16GB usage clarification and longevity

[ThunderSkunk]

a bit of light photo editing

It may work fine for you now, but that "light" photo editing can change quickly. If you get a newish camera or start working in layers, you can very easily end up exhausting 16GB. In 2020+, I wouldn't spend money on anything under 32gb.

There is a case to be made that all a lot of people need is 16 or even 8gb because all they do is surf the web and check their emails. It's the same case made that says all a lot of people need is an iPad or even an iPhone with an external keyboard/mouse.

 

[raythompsontn]

Today, rarely any manufacturer would make a 4GB laptop

You have obviously not watch HSN or looked at computers at Walmart. I see many computers from HP that are 4GB. Running Windows in "S" mode which probably reduces the memory requirements. And people still buy them. The last HSN show I watched they sold about 30K of those machines. Advertised by HSN as ideal for college students and those needing to upgrade their machine. Slick marketing based on the sayings of PT Barnum.

 

[chmania]

It may work fine for you now, but that "light" photo editing can change quickly. If you get a newish camera or start working in layers, you can very easily end up exhausting 16GB.

One can learn how to use GIMP...it's free.

 

[chmania]

You have obviously not watch HSN or looked at computers at Walmart.

None of them are available in my country...good that they are not there. 👍👌

 

[raythompsontn]

If you get a newish camera or start working in layers, you can very easily end up exhausting 16GB

I easily edited 40 Megapixel photos with one having 37 layers, with masks in many layers, in Photoshop. Not a problem on my MacBook Air M1 with a shocking 8GB of memory.

People that do heavy media processing using creative tools such as Photoshop, InDesign, DaVinci Resolve, etc. will know who they are and will buy upgraded machines. The average user uses their iPhone to take pictures and their editing needs are light and can be easily handled within 8GB. Most average users have no concept of layers, layer masks, adjustment layers, etc. They might crop, exposure or white balance adjust. Easily done on a 8GB MacBook Air using Apple provided software.

 

[raythompsontn]

None of them are available in my country...good that they are not there

Good for you and your country. HSN is selling thousands of laptops every week with 4GB of memory. Touch screens with lighted keyboards, Windows "S", 256GB of storage. All generally less than $400.00 with some other (highly overpriced retail value) items thrown in to sweeten the deal.

I have seen HSN sell an iPad with accessories for $599.00. The iPad itself retails at the Apple Store for $350.00. The added cost was the (cheap) keyboard, (ugly) case, (crappy) headphones, and (worthless) support. People were buying those machines by the thousands.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

40mp Not a problem on my MacBook Air M1 with a shocking 8GB of memory.

Neat, but when you have a new camera and try out the pixel shift function, the raw files are a gig or two each to begin with. Start throwing some layers on top, and 8gb is nowhere near enough to do it & run your OS.

 

[chmania]

HSN is selling thousands of laptops every week with 4GB of memory. Touch screens with lighted keyboards, Windows "S", 256GB of storage. All generally less than $400.00 with some other (highly overpriced retail value) items thrown in to sweeten the deal.

Do they give a 2-year legal guarantee as a protection against faulty goods, or goods that don't look or work as advertised?

 

[raythompsontn]

Neat, but when you have a new camera and try out the pixel shift function, the raw files are a gig or two each to begin with. Start throwing some layers on top, and 8gb is nowhere near enough to do it & run your OS.

Probably true. But I am not an average user, suspect you are not either, and know what I/we need to get the job accomplished. My main editing system is 64GB water cooled I9 with two high speed M.2 2TB SSDs. I could, if I needed, edit a few images on a M1 Air with 8GB. Most certainly it would not be a production machine.

Most users are not going to use RAW. Most users are not going to use pixel shift. In fact, most users are not even going to do anything beyond minor edits on an image. These same users are not going to be paying the monthly fee to Adobe for Photoshop. For these users 8GB is sufficient for their needs. I have been impressed with what some people do with a low level Chromebook.

If I was going to use my M2 Air as a production machine, well, I just wouldn't. I would instead opt for a MBP with 32GB, or more of memory, and 2TB of storage.

I do use my M2 Air for edits on the road using Lightroom and Photoshop and it works remarkably well. Heavy edits with a couple dozen layers is reserved for the desktop, larger real estate and faster processing.

 

[raythompsontn]

Do they give a 2-year legal guarantee as a protection against faulty goods, or goods that don't look or work as advertised?

I have no idea. There is generally a 30 day free return window on the products. I have no idea what the return rate is on their computers. If it was really bad I would think HSN would no longer carry the products. But every couple of weeks the same, or close to the same, product is being pushed and people are buying.

