Is 8GB of RAM Enough for a Mac in 2024?

[blastdoor]

Perhaps. But given most customers likely go for the 8GB model, they wouldn’t make many sales.



On the contrary, they are the core customers, just as airlines sell a lot more economy tickets than 1st class. There’s only so many rich people.

Do you have a source for how many 8GB models they sell? I’m not aware of anybody knowing those numbers outside of Apple.

And the even more important question is where do the majority of Mac *profits* come from? I suspect the majority of profit comes from upgrades to the base model. A $200 up charge to add 8GB of RAM is almost surely purely profit. And I bet a lot of people do that upgrade.

 

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

16 GB at least. Decent enough should be 24 & above

Agree. I bought my M2 with 32GB RAM. I’m replacing my MBP with an MBA this year and I’m not going any less than 16GB. Since the memory is non-upgradable you have to future proof.. my MBP is 2015. I will admit though… my daughters both bought MBA’s last year and 8GB is fine for them. I disagree with the argument that if all you do is surf the web you don’t need an MBA (implied that a Chromebook is good enough). Chrome can’t run a lot of apps.

 

[mode11]

Do you have a source for how many 8GB models they sell? I’m not aware of anybody knowing those numbers outside of Apple.

And the even more important question is where do the majority of Mac *profits* come from? I suspect the majority of profit comes from upgrades to the base model. A $200 up charge to add 8GB of RAM is almost surely purely profit. And I bet a lot of people do that upgrade.

Well, we're both in conjecture land. But if these forums are anything to go by, half the people think the upgrade price is outrageous, and the other half argue 8GB is perfectly adequate. So I don't know how many people are buying 16GB Airs, at least. The Pros likely see more upgrades.

Having a quick look at eBay UK for M1 Airs, there are 282 8GB models for sale, versus 42 16GB models. Perhaps 16GB owners just keep their laptops longer, but I don't think it's controversial to speculate that the cheaper models sell in greater numbers. £200 for 8GB is quite hard to justify, especially for a ~£1000, light-use laptop.

 

[Chuckeee]

I bought my M2 with 32GB RAM

I assume you mean an M2Pro machine. All of the M2 machines (MacBooks and Mac mini) max out at 24GB.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

What I don't understand is, if Apple's strategy is to have low RAM configurations just to keep the advertised base price low, with the idea that they will upgrade when purchasing, why don't they stock more high end configurations? Like I always upgrade my Mac and the upgrades I want are NEVER in stock. If Apple was trying to upsell, wouldn't they keep the upsell models on the shelf?

They're playing the long game.

More high end SKUs "out there" means that older laptops will remain usable for longer. If they limit the SKUs to lower specs, they get disposed of quicker, and Apple has a guaranteed sales pipeline.

Consider, my wife is having slowdowns with her M1 air with routine grad school work. Meanwhile, my kid is using a second generation i5. The CPU usage seems to hang out around 50% or higher with minimal use, but it has 12gb of RAM and no slowdown. It's a 13 year old computer, but for social media and word processing it's perfectly usable.

An M1 with 16gb will probably outlast the battery, but an M1 with just 8gb of RAM will become e-waste within a few years.

 

[mode11]

Nope. The title of the post is “Is 8GB of RAM Enough for a Mac in 2024?”. Apparently it is for Dell servers. Dell laptops can also be purchased with 8GB.

No one would actually buy a server with 8GB (unless perhaps they were going to fit the RAM themselves). That's just a notional starting point - the full build-out would be a lot more extensive, and highly customised to the customer's needs. It's at the very opposite end of the spectrum to a MacBook Air.

And Dell might sell you a laptop with 8GB, but the upgrade to 16GB is £50. And even there, the only 'laptops' they sell for over a grand with that little memory are either specialised rugged devices, a tablet, or mobile workstations (which are expected to be extensively configured, as with their servers).

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Ehh, ignore this.

 

[Karut]

Are you using swap when running these apps?

8GB is surprisingly enough. I went from a MacBook Pro 17” 16GB 2011 to a MacBook Air 15” M2 8GB 2023. To my surprise the 8GB really is enough. It was an involuntary upgrade as my old machine’s power supply died while I am in the Philippines. My plan had been to get a MacBook Pro M3 Max 16” 32GB but there was not time and the 8GB MBA was all that was available. I have been very surprisingly pleased with the excellent performance of the 8G of RAM on the M2. It feels like I have more than the 16GB I used to have. I run Illustrator, photoshop, safari, notes, photos, mail, excel, TextEdit, BBEdit, Calendar, HotKeys and messenger all at the same time all the time.

 

[Rookbird¥]

I don’t see why this is even a debate.

Do cheap windows laptops with 16 gb ram do what Apple’s laptops do?

