16GB usage clarification and longevity

[6749974]

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.

I'm using the term correctly.

• Mac users have less resource due to Apple's absurd pricing and their hostility to self-installation; not to mention Apple controls 100% of the Apple market (one cannot buy macOS computer from Lenovo or Dell or HP). This leads to a different mentality than PC buyers.
• PC buyers can more readily purchase what they want + headroom because they feel they have an abundance of money/opportunity/purchasing-options (even DIY installation). No one company controls PC laptops; there is an abundance of manufacturers competing for sales. This leads to a different mentality than Mac buyers.

 

[6749974]

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.

Apple can't program every single app in existence. And regardless of how much data an app itself takes, the user's involvement in how much content they create (within the app) will also dictate file sizes that are in RAM. Thats the reality of computing.

 

[za9ra22]

I'm using the term correctly.

Oh dear, nope.

Your argument may be valid (which honestly, I don't agree with but who cares) but your use of the term is entirely wrong in this context. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/scarcity-mindset for an example of use. Explaining it as a 'different mindset' is nonsense in the context of the terminology you yourself used.

 

[6749974]

Oh dear, nope.

Your argument may be valid (which honestly, I don't agree with but who cares) but your use of the term is entirely wrong in this context. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/scarcity-mindset for an example of use. Explaining it as a 'different mindset' is nonsense in the context of the terminology you yourself used.

For those paying attention, I'm using the term scarcity mindset in the economics and game theory sense, not in the therapy and mental depression sense.

It sounds like you have a different interpretation of language and thats ok. Good luck!

 

[za9ra22]

For those paying attention, I'm using the term scarcity mindset in the economics and game theory sense, not in the therapy and mental depression sense.

It sounds like you have a different interpretation of language and thats ok. Good luck!

No, I have a dictionary. And I am not seeing any way in which those of us who buy and use Macs are suffering any sense of scarcity, real or imagined. Indeed, quite the opposite. We're quite happy as far as I can tell.

 

[6749974]

No, I have a dictionary. And I am not seeing any way in which those of us who buy and use Macs are suffering any sense of scarcity, real or imagined. Indeed, quite the opposite. We're quite happy as far as I can tell.

You think Mac users are happy with the state of RAM and storage pricing?

 

[za9ra22]

You think Mac users are happy with the state of RAM and storage pricing?

Oh dear.

I don't actually care. I don't speak for them, and they are not a mindless stupid body of fools who need experts to guide them. I tend to think they buy what they buy because they choose to, and if they weren't at least reasonably happy, they'd not be buying. But I don't regard them as stupid or suffering some kind of syndrome that sounds impressive as a put down.

 

[6749974]

Oh dear.

I don't actually care. I don't speak for them, and they are not a mindless stupid body of fools who need experts to guide them. I tend to think they buy what they buy because they choose to, and if they weren't at least reasonably happy, they'd not be buying. But I don't regard them as stupid or suffering some kind of syndrome that sounds impressive as a put down.

👍 Let's move on.

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

I've found strange thing. My Mac Mini M2 with 16GB and MacBook Pro M3 Pro with 18GB never hit memory pressure or swap. But my brand new Macbook Air M3 with 16GB doing what I normally do on all my other Macs occasionally hits the memory pressure and swap file. I only noticed this happening on the Air when I'm doing my normal multi-tab browsing and listening to music. It doesn't happen nearly as often as when I had the base model MBA M2. That hit memory pressure every single time and swap file. So I'm not sure what's different with the Air M3 where it has happened couple times. Only difference I can think of is I have it connected to 34" Ultrawide in default screen resolution 3440x1440. Where my other 2 macs are connected to 4K only. Not sure if that odd resolution would make an impact. But I'm a little annoyed that this 16GB config was supposed to eliminate that issue. But it hasn't been a problem. It runs with no hiccups. And subsequent uses I haven't seen it happen doing the same activities. But we'll see I guess.

 

[joloriquelme]

I run a MSP business, with over 600 endpoints across different customers.

Almost everything is Windows, but we have monitoring a few M1 and M2 Macs, all with 8 GB.

Case 1: the head of a HR consulting company - with a M1 MBA with 8 GB.
- Office-power user. Mostly Safari, Dropbox Business, Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams and Spotify. Sometimes she reports the Mac being slow and hot at certain tasks. Checked RAM usage and it's very high.

Case 2: the head of a law-firm - with a M1 Mac Mini with 8 GB.
- Office-powered user. Mostly PDF, Word, Chrome, OneDrive, Teams, Zoom. No problems reported. Checked RAM usage, at 75-80%

Case 3: the business-manager of an engineering firm - with a M2 MBA with 8 GB.
- Same as case 1 (many Excel files opened, Teams high usage) but also with heavy media use (Apple Music Lossless, many, many Chrome opened-tabs with YouTube). No problems reported. Checked RAM usage, and it's high too.

I think at this point (2024), really, 8 GB isn't enough for the future for a brand new computer. But current used Macs are currently fine. I wouldn't buy a 8 GB RAM new computer now.

