My new MacBook Air m2 - 8gb is great

[AlmightyKang]

Slowdown comments are garbage.

I've been on a bottom end M2 Mac Mini 8Gb/256Gb and it's absolutely fine. Here's what I'm doing with it:

1. Usual apple software crap (safari, messages, email, calendars, facetime, reminders, notes, apple music, apple TV etc etc)
2. Typesetting extremely complex mathematically heavy 100+ page LaTeX documents with TeXShop.
3. Working with statistical data in R and RStudio and generating output for the above.
4. Running a CAS (Maxima) for symbolic algebra.
5. Editing many of the 3000 or so photos off my Nikon Z50 in Photos.app. I have a policy of shooting JPEG and only doing light edits on photos anyway because it's about the photo, not what you do to it afterwards for me. If I need to do any more deeper editing I will use Pixelmator which I bought ages ago. My workflow is to actually empty my camera out into my iPad Pro when travelling and let it sync to iCloud, then do the edits when I get home on the Mac. The pictures are all just there waiting for me. I tried Adobe/Lightroom and it's completely overkill unless it's professional workflow only and comes with its own universe of problems.
6. Remote admin of stuff in AWS from the terminal.
7. Lots of video conferences and tutorials on Adobe Connect.

What will cripple you with RAM and disk:

1. Using any large commercial package from Adobe. Literally they drink all the RAM they can get. I've been writing software for about 30 years now on and off and quite frankly this is mostly bloat and poor engineering. I can't stand their products at all, both from the perpetual licensing model to the excessive resource usage.
2. Hoarding data. Are you a trash panda? Keep it tidy. Everything I've ever done worth keeping which is photos, videos, documents, publications, code is on this machine and I have 138Gb of space left.
3. Keep your workspace tidy. Are you still a trash panda? Close any apps you're not using, don't have 100 tabs open.
4. Working with video. This is about the only reason to use anything other than base model IMHO and 99% of us probably aren't YT influencers who make videos about macs and only do video with them. DO YOU WANT TO BUY A VPN FROM RUSSIA COMPANY NO? Sorry mind control there went off. Back on topic. Really even the major concern there for light edit is storage and if you're a cheap ass you can just hang a drive off it and do it there. My father has a bottom end M1 iMac and a 2TB external TB drive and that does him fine right up to 4k stuff.

As has been said the majority of memory busting stuff out there is crappy software. If you have to use it, you have to. If you don't, it's money in pocket so you can go and spend it on other stuff like actually going to places to take videos and photos to edit on your mac. No point in spending £4k on an M3 Ultra if you then can't afford to go anywhere interesting to collect 4k videos to edit.

Anyway you can get perfectly good, light windows laptops if you want. But they run really hot, the battery lasts no time at all and obviously you have to put up with Windows. But if you need to use something that works on windows only, START THERE and work back. Write your requirements out first. Students where I am tend to buy Chromebooks and then find out they aren't real computers and then have to buy a second machine. Think before you buy!

Sorry for the rant but a lot of people over-buy due to paranoia produced by a lot of people who don't understand people's requirements or what their own requirements are properly. Some advice amount memory pressure:

1. Green -> woohoo
2. Yellow -> you're getting what you're paying for.
3. Red -> Close some other stuff and carry on.

 

[colonelbutt]

Sorry for the rant but a lot of people over-buy due to paranoia produced by a lot of people who don't understand people's requirements or what their own requirements are properly. Some advice amount memory pressure:

1. Green -> woohoo
2. Yellow -> you're getting what you're paying for.
3. Red -> Close some other stuff and carry on.

completely agree, well written!

along time ago, in a land far far away, I used to lead a dev team. we used java and python server, and java and C# UIs

the only time I had any problem with memory was tomcat

 

[AlmightyKang]

along time ago, in a land far far away, I used to lead a dev team. we used java and python server, and java and C# UIs

the only time I had any problem with memory was tomcat

That's what I did until they slowly replaced my entire team with outsourced staff. The big problems we had were the enterprise behemoths on top of CLR + JVM environments. The worst thing I ever had to keep alive, other than our in house stuff which was pretty bad, was Jenkins which is like shovelling a medium sized whale on top of Tomcat. Had to get 128Gb RAM EC2 instances just to keep up with the memory leaks so we could restart it daily 🤣

Those days are over now for me and I've taken a step back to working as a remote contractor in two completely disparate sectors.

