You are being vocal about it and yet you don't claim to need more than 16gb. Seems like you're proving the OP's point.
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Can We Put the 16GB "Pro" Myth to Rest?
- Thread starter aevan
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You are being vocal about it and yet you don't claim to need more than 16gb. Seems like you're proving the OP's point.
There are an awful lot of people running into performance issues with virtualisation and in 99,9% of the time they are to blame. A lot of people think that you need to assign lots of memory and CPUs/cores to a virtual machine to have good performance while in fact it does the exact opposite. If you want good performance then stick with the defaults and adjust, in small increments, accordingly. This is because these people do not understand system resources and do not understand that virtualisation means that you have to manage those resources. It actually requires you to calculate and think.
My 10 VMs on my ESXi box can be run on a machine with only 8GB of memory. It currently consumes 9GB because I've been so kind as to assign quite a lot to one of the VMs (to test out containerisation such as FreeBSD Jails, Docker, etc.) but it probably could do with half of what I assigned to it (the machine has 16GB so I have the luxury of assigning more memory). The total memory you need with virtualisation completely depends on what you are going to be doing in the VMs and on your host.
Btw, there used to be a big advantage to compile software in memory with something like ccache. However, now that we have SSDs that are extremely fast that advantage shrunk. That means you can now use less memory because the storage is fast enough.
Let's also not forget how many people are very capable of doing their work on MacBooks and even iPads that have less computing power than the new MBP. Among those kind of people are developers and IT students. It requires a different approach to how you do your computing. In a lot of cases things can be done partially or completely on remote machines. All you need in those cases is a frontend such as a shell, RDP client, etc.
Speed is an issue but so is memory size for me. I do machine learning and we use very big objects that we traverse and manipulate. I prefer not to fault parts in and out.
As for memory availability. If you need it and will pay for it, someone will provide it.
Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause mineral and/or organic particles (detritus) to settle in place.
Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause mineral and/or organic particles (detritus) to settle in place.
Yes but sedimentary lifestyle is not a saying, sedentary lifestyle is someone who doesn't move around. If I was a geode I would understand that saying. \m/ rock on dude.
Buddy I'm idling at 75GB of memory used on my Mac Pro 2010 with 128GB of RAM. Earlier today I was hovering around 100GB.
![Memory_Usage.png]()
Memory pressure looks absolutely fine there! Your computer will always use whatever RAM it can, regardless of how much physical RAM there is. It's been pointed out a few times in this thread.
p.s. that's a lot of RAM!
The point is there is a case to be made that alot of people may not need as much memory as they think they do. Of course there are exceptions and I am sure there are some that need 32 in a notebook.
....With no swap used.Buddy I'm idling at 75GB of memory used on my Mac Pro 2010 with 128GB of RAM. Earlier today I was hovering around 100GB.
![Memory_Usage.png]()
I think the Max RAM should be 8GB, or 4GB. NO ONE ever uses more than 8GB of RAM, ever. There are no industries and no applications that could ever use that much ram. 16gb is a total waste of Power and battery life. Im furious at Apple for wasting space and time and money putting in 16GB. Just no excuse for it... none.
Well, on the other hand there are results that clearly show that intense video editing workflows linearly benefit from more RAM. Although, to me it almost sounds like problem with the editor software, probably suboptimal algorithms.
Another often quoted examples is running multiple VMs for browser testing. Although here again, I have to ask whether it is really nessesary to give every VM 4GB of dedicated RAM and/or have all of them resident at the same time. And maybe also invest into the ability to reuse RAM across VMS — two VMs with the same OS are probably going to share a lot of data that doesn't nessesary have to be doubled in RAM (like the base OS kernel code).
All in all, being somewhat of a data scientist who regularly has to work on hundreds-of-GB to multi-TB data sets, I don't really see the point having more than 16GB for me. Its enough working space to solve most problems and I don't believe that I would be able to solve them more efficiently if I had more RAM. After all, more RAM = more cache pollution. And if I really need more RAM... well, for that I have a supercomputer that has 4TB of RAM
I wish I had a better understanding of VMs. Being an electrical engineering student and photoshop hobbyist, my demands have never made my MacBook Pro with 8gb or ram or even my windows desktop still only using 4gb of ram for autoCAD and inventor still do fine.
I know I'm not in the minority that needs the RAM, but what do people that work with VMs do?
For electrical engineers, you will need a parallels vm because most chip tools are in windows. Even the ones that claim to be cross platform always have stuff thats messed up in osx but works in windows. In school you don't need more than 8gb because you only have to do 1 thing at a time. In a job multitasking you might have more than 1 dev environment open, tons of pdfs open, tons of browser tabs, and slacks and/or skype hogging too much ram. 16gb is frustrating when you spent 4k on a max laptop and every day have to stop and reboot or close a bunch of stuff because the ram is used up.