This is the exact same scenario as back when the iPhone 5s was first released, and people mocked the A7 chip for only having two cores and 1 gb of ram. Meanwhile, android smartphone professors had 4-8 cores and 4 gb ram and still fared worse in terms of performance and battery life.

Wake me up when 8 gb ram MBAs suddenly stop being good enough for the majority of their user base, and I will agree that Apple has a problem. Otherwise, I maintain all this is just noise to disguise the real issue - which is that a few people are too cheapskate to pay for the ram and storage they want in a Mac.

You’re comparing cheap windows laptops with 16GB and saying they can’t perform as well as Apple laptops that cost $1,000+. I sure hope they don’t. When people buy an Apple laptop they expect a higher level of performance especially for the price. Selling one with just 8GB shouldn’t even be given serious thought. Unfortunately it’s a sign of serous issues at Apple. If they insist on nickel and dime your customers then they’re going to stop being customers. Have you wondered why Apple stopped publishing the figures on how many laptops and iPhones and iPads they sell. They only publish their profits. That’s because the numbers they’re selling are dropping and they’re making up for it by increasing their prices. That’s only gonna work for so long before it can collapse in on itself.

 

[bluecoast]

The problem is many users do not know how 8Gb reacts. They might know now, based on the software they are using now, but that same software may require higher RAM in a very short space of time and indeed OS requirements may increase, and Apple should have a duty of care to customers, especially by not making false statements inferring 8Gb is equivalent to 16Gb on PC which is not borne out by independent tests.

So those suggesting it is enough for their light needs now, should really take a five year view as to whether that 8Gb will even drive existing software, and whether swapping reduces their SSD longevity.

Far better for Apple to bite the bullet and make the baseline 16Gb which costs them next to nothing, and may even be zero cost, as they will have a larger production run of 16Gb and no need to keep the 8Gb set up.

With Apple continuing to develop aiming at games market, 8GB will not be enough and I can foresee a large class action forthcoming at some time in the near future, if those who bought 8Gb machines, find they do not even operate software upgrades, let alone gaming.

Independent tests show that the 8Gb base shows a significant performance decrease even with increased swapping if put under load, and as software develops, the RAM demand will grow.

Having 16Gb base won't adversely affect anyone who would otherwise have thought they could survive on 8Gb. whereas sticking to 8Gb will inevitably mean more SSD swapping and the distinct prospect of premature obsolescence as software enhancements take place or where customers decide to embrace games, or heavier workloads.

I am hugely tempted to buy a base spec M3 MBA, but I keep on thinking of your point - we are before the (inevitable) dawn of on device (with cloud) gen AI and even more ML on Apple devices - and these are going to need RAM and Neural engines and graphics cores.

Of course we don't know how 'gen AI' Siri will run - but Apple being Apple, it'll likely do its utmost to have it run on the local machine (privacy + a push for people to upgrade, get higher spec machines etc.)

 

[bluecoast]

I think you might have missed their point.

They are pointing out that Apple is making 8GB feel adequate with various software tricks. Those same tricks stretch the usefulness of higher RAM amounts as well. The increased performance of SSDs make it a realistic path and Apple has taken it to extremes.

The part that is very much left out of the discussion though. Increased reliance on disk to fill in the gaps wears out the SSDs more. So you end up with more wear and tear on the SSD on lower RAM machines.

You also hit more issues with the wear as the SSDs fill up and Apple is also notorious for skimping on SSD storage just as much as they skimp on RAM.

I'm on a 2017 MBP and my SDD is fine. It did have a front plate replacement (keyboard issues) so I don't know if that involved swapping out the SSD. But if it didn't I simply haven't noticed any slowdown in my light productivity use of my MBP & some gaming on Windows 10 dual boot.

 

[bluecoast]

Many 'entry level users' may be new to Apple and assume the base level will do so much more, especially with Apple pronouncements about gaming. It's no good then someone with 8Gb finding their machine would have a greater longevity and better performance if they had 16GB, as by then its too late.

Its not just about the 8Gb - 16Gb its about economy too, as I believe Apple are shooting themselves in both feet as its no good shooting from the rooftop about gaming, which may induce new users to the Mac on a base 8GB? It won't provide for happy customers who may find 2-3 years down the line their machine is obsolete, and won't even run updated software.

On the commercial front I don't believe it makes sense any more for Apple to have 8Gb in their base line up. By increasing the base to 16Gb they can have a much larger 16Gb run, save costs on stopping the 8Gb run, where then the costs are minimal rather than the perception that they are shafting customers with RAM upgrade prices.

Far better for Apple to do it, make whatever production savings they can from economies of scale and cutting out the 8Gb run, and then sing from the rooftop about the difference between Apple and other manufacturers, where Apple are pursuing gaming and where AI and other software enhancements will inevitable require greater RAM.

