• tahoe@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      To be fair I had an 8Gb M1 Mac mini for about a year and never even once felt like it was lacking memory. I could open as many things as I wanted and it didn’t slow down, so I can kinda see where they were going with this. Not saying it makes that situation much better though.

      I think the current base iPhones with 4Gb or 6Gb suffer way more from lack of memory than the 8Gb Macs, and people aren’t taking about this enough.

      • TheProtector0034@feddit.nl
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        2 months ago

        I have a old HP Elitebook with 8GB ram with Windows 10 and even on Windows I don’t notice slowdowns for daily tasks. Yes the machine swaps but because of the SSD you don’t notice much performance decrease. However, because it’s constant swapping the lifetime of the SSD will decrease and that’s exactly the problem of 8GB machines these days. Yes the machine stays fast (Windows or OSX it really does not matter) but there is extra load on the SSD.

        Don’t believe Apple marketing bullshit that 8GB is enough because of the “super duper advanced memory management” of OSX. If it really was enough then Apple would not release MacBooks with 16+ GB ram. The only reason that the 8GB MBP still exists is to sell more 16+ GB machines.

        • Billiam@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I have an old 8GB Toshiba laptop that I threw an SSD into and slapped Pop_OS! on for fun. There are plenty of lightweight Linux distros that can breathe life into older hardware if you want to tinker with them. If nothing else, my old Toshiba is good for just basic Internet usage.

      • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
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        2 months ago

        To be honest, I can still do most of my work on my old Core2Quad 4GB DDR2 PC, when using Linux.
        And as long as I setup my swap properly, I can also keep as many Firefox tabs open as I want , as I tend to forget tabs (running out of brain memory) before I run out of RAM.

        But I just like my 64GB RAM.

        • olympicyes@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Increasing swap on Linux is a great way to save money on cloud servers btw. One nice thing on Mac is that there is no swap file that you need to manage. System handles it transparently. Firefox (and really all modern browsers) require a ridiculous of RAM if you use them like you and I do.

          • ulterno@lemmy.kde.social
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            2 months ago

            My point being, “I can work on it”, can be used even on a space heater.
            Same for the IBM R52, which I no longer turn on, because a Pi would be better.

      • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        People are, just not PC spec heads that like to compare numbers. Practical use is the only real comparison.

        • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Actually the opposite is true for a basic spec. like RAM. People may not understand CPU/GPU naming conventions. BUT they understand something simple like 16>8.

          They also understand their “old slow” PC probably had 8gb and they want to UPGRADE so when they see this “new” mac with same amount of ram they immediately think slow whether it is or not…

        • olympicyes@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Some of the YouTubers comparing the new MacBook found that the 16GB Air smoked the 8GB version for creative tasks and rendering, but they found no difference between 16 GB and 24GB. Seems like Apple could up the RAM to 12 GB and see a big improvement.

      • scorpious@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        To be fair

        NO! No fair.

        I delivered a season of 4k animations for a network show using Motion, AE, C4D, Ps, AI…all using a base model M1 Mini (8/256), with zero problems.

        Of course more would be better, but unless you’ve actually used one, it’s hard to imagine how well it works. I tried mentioning this in another post, but it’s all Apple hate all the way down here

    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      UM on an SoC is not the same thing as RAM on a PC with a CPU and GPU. It’s purely a storage liaison, since data is passed directly from core to core.

      It’s not that it’s more efficient, it’s simply used less than in conventional PC architecture.

      MacOS is also designed specifically to leverage the hardware, so practical use is the only legitimate comparison to a PC.

      Maybe PC Gamer isn’t the most informed reviewer of technology outside of PCs.

      • Shadywack@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It’s not that it’s more efficient, it’s simply used less than in conventional PC architecture.

        It’s not that you’re wrong from a philosophical perspective with that, it’s that you’re factually incorrect. Memory addresses don’t suddenly shrink or expand depending on where they exist on the bus or the CPU. Being on the SoC doesn’t magically make RAM used less by the OS and applications, as the mach kernel, Darwin, and various MacOS layers still address the same amount of memory as they would on traditional PC architecture.

        Memory is memory, just like glass is glass, and glass will still scratch at a level 7 just like 8GB of RAM holds the same amount of information as…8GB of RAM.

        The article actually quantitatively tests this too by pointing out their memory usage with Chrome and different numbers of tabs open.

        Looks like you didn’t read the article.

        • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          You should familiarize yourself with the architecture before commenting. The GPU is broken into several cores of the SoC, along with the roles of the CPU. The UM is not part of the SoC. However, data is passed from what could be referred to as the CPU to what could be referred to as the GPU without interacting with UM.