 

[Surf760]

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

16GB is more than enough. We’re all nerds and tech hobbyist on here, so I get the push from some people, but the truth is for what you’re describing, 8GB would be sufficient…. I’ll now be crucified for saying that by everyone who feels you need to be able to build massive 3D models and have 100+ tabs open at a time even if you already said you’re not that person.

 

[chmania]

I've found strange thing. My Mac Mini M2 with 16GB and MacBook Pro M3 Pro with 18GB never hit memory pressure or swap. But my brand new Macbook Air M3 with 16GB doing what I normally do on all my other Macs occasionally hits the memory pressure and swap file. I only noticed this happening on the Air when I'm doing my normal multi-tab browsing and listening to music. It doesn't happen nearly as often as when I had the base model MBA M2. That hit memory pressure every single time and swap file. So I'm not sure what's different with the Air M3 where it has happened couple times. Only difference I can think of is I have it connected to 34" Ultrawide in default screen resolution 3440x1440. Where my other 2 macs are connected to 4K only. Not sure if that odd resolution would make an impact. But I'm a little annoyed that this 16GB config was supposed to eliminate that issue. But it hasn't been a problem. It runs with no hiccups. And subsequent uses I haven't seen it happen doing the same activities. But we'll see I guess.

There might be background apps running taking up RAM.
System Settings > Login Items > disable and delete all that's there > reboot.

 

[chmania]

I run a MSP business, with over 600 endpoints across different customers.

Almost everything is Windows, but we have monitoring a few M1 and M2 Macs, all with 8 GB.

Case 1: the head of a HR consulting company - with a M1 MBA with 8 GB.
- Office-power user. Mostly Safari, Dropbox Business, Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams and Spotify. Sometimes she reports the Mac being slow and hot at certain tasks. Checked RAM usage and it's very high.

Case 2: the head of a law-firm - with a M1 Mac Mini with 8 GB.
- Office-powered user. Mostly PDF, Word, Chrome, OneDrive, Teams, Zoom. No problems reported. Checked RAM usage, at 75-80%

Case 3: the business-manager of an engineering firm - with a M2 MBA with 8 GB.
- Same as case 1 (many Excel files opened, Teams high usage) but also with heavy media use (Apple Music Lossless, many, many Chrome opened-tabs with YouTube). No problems reported. Checked RAM usage, and it's high too.

I think at this point (2024), really, 8 GB isn't enough for the future for a brand new computer. But current used Macs are currently fine. I wouldn't buy a 8 GB RAM new computer now.

There are background apps running taking up RAM. They are using 3rd-party apps that runs lot of unnecessary checking updates and whatnot in the background without the user's knowledge.
System Settings > Login Items > disable and delete all that's there > reboot.

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

There might be background apps running taking up RAM.
System Settings > Login Items > disable and delete all that's there > reboot.

So tonight I've been listening to music for few hours now and multiple browsers/tabs. So far it's not hit the memory pressure at all. Whatever it was seems to have worked itself out. It's humming along with 12GB Used currently. 0 swap.

 

[macman4789]

In simple terms, the operating system's buffer cache is a portion of RAM to keep data that was recently accessed on any HDD or SSD.

As long as there is free RAM any data that any application ever uses will be stored there, which means that reading the same data again is very fast because it's already in RAM.

Once the physical RAM is all used shrinking the buffer cache is one of the things the operating system does to make more RAM available to applications that are requesting it.

When data is thrown out of the buffer cache and an application then does need it again then it has to be read from the HDD or SSD again, which is slower.

Other things the operating system can do to free up some RAM is throw away read-only pages from demand-paged executables and libraries, compress memory, write some memory pages to the swap file (paging), and if things are really bad write entire running applications to the swap file and suspend them (swapping).

Thank you for taking the time to explain that really clearly. I now understand it a lot more I think!

 

[geta]

I've found strange thing. My Mac Mini M2 with 16GB and MacBook Pro M3 Pro with 18GB never hit memory pressure or swap. But my brand new Macbook Air M3 with 16GB doing what I normally do on all my other Macs occasionally hits the memory pressure and swap file. I only noticed this happening on the Air when I'm doing my normal multi-tab browsing and listening to music. It doesn't happen nearly as often as when I had the base model MBA M2. That hit memory pressure every single time and swap file. So I'm not sure what's different with the Air M3 where it has happened couple times. Only difference I can think of is I have it connected to 34" Ultrawide in default screen resolution 3440x1440. Where my other 2 macs are connected to 4K only. Not sure if that odd resolution would make an impact. But I'm a little annoyed that this 16GB config was supposed to eliminate that issue. But it hasn't been a problem. It runs with no hiccups. And subsequent uses I haven't seen it happen doing the same activities. But we'll see I guess.

Did you try test it without connecting to external screen?

PS, how many tabs you using?

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

Did you try test it without connecting to external screen?

PS, how many tabs you using?

No I hadn’t. It seems to have gone away. Like chmania said it might have just been some background thing happening. Today i was heavily using apple music and no issues at all.