 

[JamesMay82]

So for fun I ran the multi-cpu benchmark on passmark.

My M2 8gb achieved 16,408
I looked up an M3 Max 16 core 32gb and it achieved 40,033

So that is £1,149 vs £3,799 which is 230% more or 3.3x the cost

for that you are getting 146% or 2.4x the performance improvement

When I render a 60mp picture it takes just over 4 seconds in the background, mean whilst I am working on the next photo already. If I spent 3.3x the cost, I would achieve around 2 seconds.

So, absolutely not worth it to me. Of course that could make a difference if you are rendering a 2 hour 8k video and are on the clock to render other ones as well.

It does show however, how within a few generations and some extra cpus things don't change that much. For me, any speed difference in computing <10x is only incremental at best. There is alot of hype around, basically.

you make some interesting points. I have the same use case as you but also do some family video edits from time to time. So I went with Mac Studio with 2TB SSD and it came with 32GB of ram. completely overkill but in my mind I'm thinking it will last me 10 years like my previous iMac. I can't an imagine an 8Gig machine lasting that long.

What's interesting is I have an M1 air for my work with 8 gig and 256 and it uses on average 6 GB in activity monitor. With same apps open on my Mac Studio it uses 10 gigs of ram. so it seems the more ram you have the more the system uses.

I wonder what the real preferred option of Mac OS is in terms of ram it uses.

 

[colonelbutt]

What's interesting is I have an M1 air for my work with 8 gig and 256 and it uses on average 6 GB in activity monitor. With same apps open on my Mac Studio it uses 10 gigs of ram. so it seems the more ram you have the more the system uses.

I wonder what the real preferred option of Mac OS is in terms of ram it uses.

The ram usage doesn't necessary show you what app is using what. The memory swap file expands based on the size of the memory.

I am old fashioned, but to see what is using your memory, I use "top" in a terminal/command line window

 

[h.gilbert]

is 8gb enough? in 2024? no, it's not. anyone who says otherwise will find out the hard way,
but if you are happy, that's the most important thing, have fun 😀

You're wrong, 8GB is absolutely enough.

In 2018 I did the whole of my univesity dissertation with a 2016 base 13" Pro. 70 page dissertation in Word, linked graphs and tables from Excel, lots of pictures, and lots of Chrome tabs researching papers. I also used Rstudio for statistics, Lightroom, and in 2022 I used it to make some videos in FCPX with 1080p footage. I could count the number of times it beachballed on one hand. 16GB would've been faster, it just took a couple of seconds to load anything out of memory and I never felt frustrated with the performance.

I have a base M1 Air now. Haven't done anything as intensive on it but I've recorded stuff in Garageband with multiple tracks and plugins, while having lots of tabs open in Chrome and Firefox. Some tabs have to reload, but it takes one second.

 

[Basic75]

Are 8GB enough? In 2024?

IMHO that's the wrong question. When buying today the question should be "will 8GB be enough in 2030?"

 

[Tuck_]

"8gb is more than enough for most people" to me misses the point. It's about value for money. That is, the amount that apple gives you for what you are paying. It doesn't matter that 8gb may or may not be enough. What matters is the price they charge for it and the price they charge to upgrade, which are undeniably ludicrous.

 

[Reached]

(I am a software developer)

If you make money with the machine in any capacity, just shell out the $$ for the upgrade, you honestly won't regret it, but you will definitely regret not getting enough ram.

I bought an M1 air when they were just released, and while it was a great little machine, i regretted only getting the base model with 8GB instead of just upgrading to 16GB right away.

I am now using a M1 Pro base with 16GB, it's much better, but my next upgrade will definitely have 32GB+

I might add that the reason I only got 8GB was because everyone told me that it would be enough.

