Is 8 GB of RAM enough? macOS RAM management explained

Apple needs to stop abusing their pro customers. People are begrudgingly buying overpriced machines because they love the OS.

Pretty long video to just say because they can and because people buy it. 8gig ram and 256gb of storage for well over 1k is absurd. Just because it identifies as a pro machine doesn’t make it so. For reasonable storage and ram capacity the cost of the machine shouldn’t double. Cook just sees how far the customer can be pushed. Even the 256gb isn’t actually real. They just short you a nand module to maintain their obnoxious and now made up price tier. Weird he forgets to mention that fact but will try to sell 8gig of ram.

Very good and comprehensive video. Looking at the title I was worried it was one of those videos saying that 8GB on Mac is similar to 16GB on Windows, but then the video was very well done and I can understand that a catchy/ambigous title (even if a bit clickbaity) makes sense for the algorithm. Anyway well done.
I use Windwos and MacOS daily and at this point they are both similar in RAM management, with MacOS being very slightly better. Unfortunately Apple's obscene upgrade prices and their BTO/CTO model (where only the base model is on sale) pushes people to buy underspecced devices with 8GB RAM that could otherwise have lasted them much longer because the CPU is very futureproof with Apple Silicon...

I dont care about the RAM management. Any kind of swapped/compressed memory means its not enough in some way. I use my machine heavily for music production and chose a 14" MacBook Pro with 32GB and 1TB SSD. Now I have zero swapped/compressed data all the time.

Apple are for 🤡🤡🤡🤡 only

Why? Because of greed

My Galaxy a30 has less than 8gb and chrome never slows like on my laptop or pc even with Max tabs open, while on windows I rarely ever reach half of not less. A smartphone is just a computer so a pc/mac could definitely preform like that. Assuming macos with Apple silicon achieves that, the only issue is the ssd being soldered.

Clueless

My rule of thumb is:
If Apple offers options, never pick the lowest

When I got my iPhone 7 in 2017 it started at 32 GB, I got it with 128 GB
I upgraded to the iPhone XR in 2019, starting at 64 GB I again got it with 128 GB but at the end of its life with me It was almost ful all the time
I upgraded two weeks ago to the 15 Pro starting at 128 GB, I got it with 256 GB

When it comes to Macs, I upgraded my 500 GB HHD - 4 GB RAM 2012 13" MBP to 16 GB RAM and replaced the disk drive with a 500 GB SSD for a total of 1 TB of storage. It felt nice
I got a 2015 15" MBP with 16 GB when the min was 8 GB and upgraded myself the 256 GB SSD with a 512 GB SSD
I later got an M1 MBA with 16 GB RAM but left it with the base 256 GB SSD and I kinda regret it. Not so much because I don't use it for games like I did with the other two, but 256 GB still feels a bit too little

So yeah, the base config is not meant for lastint. It's meant for selling. If you want something that'll last you for a while, upgrade it when purchasing

If mac os handles tam better then my apple sells mac with more than 64GB.?

Its stupid to say that mac os handles memory diffrent. You are paying too much for 8 gigs.

No matter how efficient your ram management is, minimum ram should be 16 GB. Cpu core upgrade costs 100 but ram upgrade costs 200. They are doing this for extra profits. Also if you laptop dies/wears out faster, you will buy the next mac sooner.

My little Dell laptop that I paid just over $900 for comes with 32 gigs and a one T SSD in it.

A very nice video, keep it up

MacOS also purposefully resorts to compressed memory quite quickly to store some of the page cache. When a binary is loaded and executed (or that binary starts opening files and libraries), MacOS isn't going to just throw the entire binary into RAM. Instead, it loads a tiny portion of it to bootstrap the execution, then loads the other portions of it on an as-needed basis as a part of a process known as "demand paging". Some prefetching happens too, but generally MacOS isn't going to load the whole file unless the whole file gets accessed in its entirety.

These pages are technically purgeable (and in fact often do get purged) because they contain completely unmodified data. They are quite literally just copies of the data that is on disk, but if they belong to programs that are actively being run, many of these pages are important to keep in RAM because otherwise the OS would have to go back and forth constantly to the disk to fetch the pages that contain the very code that the program needs to run. Which pages to keep and which pages to discard is a balancing act. You don't want to necessarily prioritize the page cache so much that you instantly swap everything else out, because then some of these pages which DO contain modified data (which can't be purged) will end up going back and forth from swap constantly, causing the same effect and slowing down the computer while it waits on IO.

MacOS is really smart about how it handles this, and tends to be quite quick to free up space and to compress some of these pages if it finds the opportunity to do so. This allows the page cache to contain more pages, reduces how often they need to get purged from memory, reduces how often so-called "anonymous pages" (memory that would get swapped rather than purged) have to be swapped out, and drastically reduces the latency of refetching the data in these pages in the event that they are needed again.

This is part of why some amount of compressed memory is perfectly normal on MacOS. The system would be slower without it, as more of these pages would have to get purged, more pages would have to get swapped out, and the system would overall spend more time waiting on disk. Some have also indicated that the A14 and M1 apparently introduced hardware accelerated memory compression as well, which would help to explain part of why it performs so well. Of course, this still would have a latency penalty over uncompressed memory, but it would be much less than the penalty involved in doing this entirely in software.

If you are tech savvy enough to ask me how much ram? The answer is 16. If you are unaware 8 is probably fine.

