2024 MacBook Air still 8GB Unified Memory

[Howard2k]

Hold up. You just said a few comments above that everyone should get more than 8/256. Are you backing down from that stance now?

I’m literally agreeing with that statement.

Yes, as above, I was just being facetious. 8/256 is clearly enough for plenty of people, whether it's in an iPad or a MacBook. Everyone should make a sensible decision when purchasing. It's a shame that upgrades are so crazy expensive, and that we cannot upgrade later, but that's even more reason to make an informed decision.

I don't think that a MacBook should necessarily be more powerful than an iPad.

I do think there's a lot of work to do on iPadOS before that's even a sensible discussion though

 

[AlastorKatriona]

It's all about profits, my man! And stupidity...

Please do explain how this is about profits.

Apple doesn't even stock BTO models.

 

[TigerNike23]

Yes, as above, I was just being facetious. 8/256 is clearly enough for plenty of people, whether it's in an iPad or a MacBook. Everyone should make a sensible decision when purchasing. It's a shame that upgrades are so crazy expensive, and that we cannot upgrade later, but that's even more reason to make an informed decision.

I don't think that a MacBook should necessarily be more powerful than an iPad.

I do think there's a lot of work to do on iPadOS before that's even a sensible discussion though

Fair enough. I edited my comment to include you were joking. My mistake.

 

[OneBar]

Your 8 Gb today can to vastly more, vastly faster than the 8 Gb I purchased 5 years ago. Is 16 Gb nice? Sure. Do you *need* it? Probably not. If you do, you will be needing more than the base SoC as well.

 

[Account25476]

Don't you know??? 8GB on a Mac are like 16GB on a PC...
- Apple itself

 

[v0lume4]

Who cares? Cloud storage is a thing nowadays. I have 10TB +.

🤯 And that is costing you how much a month?!

 

[v0lume4]

You're not getting OP's and my point:
We are in 2024, 16 GB RAM should be the absolute minimum for laptops.

For sure. Or, at least in this price bracket. I could stomach my previous laptop's 8GB of RAM because it was $750 (~$500 open box, how I got it). These M3 Airs start at $1,200!!

 

[turbineseaplane]

Don't you know??? 8GB on a Mac are like 16GB on a PC...
- Apple itself

Reminds me of when they were comparing M GPUs to top end NVIDIA RTX cards

I laughed then, like I laugh now - lol

 

[LavaLevel]

I am borrowing a Macbook Air M1 8gb/512 storage and it is absolutely blowing my mind.

I'm an App developer. I've worked on the same 16gb Mac Mini Late 2012 for 12 years now. Honestly, I'd still be there if Xcode installed on macOS High Sierra. Alas, I finally had to start thinking about upgrading If I want to release & keep my iPhone Apps updated in the Appstore. Dang forced OS upgrades.

That's why I am borrowing this Macbook Air M1 from my wife. It. Is. AMAZING! So dang snappy! Plenty enough speed and memory to make iPhone Apps for me. So I've decided, I'm getting one of those Amazon deals of an M2 Mini (499!) to replace my old Mac Mini. Cheaper and way more powerful.

If I am a programmer why don't I update more often? I'm just happy making apps. I could do that on a rather old device so it's all good!

But I think now my plan will be get one of these Apple Silicon (M2 which will even further blow my mind) for only $499 and then trade it in for a M3 Mac Studio if they are announced at WWDC 2024!

I figure that's a computer I can probably sit on even longer than my old trusty 2012 Mac Mini!

 

[turbineseaplane]

I am borrowing a Macbook Air M1 8gb/512 storage and it is absolutely blowing my mind.

Sweet machine - particularly the M1 Wedge -- The Classic .. the truest MacBook Air

 

[AlmightyKang]

Referring to my thread here:

I spent 2 months on a base M2 Mac Mini

The project is over. About 2 months ago now, a friend of mine sold me a base 8/256 Mac Mini M2 for a stupid low price which I couldn't turn down. It was his first ARM Mac after his old 16" Intel lap burner gave up. He bought an M3 iMac to replace the mini with so wanted to dump it off. I...

forums.macrumors.com

I spent 2 months on a base M2 Mac Mini.... it's fine!

 

[SamRyouji]

Reminds me of when they were comparing M GPUs to top end NVIDIA RTX cards

I laughed then, like I laugh now - lol

As much as I hate to admit it, I have to admit that's closer to the truth. I could attest to this, as I have M1 MBA 8/512 for video editing purpose and a Lenovo G15 16/512 for office work.
I didn't encounter any bottleneck whenever I edit my 4K footages and render it with DaVinci Resolve 18 on my M1 MBA. On the other hand, opening 8 tabs on Edge + Teams and Outlook, the Lenovo occasionally have micro stutters here and there (Edge alone consumed half of my RAM with 8 tabs). I'll post the screenshot on both when I have time as proof. GPU performance comparison? Yeah, that one also make me laughing. Hard.
.
And in my personal opinion, unless PC manufacturers start reserve 8GB RAM exclusively for Celeron and make 16 GB as bare minimum standard for all Intel core-i / AMD Ryzen, I don't think Apple would raise their 8GB to 16GB. Remember the 16GB iPhone fiasco? When all high end Android starts offering 32 as default, iPhone still has 16GB for another two years.