Everything that HSN sells has to look, and operate as advertised. If the product did not, then HSN would be in some serious legal trouble with the FTC. What I don't know is the warranty on the product. Two years tech support is generally one of the high priced add-ons to arrive at full retail value. The selling price is significantly lower to make it look like a good deal. The suitability of the product for the buyer's needs is the problem of the buyer.

 

[6749974]

Neat, but when you have a new camera and try out the pixel shift function, the raw files are a gig or two each to begin with. Start throwing some layers on top, and 8gb is nowhere near enough to do it & run your OS.

What Mac specs do you use, and how long does it take to pixel shift—for example—ten RAW photos?

 

[ThunderSkunk]

What Mac specs do you use, and how long does it take to pixel shift—for example—ten RAW photos?

Maxed out 10-core i9 iMac with 128GB ram & a vega 48 + cooling mod. Takes a couple minutes to crunch each full size PS image from the Sony or Nikon Z9. I tried it on various MBP’s from 2020 back to 2015 but found that processing is enough work that heat/throttling became an issue, so I don’t put the strain on notebooks & just let the big iMac grind them out. Pickleshift is a great high quality mode to have where it makes sense to use it, and it’s amazing how much color & detail you can pack into an image and eliminate noise completely, but man it’s hungry.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Most users … Most users … most users

sure but I‘m not talking about most users, I’m talking about OP here, who thought enough to name photo editing as an area of interest, and my only caveat is if that area of interest results in a new(ish) camera purchase, that can change the equation. Otherwise, as I said, the “most users” argument for using cheap admin machines is the same argument that most users don’t need a notebook at all and can do “most user” tasks on an iPad or phone + keyboard & mouse.

…I mean hell I use a 2010 MBP 17” with 8GB of ram for almost everything not graphics-intensive, and I’m pretty sure a 7yo iPad mini outperforms it. Not that I’d recommend the uphill battle of making that work for the average user either…

 

[Thisismattwade]

What happens if you close

- edge (safari is enough)
- apple maps (after checking out something you can close it)
- photos (after editing your photos you can close it)
- Closing 3 Safari Tabs (Too many tabs will bring you out of focus)
- closing potcast (or do you listen to music and potcasts at the same time?)
- Close everything from the other user (Don’t think that multi user is common for the average user)

Now you can work focused on your numbers app while listening to music. Please give feedback about your Ram usage.

I closed Edge (Command+Q) at the end of my work day, an easy choice and good way to mentally close it out, too. Your rec was close, though point taken that both Edge and Safari open at the same time isn't good for Focus.

I don't know why Maps was open, but it was an option in Command+tab so I put it in there, same with Photos and Podcasts.

I am lazy with my Safari tabs, even at just 6.

Memory Pressure immediately went to green, but most of the other numbers didn't change significantly.

I would never close another user's programs. That's why I got a MacBook over an iPad - the ability to have multiple users. Whether it's a typical use case is a different question, but it's not my place to close my wife's computer programs.

 

[Basic75]

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.

macOS would work well on 4GB of RAM like Linux if if behaved more like Linux. But that's not the case. It is more heavyweight in many corners. And applications often come with their own duplicate set of shared libraries that all need to be loaded into RAM instead of sharing one copy in memory. Coming from the Mac it's quite surprising how well Linux runs on 2GB. If you don't need the graphical user interface you can often get by with a few 100 MB. macOS just doesn't scale down that well, not even when it's called iOS.

 

[Velli]

Hi,

I know this ‘dilemma’ has been done to death. I remember buying a MBP with 16GB RAM in 2013 (I think!).

I’ve read the different threads etc but just wanted to ask, with 16GB now slowly becoming the recommended memory configuration for most people unless very light usage. How long can you expect 16GB to be sufficient for general Office, productivity/web based work etc with a bit of light photo editing? (The usual ‘casual/amateur/typical’ MBA user.

Secondly, for someone who has 16GB with the new M3 chip, how is memory pressure with multiple tabs open and the usual usage case?

Many thanks

I think memory usage for those kinds of apps has slowed down a lot. Even for gaming PC’s, 32 GB is being treated as the relatively cheap overkill option - 16 is probably enough, but 32 is cheap enough (on Windows…), so why not?

The limiting factor is more likely to be AI advances in everyday work, which will/may require raw CPU/GPU power, but not necessarily lots of RAM.

I’d be surprised if 16GB is not enough for the described use in 10 years. CPU, maybe not.

I was briefly using a 10-ish year old Mac with 8 GB Ram while considering which M1 to buy. It was very sluggish, but it didn’t seem like it was due to lack of RAM (only used it for light work).