So better for Apple to do that, and then use the enhanced PR than this constant drip drip drip of customers unhappy with extortionate RAM upgrade costs for Pro machines, where some software for pro users already exceeds 8Gb.

I'm going to be extremely surprised if Apple manages to make MacOS a viable and successful gaming platform.

I think it will continue to have some triple A games on it each year. But I don't think it'll ever be on par with Windows and I don't think that anyone seriously into playing the latest and greatest triple A games will seek to do so primarily on a Mac - or on iPad or iPhone.

I suspect that the games that we have seen, Apple has either paid the devs or provided them with bespoke porting assistance. And even Apple is not going to do that with every single game dev.

However, if they continue to make porting games to the A and M chips pretty easy, then potentially some devs will see this as useful incremental revenue for a certain type of triple A game (that they could see appealing to Mac owners) when the main consoles and the PC market doesn't have much further sales in them for their game.

I think that Apple's eye is on the bigger prize - getting the big games devs used to its architecture in readiness for when the vision pro becomes a mass market device.

 

[Velli]

NO! All my staff get 8gb machines. Regardless of Win or Mac. The machines I can upgrade on my own to 16gbs I do and everyone says, WoW my computer is sooo fast now. Right, cuz 8gb is the minimum spec is BS.

Your Windows experience means nothing when discussing Macs. I have an 8GB Mac and a 16GB Windows. Mac wins.

 

[Velli]

See above.

8GB is a joke. I work in education and the number of staff who run out of ram using chrome because they have a lot of tabs open is ridiculous.

So? Buy 16GB Macs then. Who cares which other configs exist?

Should they also stop making computers with larger drives than you need?

This whole discussion is stupid. What matters is the price of the config you want, not the price of the configs you don’t want.

 

[taliz]

Honest question: why do you need a few hundred tabs open when web browsing? Not being critical…..…. I just find that if I have more than say 5-10 tabs opened I start losing track of what I am doing.

Because I work with dozens of web administration based systems, and I also have lots of documentation about said systems open, web based docs and pdfs. Lots of internal wiki too. Then I have another dozen or so web based monitoring systems + ticket handling systems. Then web based chat support for some of these systems(some are very critical so need fast support).
I use vertical tabs to keep a structure, based on system, in one of the browsers(Firefox).
In Safari it's more unstructured, here I search tabs when I need something. This is also the "general purpose" browser.
In Chrome I have only a dozen or so tabs, focused on specific monitoring and ticket handling, so easy to find without structure or searching.

 

[taliz]

See above.

So? Buy 16GB Macs then. Who cares which other configs exist?

Should they also stop making computers with larger drives than you need?

This whole discussion is stupid. What matters is the price of the config you want, not the price of the configs you don’t want.

It's silly when you can't even do basic stuff without the system swapping.
Sure most won't notice it swapping with todays fast SSDs. But the purpose of swap in an OS is basically for "emergency". If it's done all the time eventually the SSD will wear out, like mine did.
Thats just poor/cheap engineering by Apple.

 

[Egregius]

That's just the whole point of this entire discussion: Is it enough? Well yes it is for normal usage. If you do photo/video/audio editing you're probably getting a Macbook Pro anyway.
For me the 8GB is more than enough. I hardly see more than 100MB swap usage so that's perfectly fine.
On my 27" iMac with 64GB RAM i constantly see more than 20GB RAM usage. Mac OS is just very good in memory management.

 

[Motorola68000]

Not really. It was in line with comments that 8GB not viable in 2024 and no one should be selling systems with less than 16 GB. The title of the post is regarding 8GB ram enough in 2024.

You clearly changed your comment to me, inserting the Dell server, when it was about a totally different set up, the Dell XPS, I even posted the evidence.

It is poor form to do that, in trying to change your response insert the Dell server which is irrelevant anyway when you yourself posted the minimum configuration of the Dell XPS showing it has a 16GB base configuration.

Changing the goalposts does not help credibility it trashes it.

 

[Motorola68000]

That's just the whole point of this entire discussion: Is it enough? Well yes it is for normal usage. If you do photo/video/audio editing you're probably getting a Macbook Pro anyway.
For me the 8GB is more than enough. I hardly see more than 100MB swap usage so that's perfectly fine.
On my 27" iMac with 64GB RAM i constantly see more than 20GB RAM usage. Mac OS is just very good in memory management.

I believe what is coming across is that there is no such thing as 'normal usage' for most customers. If normal usage is considered just browsing internet, with insufficient user knowledge 8Gb may be insufficient, depending on how many tabs are left open, applications etc, but surely the pertinent fact is if 8Gb proves insufficient now or in the veery near future, for most it writes off their machine.

With Sonoma requiring 4Gb RAM alone. We have Safari, where RAM requirements add to that, at approx. 1.2Gb (10 tabs), which doesn't leave a lot for other applications.