Dude, it looks like you got ready to go outside and then decided to jump into recording a video last minute lol don’t hand us that crap about hearing your heating system. That’s nonsense and hilarious. You’re obviously just too cheap to heat your home. No one‘s going to take you serious dressed for cold outdoors while filming your content inside lol

Brazilians have a nice term/slung for this kind of video and perception, it's called "passar o pano".

Because Apple has a cult following that will always buy their products no matter what.

A pc with 8gbs of ram that cost over $1k is abysmal.

Fanboy

now apply this to all mac that applo sell with 8gb and a 5400 rpm classic hard drive, yes they sold it a lot for mant years even when ssd where cheap every where except at apple.

Try things like Stable difusion in 8 GB, it kill your computer as you need a lot of Vram and RAM. 8 GB still 8 gw anyway, put a large screen or 2 and you will have so few ram that you will have a super slow mac , it is a shame to sell this on a 3000$ computer, please note that 8 GB modules cost around 40$.

The reason Apple still ships computers with 8gb RAM is because they are extremely greedy!

My Mac mini is using 0bytes of swap it only has 8GB but I only ever have a max of 2 tabs on safari and listen to music and watch movies, if you are a pro user it will be annoying but configured to your needs is essential, the cost is a price we pay for being in the apple ecosystem, saying all that I’m still baffled as to why the latest pro machine come with 8GB 😂

Selling an 8gb laptop isnt the problem... The price they charge for it is

I managed to build a highly capable desktop with 64gb of RAM for less than a 8gb MBP

8GB ram Is More Like 12GB On Windows

next: How can Microsoft ship with 4 GB of RAM? Windows sh*t RAM managment explained.


Microsoft ship the Surface Go (I think) with only 8 GB of RAM

8Gb of ram is like having 16Gb of compressed swap in M1, also when ssd wears out you can buy another Macbook.

To me, anything compressed / swapped memory means lack of RAM. It is not a solution, but just the last effort to struggle, and hurt performance.

compressed memory is hammering cpu.

i just upped my pc to 48gb... bc 16 GB was almost full
even in 2018 8GB was like "are you sure?" let alone in 2024 :DDDDDDDD

All this software engineering to save like 3.5 bucks on ram... If you're doing anything other than web browsing/ using office suite, get 32 minimum.

Let me explain it to you with one word:

GREED!

Every goddamn asshole defending Apple choices probably like big bananas in their filthy mouth.

8 GB is just not enough, either way.

Is 8 gb ram on a Mac similar to 16 on a Windows PC? Answer: Nope. Apple's claim has been proven untrue in many online videos. And laptops using Apple's M series chips have no path to upgrade later.

8 gb on either a Mac or Windows Windows is enough for basic tasks. Be sure to carefully study up on how you plan on using your computer before purchasing. Or.....buy a PC because you can upgrade later if you didn't buy enough.

I have 8 gb on the Windows laptop I mostly used until recently, and it's zippy. Boots from hibernation mode in about 15-20 seconds. I can open many windows at the same time. Almost never a delay for anything I do on it. My other laptop has 32 gb & a 2tb hard drive. I didn't have to re-mortgage the house to buy it either.🤣 I wanted to do some more advanced things with it like video editing.

Stop believing the lies from Apple.

Extraordinary video. Thanks

MY Mac mini M1 is great but I used it mostly for internet cos it using 8g just for browsing the net!!!! I have to kill apps or the computer won't work! that's what's happening these days with new Macs! never had this since I've been using mac cos I always upgraded ram which is not possible anylonger. We all know that you also need more gigas on your Hard drive that helps memory and the computer to work better.

Greg, thank you for your understanding you brought us about the Apple Silicon way of working mechanism that demands memory aggressively and why apple had a false belief in RAM configuration. This, is why some people still rather put up with Windows inconveniences buying gaming laptops because of numb-minded decisions Apple made

Sounds like bunch of bs. Microsoft also sell copies of windows on ultra books and netbooks with 8gb of memory, but they are usually like $200 and not $1499.99

Fresh M1 mac mini . Fresh Out of the the box, upgraded to new OS Sonoma. Shows 7 GB ram used idle.

Fine if you want graphics not to render, whole webpages to appear blank and for lists of files in Finder to not show so you will delete folders full of files thinking they are not there. * And for your non-replaceable SSD to wear out and make your Macbook a brick, due to constant massive caching.

Other than that Apple's RAM management is fantastic.

* From experience, not from theory. My SSD is not gone yet, I am just waiting for it to happen and I have 16gb RAM, not 8gb!

This is, by far, the best explanation for RAM management on Apple Silicon, or even in general, including how it works on older Intel Apple units, and how this works along with storage….. thank you!!!

For example my Mac Pro with 200 gb of ram...

Swap is the reason ssd’s need and MUST be replaceable

I wonder how much Windows and Linux replicate these memory management tricks such as compressed memory.

Buy an Apple Refurbished item with the memory you want of whatever your preferred Mac is.

It's the same when I buy toilet paper. Somehow "12 ROLLS = 36 ROLLS!!"

This kind of memory management is nothing specific to MacOS. All modern OSes utilize the same techniques, Linux, Windows, BSDs, ... It's pretty much a given these days, which also makes sense since the memory HW subsytem doesn't really differ, no matter what Apple would want you to think.

Last year, I bought a Windows laptop with 64 GB RAM. Cost the same as a slightly-upgraded MacBook Air.

I love this video, informative, unbiased and just super useful. THANK YOU