TL;DR: Yes, it's profit margin. No, 8GB RAM is still fine on Apple devices for most people (including grandmas & grandpas). Yes, the GPU performance isn't comparable to RTX – the RTX still could smokes M GPU.

 

[Rychiar]

Why is it supposed to be more powerful?

Cus it’s not a toy like an iPad….

 

[LavaLevel]

Referring to my thread here:

I spent 2 months on a base M2 Mac Mini

The project is over. About 2 months ago now, a friend of mine sold me a base 8/256 Mac Mini M2 for a stupid low price which I couldn't turn down. It was his first ARM Mac after his old 16" Intel lap burner gave up. He bought an M3 iMac to replace the mini with so wanted to dump it off. I...

forums.macrumors.com

I spent 2 months on a base M2 Mac Mini.... it's fine!

Aw, that was a great thread. That thread finally got me off my keister to join the forum. Lot of very stern opinions. 😄

But it makes me wonder if for a lot of those Mac Users that are still upset about 8gb, are they truly hitting the 8gb Ram limitations? If they are, wouldn't they have known, "Ok, I'm not an average user I need to pretend 8gb doesn't exist because it will always have to be 16gb for me." It seems like by now they would know that.

It almost feels like a prestige thing. "How are those PC users going to look at us?!?"

I mean, I can code in Xcode, make Apps and upload them to the Appstore. I can even do medium level 3D modeling in Blender. 🤷‍♂️ Seems like if someone is buying a laptop and not even checking wether its 8gb or 16gb, they're not going to need 16gb.

 

[Sami13496]

There is an option to upgrade to 16 or even more if you need more RAM. I don’t understand the problem. What am I missing here?

 

[AppleTO]

I have 8GB in my M2 15" Air and have never had an issue. Why does everyone think they are unusable? Is everyone except me always watching RAM usage?

 

[Yebubbleman]

Who cares? Cloud storage is a thing nowadays. I have 10TB +.

How well do your installed applications run when you install them to your cloud storage rather than your local internal storage?

How well does your 10TB + of cloud storage offset only having 8GB of RAM paired with an OS that regularly uses 11GB (and HAS to use memory compression to bring that down to 6GB even when doing extremely basic functions like browsing 10 tabs with one or two other stock applications also running in the background)?

8GB Memory is still good enough for students and grandma to use it to browse the web and use Microsoft Word. That's probably not going to change any time soon.

Activity monitor regularly suggests otherwise on 8GB Apple Silicon Macs. But most people in the "8GB of RAM is totally enough" camp cite only the fluidity of their experience using macOS on such configurations and not what's going on under the hood. 🤷‍♂️

 

[geta]

There is an option to upgrade to 16 or even more if you need more RAM. I don’t understand the problem. What am I missing here?

Some people expecting to get fully loaded Mac at the price of base model.

 

[Yebubbleman]

I have 8GB in my M2 15" Air and have never had an issue. Why does everyone think they are unusable? Is everyone except me always watching RAM usage?

I watch my RAM usage when I get an error message saying that I've run out of memory (often on 8GB M1 Macs, I've found) and whenever someone on this forum tries to tell me that they never get yellow memory pressure and that I must be really taxing my computer to get yellow memory pressure. Incidentally, Activity Monitor shows that (a) I'm not running that many programs and (b) the OS really is using that much RAM.

 

[cupcakes2000]

If a machine is more powerful, then it would theoretically require more resources than an 8/256 configuration.

Perhaps if it was more powerful it would require less resources 🤔🤔

 

[turbineseaplane]

Some people expecting to get fully loaded Mac at the price of base model.

Where has anybody said that?

 

[joeblow7777]

I'm not trying to defend it, but to be fair, I think that 8GB does more than many people think. My current laptop is 8GB, and it's still sufficient for my workflow even now. I'm a teacher, so I don't run super demanding software though, but lots of Chrome tabs and productivity stuff.

 

[geta]

Where has anybody said that?

Just paying extra for the ram like always. It should be included in the base price.

 

[LavaLevel]

Cus it’s not a toy like an iPad….

It's the same for iPads as it is for computers. I have an iPad Pro that is far from a toy. I use my 3rd gen iPad Pro for Procreate and Procreate Dreams for professional animation work that goes into my Apps or for my clients. It's Pro for a reason. I got a little iPad Mini to goof off with and do very light things. It's the same for Apple's computers.

Incidentally, Activity Monitor shows that (a) I'm not running that many programs and (b) the OS really is using that much RAM.

Sure but what is it stopping you from doing? Is swap not working super speedy on the SSD drives? Do you just not want to blast through too many TBWs? If you're actually getting memory notices... Or massive hicups... You might be one of those 'non casual' or 'light users' who needs to permanently forget 8gb and start at 16gb with 512 storage or use alt storage drives.

 

[backstreetboy]

How well do your installed applications run when you install them to your cloud storage rather than your local internal storage?

What large apps? Did gaming on the Mac suddenly take off?

How well does your 10TB + of cloud storage offset only having 8GB of RAM paired with an OS that regularly uses 11GB (and HAS to use memory compression to bring that down to 6GB even when doing extremely basic functions like browsing 10 tabs with one or two other stock applications also running in the background)?

Unused RAM is wasted RAM.