Apple argues in favor of selling Macs with only 8GB of RAM
With the launch of the M3 MacBook Pro last year, many reviewers and customers criticized the company for still selling...
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I'll admit I don't use Macs, so maybe they are more efficient than the Linux and windows machines I work off...
...but I typically use machines with 64GB and recently upgraded my personal machine to 128GB. I still swap about 50GB to my SSD from time to time.
And I'm not doing heavy graphic design or movie editing stuff.
I cannot fathom for the life of me how 8GB would ever be feasible.
How the fuck are you using that much ram of you aren't doing "heavy duty" stuff????
I just said I'm not doing graphic design or movie editing. I typically have 10 different browser profiles open to separate data / bookmarks, maybe 8 email accounts in tabs and Outlook (if not on Linux), 4-8 VS code windows, a mix of jetbrains rider or visual studio instances, a smattering mix of postman/SQL server/azure data studio/thunder client, among other things like PDFs and documents. And then multiple docker containers and other local running servers.
The swap usually comes in when I'm parsing a data file or something.
I do not want to see what your desktop looks like lol
Hahaha, it stressed me out so I hide all the icons and changed the background to just black.
Excuse me, can I get some more pepper for this troll dish?
I do a lot on my M1 air and I haven't even considered I would have RAM issues with 16GB. Windows, I would be getting 64GB to not be miserable. I don't run as much as you all the time, but having a container or two going, far too many browser tabs, PDFs, 3-4 intellij projects, discord, teams, and probably other things I am forgetting about is the norm. I even have AutoCAD open sometimes.
The biggest difference is Mx is arm based, which goes a long way into getting better performance and battery life. I really need to look up again how Apple manages memory, swap, and performance in general. I just checked Activity Monitor and even with most of the memory showing as used, I don't even notice. If my laptop were to die tomorrow due to my clumsy fumbling, I am getting another Mac. My only wish is getting Vulkan support. That would be amazing. Not going to hold my breath on that though.
Now, 8GB is a crime and it is not something I would recommend for any laptop/desktop, no matter what it is running. Not saying it wouldn't work ok on a Mac for someone who only uses it for web browsing, but it is utterly ridiculous that 8GB is even an option these days. This is a dumb hill for Apple to die on and 16 should be the absolute minimum.
I have a debloated W11 VM on my proxmox server that I have used only once and is only there for some unknown emergency. With a little fiddling, I got it to idle under 4GB. I don't plan to run servers on my laptop and invested enough on a little server rack to give me things like file servers, VMs, more permanent containers, and somehow got talked into making a gaming VM that I use at LAN parties. The 3U case for the main server travels very well.
Personally, I would try and get some of your server stuff off your machine. You can even take a look at some docker swarm or similar k8 concepts to reduce your container load. RPis are another good choice for some lower load server operations. I have a little RPi swarm that is powered by PoE+, though I plan on trying k8 on them soon to get some experience. RPis are also small enough that you could throw one in your bag if you needed something portable and are fairly inexpensive. Just a thought and may not be possible with your server applications.
Hmm, getting server stuff off sounds fun! I have a couple laptops sitting around so it might be fun to even just use those to offload some processes.
I'd love to get my own little server rack or something, not the best timing financially, but that'd be awesome.
I'll have to look into the RPi thing. Thanks for the ideas!
For me, it's huddle (the conf call thing of slack), zoom, and a few Google sheets. Very easy to get to OOM killer
With 64GiB or more of RAM?
That VM has 16.
It's worth mentioning that windows will use as much ram as possible just because it can and leave available with what it considers "reasonable"
Then WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Code code code
I don't think even Eclipse can burn so much memory
I get the sense that a lot of people here don’t use MacOS.
I have a few ARM and Intel Macs in 8 and 16gig configs, and I do a lot of heavy multimedia work. My 8 gig M1 only really gets into trouble when my partner and I both have an account with files open in bloated creative software. One pro user, and it’s usually fine. 2 active accounts with shitty creative software running, and you get a few beach balls.
There are a ton of benchmark videos on YouTube. I saw one recently for the new MacBook Air comparing the 8/16/24 GB models. They found that 8GB was significantly slower than 16GB for tasks like exporting video, but there was no difference between 16 and 24 gb.
I get the sense that a lot of people here don’t use MacOS.
I wish that was true.
Interesting to know for sure! I guess I can't speak to what they're doing for optimizations first hand, but at the same time...my 128GB cost me like $300 on sale so, I dunno, a wash? Haha.
I've tried to become a Mac convert a few times, mostly peer pressure, but I just haven't been able to do it successfully yet.
Yeah, if I’m building a PC, I’ll throw in as much RAM as I can get.
That said, with 16gigs I’m usually not thinking about RAM at all. I’d probably only want to go higher than that if I was living in Adobe Lightroom 24/7.
Do you understand kernel memory management fundamentals? I'm asking because what you wrote here strongly suggests otherwise - so, unless you're able to show me I'm wrong, I'm going to stick with my conclusion that this is all incorrect and likely complete bullshit.
You do you.
You seem particular in a way that is breathtakingly unfun.
I have a five year old MBP here with 16 gigs of RAM and it runs the latest version of macOS. I can run multiple web browsers with dozens of open tabs, VS Code, an LLM, and a video editing app on it, all simultaneously, without breaking a sweat.
IDK what Apple's secret sauce is but their shit just works better than everyone else's, that's a fact.
Dude, that's how much RAM I used to have on a super high-end dev box at work with 56 cores. It was very helpful for compiling Chrome. WTF are you doing with a personal machine that needs that much RAM?
I mean it's my personal machine but I am a software engineer consultant/contractor so I use it for work, too.
Ok fair enough. It's just surprising to see someone say that. The standard-issue dev machine where I work is a laptop with 32 GB.