 

[za9ra22]

I think memory usage for those kinds of apps has slowed down a lot. Even for gaming PC’s, 32 GB is being treated as the relatively cheap overkill option - 16 is probably enough, but 32 is cheap enough (on Windows…), so why not?

The limiting factor is more likely to be AI advances in everyday work, which will/may require raw CPU/GPU power, but not necessarily lots of RAM.

I’d be surprised if 16GB is not enough for the described use in 10 years. CPU, maybe not.

RAM has become this rather curious pivot around which almost the entire IT business turns. People tend to assume that more RAM is best, and that over time, the demands of operating systems and software always increase, so a good way to future proof a new system is to buy more RAM than you likely need, on the basis that eventually, you'll need it.

What we have tended to do is bake that into a hard principle, when in fact all the signs are from both macOS and Windows development that the upscaling of demand on system RAM is slowing, and that what is happening more is that demand on data throughout in systems has taken over.

It's hard to actually know where we'll be in maybe 10 years, but it is reasonable to project that the curve on RAM usage will at least for the most part slow down because, realistically, it has to. There is certainly no clear reason why for normal end-user purposes, AI would demand more memory, but every reason to expect that it will demand faster processing. In 10 years, I suspect 16GB will be sufficient, particularly since present 8GB production models will still need to be supported and operable for at least 5 more years from now.

Personally, I'm not convinced that even 8GB systems won't still be quite viable then, because seriously, how much more junk do we need our computers to come loaded with?

I was briefly using a 10-ish year old Mac with 8 GB Ram while considering which M1 to buy. It was very sluggish, but it didn’t seem like it was due to lack of RAM (only used it for light work).

This I find really telling, because back in the pandemic when I was working mostly from home, I put back into service what was then an 8-year old iMac to use as my main management system. It was incredibly slow, so I maxed out the RAM, expecting that would fix the problem. It made no difference at all.

A MacBook Pro of the same age with the same original 8GB RAM was much, much faster. Wiping the iMac and reinstalling macOS, plus all my software, resolved the speed issues entirely. Clearly, prior use and updates had caused issues which looked like RAM but were not.

 

[chmania]

It's hard to actually know where we'll be in maybe 10 years, ...

In 10 years, the "modern" M1, M2, M3 chip Macs will be old, or Apple will make them obsolete, just so it can sell its new production. So, if you don't need 16GB, 24GB or 32GB for your work, your production, or other specific work, you shouldn't buy those expensive, non-entry-level Macs. Today's M3 chip Mac will lose its value by ~30% in the aftermarket within a year. There are so many M3 Macs in the aftermarket now. They are some people, who buy for the sake of buying to have the newest, and there are some people, who buy to find out that they don't want/need that specific Mac. There are even "refurbished" M3 Macs in the aftermarket. One can always buy a (hardly) used, and in very good condition Mac for even 50-60% value in the 2nd year. I'm not that concerned about Apple's 1-year warranty either. If Apple is so sure about the quality of its products, it should give a 5-year warranty. Or, it is not that sure...

 

[za9ra22]

In 10 years, the "modern" M1, M2, M3 chip Macs will be old, or Apple will make them obsolete, just so it can sell its new production. So, if you don't need 16GB, 24GB or 32GB for your work, your production, or other specific work, you shouldn't buy those expensive, non-entry-level Macs. Today's M3 chip Mac will lose its value by ~30% in the aftermarket within a year. There are so many M3 Macs in the aftermarket now. They are some people, who buy for the sake of buying to have the newest, and there are some people, who buy to find out that they don't want/need that specific Mac. There are even "refurbished" M3 Macs in the aftermarket. One can always buy a (hardly) used, and in very good condition Mac for even 50-60% value in the 2nd year. I'm not that concerned about Apple's 1-year warranty either. If Apple is so sure about the quality of its products, it should give a 5-year warranty. Or, it is not that sure...

Apple is, of course, the only business anywhere that obsoletes old products, where value drops over time, where there's a used, resale market floating on new sales, and which doesn't offer a 5 year warranty despite products having a (broadly deserved) reputation for lasting more than 5 years.

I know that by the time I cease to use my current M3, it will have cost me much less than $1 per day. Which for me means that it will have actually paid for itself a number of times over.

My 10 year plan is not even remotely about where the market will be by the end of it, but what my needs are during he course of it.

 

[6749974]

In 10 years, the "modern" M1, M2, M3 chip Macs will be old, or Apple will make them obsolete, just so it can sell its new production. So, if you don't need 16GB, 24GB or 32GB for your work, your production, or other specific work, you shouldn't buy those expensive, non-entry-level Macs. Today's M3 chip Mac will lose its value by ~30% in the aftermarket within a year. There are so many M3 Macs in the aftermarket now. They are some people, who buy for the sake of buying to have the newest, and there are some people, who buy to find out that they don't want/need that specific Mac. There are even "refurbished" M3 Macs in the aftermarket. One can always buy a (hardly) used, and in very good condition Mac for even 50-60% value in the 2nd year. I'm not that concerned about Apple's 1-year warranty either. If Apple is so sure about the quality of its products, it should give a 5-year warranty. Or, it is not that sure...

