called entry level MacBook has 8GB RAM, and that's just business, a marketing matter. It is just the same as saying that macOS 14 cannot run on a 2017 MacBook. Just a marketing gimmick.

There is no such thing as "entry level", 8GB RAM is quite good enough for a MacBook.

8 GB is good enough for macOS and a MacBook to start.

The argument is that its stingy for the price. Yes, 8 GB RAM is the norm on Windows laptops—but those laptops cost $500. At the price that Apple sells an 8/256 at MSRP, Windows laptops come with 16 GB RAM, and 1 TB storage.

I don't think people are complaining that the $599 Mac mini—often on sale for $499—comes with 8 GB.

Price is really the instigator of this debate.

 

[6749974]

How could I have got your meaning wrong?!

Good question. I think most people would realize I wasn’t insulting Cook for claiming he doesn’t have time to write all of Apple’s web copy because he’s busy managing a company.