 

[h.gilbert]

IMHO that's the wrong question. When buying today the question should be "will 8GB be enough in 2030?"

I disagree. If you buy more RAM than you need now in anticipation it will come into use in 2030 when you're probably going to get a new computer soon then that's a waste of money, considering what Apple charges from RAM.

 

[colonelbutt]

(I am a software developer)

If you make money with the machine in any capacity, just shell out the $$ for the upgrade, you honestly won't regret it, but you will definitely regret not getting enough ram.

I bought an M1 air when they were just released, and while it was a great little machine, i regretted only getting the base model with 8GB instead of just upgrading to 16GB right away.

I am now using a M1 Pro base with 16GB, it's much better, but my next upgrade will definitely have 32GB+

I might add that the reason I only got 8GB was because everyone told me that it would be enough.

Again, doesn’t it depend on what you are doing

"8gb is more than enough for most people" to me misses the point. It's about value for money. That is, the amount that apple gives you for what you are paying. It doesn't matter that 8gb may or may not be enough. What matters is the price they charge for it and the price they charge to upgrade, which are undeniably ludicrous.

Price is important. With Apple though you are paying for the materials and screen. Any comparison with a windows laptop at the same price show this off. However you are right, the upgrades are expensive. Best to start with what you need. I am pretty sure I only need 8gb. I will update in 6 months

IMHO that's the wrong question. When buying today the question should be "will 8GB be enough in 2030?"

Seriously , LOL, I replace my laptop every 2 years max

 

[ric22]

Can I ask what you use it for ?

Also why would it make difference over time if you are doing the same things ? If there is slow down over time it would be nothing to do with the specs, rather the OS or badApp building up some kind of baggage. Having more memory just masks the problem for longer

As you own the device and gradually install more programs and have more running, the RAM demands increase. Also, there is a trend where existing software typically becomes more RAM intensive over time with updates.

On my personal M1 Air I generally just use the Office suite, Safari, Chrome, a VPN, Apple's default Apps like Mail and Preview, and Sky Go to watch TV. The last one is a hellish nightmare of an app, but they have a good selection of TV channels. Like I said, the heavy lifting can be done on my other Mac.

 

[ric22]

, I replace my laptop every 2 years max

So.... you have a some kind of phobia for "old things"? You are so wealthy tech is meaninglessly cheap (if so, why do you buy 2 year old laptops every 2 years?)? Or, uh, I can't even speculate....

 

[canadianreader]

People get 8gb of ram not because they prefer 8 over 16 it's because Apple charges an arm and a leg for upgrades. Positive take on this is people no longer say 8gb is 16gb like they used to when M3 launched which is in itself an improvement.

 

[colonelbutt]

So.... you have a some kind of phobia for "old things"? You are so wealthy tech is meaninglessly cheap (if so, why do you buy 2 year old laptops every 2 years?)? Or, uh, I can't even speculate....

Firstly, as I said above, I don’t buy the latest and greatest anymore. It saves so much money to be on a one year lag.
Secondly, there are advances in cpus, gpus and other things which make memory the least important reason to upgrade. If you buy memory for 2030 it’ll be a waste of money.
Thirdly, continual over buying, I.e. buying specs you don’t really need, that some forum geek shamed one into, is a real waste of money.
Lastly, the used price of macs means you can sell after 1-2 years and recover a decent amount of money. So I look on it as an annual cost. New - used / number of years. For an Apple computer under £1000 this can be a very low 1-200 a year.

 

[AlmightyKang]

People get 8gb of ram not because they prefer 8 over 16 it's because Apple charges an arm and a leg for upgrades. Positive take on this is people no longer say 8gb is 16gb like they used to when M3 launched which is in itself an improvement.

Bit of a bad straw man. I mean I can afford to max out a 16" MBP but I don't need it.

 

[ric22]

Bit of a bad straw man. I mean I can afford to max out a 16" MBP but I don't need it.

Affording something and being able to justify something are different things. I *could* afford to buy myself some $200 cocktails at a bar, but I would feel the price unjustifiable, so I wouldn't. More RAM is obviously better, but at a >1,000% markup? Meh.