In the PC/IT world, it's common wisdom that a person should at least consider buying more RAM and storage than they need. Thats just common sense as far as technical systems—consider headroom! Plenty of PC users have older hardware they're still happy with because they bought double the RAM and storage they needed at the time.

It's only on the Mac side that we have this scarcity mindset about buying exactly what we need. It's understandable and relatable that people are going to be conservative when configuring their Macs—to save costs—but from a computer system and longevity perspective, it's not "bad" to spend 10-20% more to make sure there's headroom.

My point is a person should decide for themselves how they want to approach computer buying. Me, I want headroom. I'm not going to be conservative with specs over what amounts to the cost of 2-4 dinners—not when I'm using this Mac daily for 5+ years.

 

[chmania]

In the PC/IT world, it's common wisdom that a person should at least consider buying more RAM and storage than they need. Thats just common sense as far as technical systems—consider headroom!

Which means 8GB is enough as macOS can run on 4GB. Just because Apple is selling "entry level" Macs with 8GB doesn't mean macOS can't run on 4GB. It is just business!

OCLP had shown how well the older 4GB Macs running Sonoma.

 

[6749974]

Which means 8GB is enough as macOS can run on 4GB. Just because Apple is selling "entry level" Macs with 8GB doesn't mean macOS can't run on 4GB. It is just business!

OCLP had shown how well the older 4GB Macs running Sonoma.

Due to unified memory, macOS + GPU use 2-3 GB of that 8 GB RAM. That leaves only 5-6 GB of available memory for the user's applications. For casual users, their headroom is called "swapping," and thats perfectly fine because swapping low-performance apps can be seamless up to a point.

I'm not arguing against 8 GB.

I'm only arguing that people should consider buying what they need + headroom. If for you that's 8 GB, then that's the optimal purchase for you. Nobody can sensibly judge otherwise. For me it's 24 GB. For someone else it may be 16 GB.

 

[za9ra22]

... scarcity mindset ...

Ah, that's cool. Scarcity mindset indeed. Put a rather grand name to something and you encourage people to believe your point must make sense, when in fact you might just have well said 'common sense', because it could be that on the Mac side, we understand that we don't actually need more headroom because the road we're on isn't as bumpy as the one on the PC side.

The definition of 'scarcity mindset' however does seem the opposite of what you are implying here, because it is 'fixating on thinking you never have enough'. RAM, for example.

My point is a person should decide for themselves how they want to approach computer buying.

This, though, is exactly the point. For me it is actually very simple, that unlike my PCs over the years, I don't tinker with my Macs and never have. Since 1986 each one has been bought for a purpose, and while purposes can change, I have when needed, tailored my solutions to the system I have. There's never been so little choice that there wasn't that option.

The alternative, which I have never done but have costed for curiosity sake, would have been to sell the old system, usually at a loss amounting to an ownership cost of around $1/day overall, and replace it. I haven't needed to ever do that though, but it highlights a point that there isn't just that one way of evaluating and delivering on needs.

Actually, I have tinkered with one of my Macs. Last year I increased RAM in my Classic II to 10MB (from 4) and swapped out the 80MB original hard drive for a 2GB SCSI2SD. But since it had passed its 30th birthday, I thought it had earned it. And yes, it's still in use.

 

[chmania]

I'm not arguing against 8 GB.

The idea of the macOS is to run quite simple apps, maybe complicated, but simple apps. But, it was not made to run, at least originally, apps made for Windows. These apps, even if they are sort of reorganised to run on macOS, they are real cows, and the problem starts with the Mac users. People want to use Adobe's heavy cows, MS Office, Google's heavy Chrome etc, etc, on a MacBook, so memory gets stuck, so you need more GBs.

The macOS is made for the Mac, and none of the proprietary stuff is shown to Adobe, Microsoft or Google. So, most probably they can't make their apps quite compatible with a Mac, hence the heavy RAM and processor usage.

 

[raythompsontn]

People want to use Adobe's heavy cows, MS Office, Google's heavy Chrome etc, etc, on a MacBook, so memory gets stuck, so you need more GBs.

I run Adobe products on MacOS. Native apps that are designed for Apple silicon. Adobe products are heavy memory users regardless of the platform. And those apps ran OK on a machine with 8GB.