As the link in the OP shows you need to do a whole lot more than what you are describing there and even then it won't fill up the 16GB memory.
There are many different ways in doing those jobs and many of them can be done with 4 to 8GB of memory or even less. It all depends on the exact workflow. If you absolutely need 16GB for that I'd strongly suggest taking a very good look at your workflow and software used because needing a lot of memory usually means there is something wrong with either the workflow or the software used.
There are many different ways in doing those jobs and many of them can be done with 4 to 8GB of memory or even less. It all depends on the exact workflow. If you absolutely need 16GB for that I'd strongly suggest taking a very good look at your workflow and software used because needing a lot of memory usually means there is something wrong with either the workflow or the software used.
Boot camp and kernel_task take up 6gb right off the bat. Chrome and firefox a few more gb, spotify 1gb, android studio another few gb, 2 or more instances of eclipse- wait a minute, I shouldn't have to justify why I need more ram. I need it and I was ready to pay for it. Folks who are probably younger than me and not professional engineers think they know better than me how much ram I need!
Just checked. I currently have 10 tabs open in Safari, 14 in Chrome, Mail, iTunes, BBEdit, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat DC, Pages, Messages, TextEdit, and Notes open.
Photoshop is using 940mb (Working on 2 large images). Illustrator is using 460mb (Several tabs with icons and stuff open). Acrobat is using 350mb (Few files open). Chrome has many instances, I'll round it up to 1.5gb. iTunes 90mb. Safari again multiple instances, let's call it 2gb. Others are below 100mb each. Oh and I see Siri being a resource hog and using 4mb! Kernal_Task is 1.2gb.
Currently using 13gb out of 16gb system RAM. Point is the system is using RAM quite smartly depending on what it's doing, so I don't think things like Spotify need a whole 1gb, and that adds into your equation of how much RAM you need. I could load up a bunch of other apps and still be absolutely fine, because I'm not literally using them all at the same time.
No I'm not some young schmuck telling you how much RAM you need, but check your RAM usage, it's quite cool how little is actually used by some apps, and always amazing how much Chrome takes up.
My wife is a social media professional who has tons of browser tabs open and was always in swap space on her 6gb machine. She told her boss and was sent a new 32gb thinkpad that cost $1700. Nobody insulted her or told her she was using her computer wrong or that she had to change the way she was working. It was legit dipping into swap space and slowing down by 10x. Her new computer no longer dips into swap space and it "just works". I'm a professional engineer doing a lot more than having tons of browser tabs open but I can't get a 32gb machine because I use a mac. I dealt with it for a long time thinking a new release with more ram was just around the corner, but now I believe we may never see a macbook with more than 32gb ram. Apple isn't going to make a computer that works well for me, so why am I paying a premium for this just so I can take an ios job here and there? I am not sure it is worth it anymore.
Actually you are the one belonging to the "not professional engineer and knowing it better than an engineer" group because how you think the memory system works is absolutely incorrect and very very outdated (we are talking DOS and the early days of Windows; it's almost about 15 years out of date). There are some knowledge base articles from Apple that explain how the memory system in OS X/macOS works which you really need to go through (Use Activity Monitor to read system memory and determine how much RAM is being used (OS X Mountain Lion and earlier) & Use Activity Monitor on your Mac; these are also available via the help function in Activity Monitor). These are for users like you, those with a better and more technical understanding can head over to developer.apple.com for a more in-depth version.
Any current operating system will try to use all available memory and it does so by allotting a bit more generous than normally as well as use it for caching. If an app is opened that requires more memory then the OS will take away the extra unnecessary memory it had allotted and give it to the app that really needs it. In some cases you'll also see a rise in swapping. In more recent OS X/macOS versions there is a better and easier way of displaying how well your memory usage is going. In the Activity Monitor there is a graph called "memory pressure" and only when that graph is red you can say you need more memory although this requires further investigation (there are quite a few very bad written apps that cause memory leaks; even extensions in web browsers such as AdBlock Plus are known to have memory issues and thus use up considerable amounts of memory). If it stays green or yellow then you clearly do not (yellow is more of a "maybe" and this may require further investigation).
Boot camp is something very different btw. It's not some process or thread in the OS but a more generic term for the set of apps and drivers that allow you to partition, install and run Windows on your Mac natively right next to OS X/macOS.