I presume you must be using your 27in. iMac for more intensive tasks with other RAM intensive applications,if it has 64Gb RAM and still swapping 20Gb?

 

[EugW]

.

I believe what is coming across is that there is no such thing as 'normal usage' for most customers. If normal usage is considered just browsing internet, with insufficient user knowledge 8Gb may be insufficient, depending on how many tabs are left open, applications etc, but surely the pertinent fact is if 8Gb proves insufficient now or in the veery near future, for most it writes off their machine.

With Sonoma requiring 4Gb RAM alone. We have Safari, where RAM requirements add to that, at approx. 1.2Gb (10 tabs), which doesn't leave a lot for other applications.

For some reason you keep ignoring the fact that even without swap, macOS uses memory compression. 8 GB physical RAM in this context is roughly equivalent to around 12 GB RAM, give or take.

In your example above, that means the machine would still have roughly about 6 GB available after Sonoma and those Safari tabs.

Furthermore, you cannot use a 16 GB machine to assess physical RAM usage of an 8 GB machine, because in that scenario the 16 GB machine will use more physical RAM. macOS won’t bother with significant RAM compression when it is unneeded.

ie. If you have a scenario where say about 10 GB is needed, both an 8 GB machine and a 16 GB machine can support this without having to hit the swap. However the 16 GB machine will use more physical RAM to achieve the same result compared to the 8 GB machine.

And finally, the swap is not a bad thing. In my usage, I found I almost never even noticed the swap until a few GB of swap was being utilized.

How do I know this? Actual real world experience. I have 8 GB, 12 GB, 16 GB, and 24 GB Macs all in the same house. Furthermore I’ve run 8 and 16 GB Macs side-by-side.

 

[raythompsontn]

You clearly changed your comment to me, inserting the Dell server, when it was about a totally different set up, the Dell XPS, I even posted the evidence.

The post is about memory. Whether that is a server, Mac, Dell, Surface, whatever.

Changing the goalposts does not help credibility it trashes it.

The goalposts were not changed. If you feel that way, so be it.

 

[Mainsail]

Because I work with dozens of web administration based systems, and I also have lots of documentation about said systems open, web based docs and pdfs. Lots of internal wiki too. Then I have another dozen or so web based monitoring systems + ticket handling systems. Then web based chat support for some of these systems(some are very critical so need fast support).
I use vertical tabs to keep a structure, based on system, in one of the browsers(Firefox).
In Safari it's more unstructured, here I search tabs when I need something. This is also the "general purpose" browser.
In Chrome I have only a dozen or so tabs, focused on specific monitoring and ticket handling, so easy to find without structure or searching.

Got it. I think you would agree that this is kind of a niche use case. The typical MBA user is unlikely to need hundreds of tabs open.

 

[PhireWare]

One reason Apple should upgrade is they have a reputation of being proactive since Steve Jobs days, hence the Apple premium. there's also the economy of scale benefit to Apple in cutting out the 8Gb run which then adds economy of scale to a much larger 16Gb run and.

Can you imagine the PR coup for Apple in arbitrarily increasing base RAM to 16Gb, as. no doubt it would be a Vive La Difference in Apple marketing rather than the disingenuous 8Gb is equivalent to 16GB on a pc, where independent tests make that claim look poor, and where independent tests on Pro Macs with 8Gb and 16Gb show the difference it makes.

They could almost make it self financing, and encourage more Apple users, rather than what appears to be happening, with multiple media pundits, and even industry experts suggesting 8Gb is just not up to it anymore and will certainly not be up to it in the next few years, with more emphasis on gaming, AI, VR etc. and where software already used by many Mac users, already. hits the 8GB minimum just for that one piece of software.

But the 8gb of ram isn't for the people you just mentioned. It's for the moms/dads/grandmas/grandpas that just want a simple laptop that works without fuss and allows them to view pictures of their kids/grandkids, respond to some emails and watch a movie. There's a reason Apple doesn't advertise how much RAM is in the iPhone... it's because a large majority of their users don't know or don't care. The people that are passionate about 8gb vs 16gb minimum are such a small group compared to their overall userbase. Apple will move away from 8gb of RAM as base when it financially makes sense to them, and evidently it doesn't make sense to them yet. Probably because they have thousands of customers (my wife included) who are perfectly happy with their 8gb MacBook Air/Pro. Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world, obviously whatever they are doing seems to be working for them.

 

[smulji]

How do I know this? Actual real world experience. I have 8 GB, 12 GB, 16 GB, and 24 GB Macs all in the same house. Furthermore I’ve run 8 and 16 GB Macs side-by-side.

That's a lot of Macs

 

[smulji]

Apple will move away from 8gb of RAM as base when it financially makes sense to them, and evidently it doesn't make sense to them yet

I think, beginning with the M4, Apple will make 12GB RAM the base.