 

[sxbkdljb]

These are the apps that are opened

And this is my memory usage

I'll definitely get 24g or more for my next Mac if I ever get another one.

 

[Torty]

These are the apps that are opened
View attachment 2365445
And this is my memory usage
View attachment 2365446
I'll definitely get 24g or more for my next Mac if I ever get another one.

It you never close anything after use all ram in the world will be filled eventually. So better go for 128GB next time or more, if available 😁

 

[macman4789]

These are the apps that are opened
View attachment 2365445
And this is my memory usage
View attachment 2365446
I'll definitely get 24g or more for my next Mac if I ever get another one.

This is interesting. It would be interesting to see the full breakdown list of apps in Activity Monitor to see how much memory each app is using. On face value, this doesn’t look like a lot of apps open considering what others have said about how well MacOS handles 16GB of RAM. Is performance reduced?

 

[za9ra22]

These are the apps that are opened
View attachment 2365445
And this is my memory usage
View attachment 2365446
I'll definitely get 24g or more for my next Mac if I ever get another one.

It's is actually at about the right amount of RAM utilization, but rather higher memory pressure than normal, which tends to suggest one or more apps is holding RAM access up and not releasing it.

Activity monitor will tell you which app is the likely cause, but a quick way to find out with that memory pressure window open is to right-click each of the open apps and select 'Quit' to exit it. When you see a notable drop in memory pressure, that was the app responsible.

From your post, it isn't possible to tell what level of activity each one is at - though a favorite bugbear of mine in the past has been Spotify. It has had some wayward caching and saturation behaviors, though they may well have resolved that.

I would say though that with this RAM use, 24GB is probably not going to help that much since you do have RAM to spare.

 

[chmania]

These are the apps that are opened
View attachment 2365445
And this is my memory usage
View attachment 2365446
I'll definitely get 24g or more for my next Mac if I ever get another one.

Oh, have look at System settings > Login items > to see how much all those 3rd-party apps, and their helpers running in the background and eating up the memory. Mac apps know how to go to sleep, but all those memory hogs as Adobe, Google, Microsoft etc can't and won't do that.

 

[6749974]

I would say though that with this RAM use, 24GB is probably not going to help that much since you do have RAM to spare.

It actually would help. Memory pressure is yellow because of the 7 GB of compressed memory—which is a lot. If macOS needed it, uncompressed it would take up maybe 17.6 GB which forces data into swap. So would 24 GB help? Yes.

17.6 + 3.75 + 2.27 = 23.62 GB

23.62 is more than 16 GB, but just makes it under 24 GB.

But due to a scarcity mindset I'm sure you would recommend they NOT buy the optimal amount of RAM.

(I'm just messing with you on that last past, lol)

No but seriously, they can just manage their memory better by quitting apps, or finding "offending" apps and replacing them with alternatives that are better at memory management. Or just let macOS do its thing and compress 17.6 GB of memory down to 7 GB. The problem is once it needs that data, it's going to uncompress it, which likely balloons memory into swap. But swap isn't the end of the world. Just depends on the user if they mind that or not.

I say they just carry on. It's not like they need a new Mac now. But in their shoes I would definitely consider more RAM the next time I upgrade.

 

[za9ra22]

It actually would help. macOS is compressing 7 GB. That's a lot. That means uncompressed it would take up maybe 17.6 GB.

17.6 + 3.75 + 2.27 = 23.62 GB

23.62 is more than 16 GB, but just makes it in 24 GB.

But due to a scarcity mindset I'm sure you would recommend they NOT buy the optimal amount of RAM.

(I'm just messing with you on that last past, lol)

No but seriously, they can just manage their memory better by quitting apps, or finding "offending" apps and replacing them with alternatives that are better at memory management. Or just let macOS do its thing and compress 17.6 GB of memory down to 7 GB. The problem is once it needs that data, it's going to uncompress it, which likely balloons memory into swap. But swap isn't the end of the world. Just depends on the user if they mind that or not.

Yeah, I see what you did there.

Actually, if this user habitually follows this workflow, 24GB would likely be better, though it isn't macOS-related. One (at least) of these apps is not behaving well, or the workflow is using a lot of seemingly unnecessary swap for some reason. Not being able to see which one(s) in this example means it's not possible to know exactly why.

It would be wise in this instance to identify the culprit though. As much as I wouldn't personally be concerned at moderate swap, on an MBA this would be raising internal temperatures a bit. At the rate here, probably not much, and no real risk of getting into throttling territory, but a bit more of the same could so it would be an idea to know what to avoid if it can be.

 

[sxbkdljb]

This is interesting. It would be interesting to see the full breakdown list of apps in Activity Monitor to see how much memory each app is using. On face value, this doesn’t look like a lot of apps open considering what others have said about how well MacOS handles 16GB of RAM. Is performance reduced?

Here is a break down of apps and their ram usage

Matlab and Zotero and very memory hungry but I do need them Hope this helps!

Performance is not affected at all!