 

[cawgijoe]

More RAM is better. The markup is the real problem here.
I tend to keep a computer for a long time, and right or wrong, I always get additional RAM, especially if I can't add to it after the fact. My experience has been that the computer will last longer.
At work, most of the PC's have 8GB of RAM. Any new replacement machines are now coming with 16GB. Most of the complaints center around the 8GB machines.

 

[kylelerner]

I think it also helps that any page file memory is now on the blazing-fast NVMe SSDs.

 

[AlmightyKang]

More RAM is better. The markup is the real problem here.
I tend to keep a computer for a long time, and right or wrong, I always get additional RAM, especially if I can't add to it after the fact. My experience has been that the computer will last longer.
At work, most of the PC's have 8GB of RAM. Any new replacement machines are now coming with 16GB. Most of the complaints center around the 8GB machines.

It matters not if all your apps aren’t individual stacks of NodeJS and half of NPM wrapped in Chrome.

If I need RAM I rent it from Amazon by the hour.

 

[GMShadow]

I disagree. If you buy more RAM than you need now in anticipation it will come into use in 2030 when you're probably going to get a new computer soon then that's a waste of money, considering what Apple charges from RAM.

That's what I remind myself when I think about getting 32GB in the next Mac - if I'm only keeping it 3-4 years, 16GB will still be great then.

 

[colonelbutt]

It matters not if all your apps aren’t individual stacks of NodeJS and half of NPM wrapped in Chrome.

If I need RAM I rent it from Amazon by the hour.

50 x {24TiB 446 CPU Amazon EC2} would do wonders for those large spreadsheets 😈😈

 

[StrollerEd]

Can I ask what you use it for ?

Also why would it make difference over time if you are doing the same things ? If there is slow down over time it would be nothing to do with the specs, rather the OS or badApp building up some kind of baggage. Having more memory just masks the problem for longer

 

[AlmightyKang]

50 x {24TiB 446 CPU Amazon EC2} would do wonders for those large spreadsheets 😈😈

Ironically the company I am contracting for have had to get Amazon to rack new hardware for them because they are using stuff bigger than the largest metal instances they supply to public users. This is insane of course but cheaper than working out how to parallelise their workload, which and this is the ironic bit, was originally conceived in Excel…

 

[YoitsTmac]

I don’t want to repeat what too many others have said here but it does depend on what you do and how value-centric you are.

I loved my M1 air 16/512. I then went to an M1 Pro 16/1TB just for dual monitor support. At work I used an M1 Mini 16/512. I’m surprised OP isn’t having slowdowns in Lightroom. It totally depends on how you use it. I had Lightroom, Safari (about 8 tabs), fantastical and mail open. I only shoot RAW, and sometimes I merge 5 RAW’s to make an “HDR” image. Just browsing my library caused it to hang so long, that before the previews loaded I could go to accounting, request budget for a new computer, walk back and still not have the previews loaded. A few seconds after I returned, the previews began loading. There was just no RAM, and as someone else said, Adobe programs are horrible at RAM management and Lightroom is generally open 1-3 hours at a time for me. My images are 24MP, I can’t imagine 60MP RAW.

Someone mentioned only shooting JPEG. That makes a huge difference on performance because they’re so much lighter to play with. I now have a Mac Studio, 32GB. I wanted to add an image to FCPX, and I had to go to Lightroom to find an imagine, and make an adjustment in photoshop. I had a 15GB swap. Obviously this isn’t everyone’s workflow, but it did slow me down.

For my personal rig, I just moved to a 64GB M2 Max. I now never have to close anything, and just have a different space for each of my tasks. Everything is so quick, I’m never waiting, or managing what I have open or closed. I don’t have to think or worry about it anymore.

I do question the logic of upgrading a base model spec every two years. I feel like I’ve now bought the computer I need, and I can’t imagine upgrading for 4-5 years. I do wonder if, instead of regularly upgrading, they just spent double the money on a computer that perfectly fit into their needs they’ll have over 5 years. The $2k M1 MBP still sells for $1,300 3 years later, so they’d likely be just as green.