Also check whatever drivers and other kernel extensions you have installed as well as how long you haven't rebooted your machine. All these things greatly affect the kernel_task memory usage negatively.
The problem here is your complete lack of knowledge which is causing you to see a problem that may not even be there. Understand what memory is, what it is used for and how operating systems handle them (especially OS X/macOS) and you'll actually be able to tell if your memory usage requires additional physical memory. Until then you are just summing up numbers you don't know the meaning of. As with any issue you need to base your conclusion on the causes you found, not on what some app was displaying. Software can come with bugs causing heavy memory usage where the actual solution is to fix the bugs, not upgrade your RAM.
Thanks for the info.
So if extra memory is used for caching, etc. Then having less memory means more of it is used for apps. So relaunching apps, and less caching means less performance. Different kind of performance, but still less of it. So thereby less memory = less performance. Not a critical requirement (need vs want), but I can argue do you really need a 3GB/read SSD... So if people want absolute performance out of their laptops they'll need more memory. Even if it's a little performance.. As little as the difference between 2gb and 3gb read speeds of SSDs that apple is touting around.
Is this what apple has become? Bunch of horribly condescending fanboys? Guess I'll just reboot my machine all the time and fix the bug in photoshop that cause it to hold onto ram when its closed. I know what using up all the ram on a mac is like, I used to own a 8gb machine where it would max out all the time. You know when it happens when everything starts slowing down, its pretty simple actually, not sure if you can understand. I don't need to look at the memory pressure number because I know it is up if the interface begins to lag. I also don't need to explain any of this to you because nothing I say will make any of you fanboys believe that my requirements are legitimate.
In addition to this, they can now swap with 3GB/s to the SSD, this makes 32GB RAM even less relevant. Most Users won't even notice they are swapping.
Hightech, compared to the +-80MB/s of spinning drives(still used a lot), or +-450MB/s of current default PC SATA SSDs.
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Some will be noticeable, some won't because the gains aren't that huge. This is similar to upgrading the physical memory. There have been many people who upgraded from 4 to 8GB and saw a real increase in performance but didn't see anything happening when they went from 8 to 16GB. The caching is more for small stuff like writing things to disk, hot loading apps (which means that apps will reload faster when you open them again after you closed them) and so on.
Caching does come at a cost though. The fact they you are keeping data in memory means that it holds old data. If you need something to refresh often because you have to have up to date data (more likely realtime data) then caching is something you do not want.
That would be the same thing. There are some applications where that fast SSD will work (mind you, this is a PCIe NVME SSD and it will be mostly the NVME part that people will notice) but for most people it's not going to be a huge upgrade from a SATA version. It's also these kind of SSDs that will make the additional performance you get from hot loading the apps disappear as the storage now is so fast that apps will load nearly
Nope they don't. It depends on what you are going to use it for. Adding more memory is not going to make things faster as there is only so much you can cache.
No just a bunch of whiners that do not understand technology but think they do.
You could try bugging Adobe but people have been doing that for years now without much result so I guess you are better off using some other piece of software (which usually also is cheaper and doesn't come with some kind of subscription). But if you stick with Photoshop then yes, rebooting is all you can do because Photoshop is well known not to scale on hardware (if you have 12-cores it'll still use no more than 6 so why buy a more expensive 12-core if the cheaper 8-core gives you the same performance?).
What you posted shows that you most definitely do NOT know what using up all the memory on a Mac is like. What you posted here is just general slowness that can be caused by a number of things. Someone who actually knows what he is doing will look for a couple of things so he can quickly narrow the options and find the actual cause. Leave the troubleshooting to us professionals, it really isn't all that simple (which all the incorrect information here clearly shows).
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Ohhh ohhhh, alarm, alarm, did you realize you just downplayed your wifes job?
By putting your engineer profession over her social tabs.
I suggest you to hide your statement from her.
Anyway, sit down, be professional, put your apple devotion by side, and your ask yourself:
"Do I really need a MacBook Pro for my "daily Job"? Or would e.g. a HP workstation laptop with Windows and more RAM suit my needs, too?"
In case you badly need Apple Hardware to earn money(e.g. iOS dev), then you're in same boat as all other iOS devs. Accept the mobile 16GB RAM or go 32GB/64GB/128GB on a stationary device.
A professional user would simply buy whats suits the job best, without any devotional feelings. If you need 32GB, then simply move on to a device with more RAM. Problem solved!
Do the math if it worths being an iOS dev.
A professional investment should always pay off, else it's unprofessional.
An "...ios job here and there..." (in relation to iOS dev) sound not very professional to me.
If a 3k investment helps you to pay your life, go for it.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it's the truth.
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