          • Shadywack@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I’m actually deeply familiar with the architecture, and how caches, memory, and UM’s work. I understand all of that. None of that changes the storage available. Having high memory bandwidth to load/unload memory addresses doesn’t fix the issue of the environment easily exceeding 8GB. I also understand the caching principles and how you actually want RAM utilization to be higher for faster responsiveness. 8GB is still 8GB, and a joke.

              • Shadywack@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                A weeklong battery life, efficient cores, rapid response time, and great software environment make it a great choice…at 16GB for my needs. I will not recommend 8GB to any user at all going forward. It’s marketing malarkey with no future proofing, degrading the viable longevity of the machine.

                There’s no conversation to continue. Glass is glass, and 8GB is 8GB, as well as being a joke.

                • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  If it’s great for your needs, the base model isn’t for you. You can stream video with have 30 tabs open in Safari and only use 4.6GB of UM on an M1 Mac. I just verified for you.

      • orclev@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        What a load of nonsense. You’ve got no idea how a computer works. RAM isn’t just used for passing data between cores. If anything that’s more the role of cache although even that isn’t strictly accurate.

        Whether a system has a discrete GPU or not doesn’t really factor into the discussion one way or another, although even if it did having more RAM would be even more important without a discrete GPU because a portion of the system RAM gets utilized as VRAM.

      • RogueBanana@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        Guessing you haven’t rear the article. That quote is from apple not author, he is actually 100% against it throughout the article.

      • magiccupcake@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        This is a truly terrible article.

        Like why not test these things? This just sounds like ai generated garbage.

        That being said, 8gb is an abysmally low amount of ram in 2024. I had a mid range surface in 2014 that had that much ram. And the upcharge for more is quite ridiculous too.

        I know it’s pc ram but I bought 64gb of ddr4 3600mhz for like $130. How on earth is apple charging $200 for 8!!!

        • Shadywack@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Looks like you didn’t read the article either.

          Overall, I’m using 12.5GB of memory and the only application I have open is Chrome. Oh, and did I mention I’m typing this on a 16GB MacBook Air? I used to have an 8GB Apple silicon Air and to be frank it was a nightmare, constantly running out of memory just browsing the web.

          Earlier it’s mentioned that they have 15 tabs open. I don’t like a lot of things they do in “gaming journalism” but on this article they’re spot on. Apple is full of shit in saying 8GB is enough by today’s standards. 8GB is a fuckin joke, and you can’t add any RAM later.

          • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            That doesn’t make sense. I have the 8GB M2 and don’t have any issues with 20+ tabs, video calling, torrents, Luminar, Little Snitch, etc open right now.

            • Shadywack@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              15 tabs of Safari, which is demonstrably a better browser by some opinions due to its efficiency and available privacy configuration options. What if you prefer Chrome or Firefox?

              I will argue in Apple’s defense that their stack includes very effective libraries that intrinsically made applications on Mac OS better in many regards, but 8GB is still 8GB, and an SoC isn’t upgradeable. Competition has far cheaper 16GB options, and Apple is back to looking like complete assholes again.

            • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              That’s because PC people try to equate specs in dissimilar architecture with an OS that is not written explicitly to utilize that architecture. They haven’t read enough about it or experienced it in practice to have an informed opinion. We can get downvoted together on our “sub standard hardware” that works wonderfully. lol

              • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                The only memory-utilization-related advantage gained by sharing memory between the CPU and GPU is zero-copy operations between the CPU and GPU. The occasional texture upload and framebuffer access is nowhere near enough to make 8 GiB the functional equivalent of 16 GiB.

                If you want to see something “written explicitly to utilize [a unified memory] architecture,” look no further than the Nintendo Switch. The operating system and applications are designed specifically for the hardware, and even first-party titles are choked by the hardware’s memory capacity and bandwidth.

                • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  The Tegra is similar being an SoC, however it does not possess nearly as many dedicated independent processing cores designed around specialized processes.

                  The M1 has 10-core CPU with 8 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores, a 16-core GPU, a 16-core Neural Engine, and all with 200GB/s memory bandwidth.

                  • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    The M1-3 is still miles ahead of the Tegra, I don’t disagree. My point was that software designed specifically for a platform can’t make up for the platform’s shortcomings. The SOC itself is excellently designed to meet needs well into the future, but that 8 GiB of total system memory on the base model is unfortunately a shortcoming.

                    Apple’s use of memory compression stops it from being too noticeable, but it’s going to become a problem as application memory requirements grow (like with the Switch).

          • magiccupcake@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Oh no I read the article, I just don’t consider that testing.

            It’s not really apt to compare using ram on a browser on one computer and extract that to another, there’s a lot of complicated ram and cache management that happens in the background.

            Testing would involve getting a 8gb ram Mac computer and running common tasks to see if you can measure poorer performance, be it lag, stutters or frame drops.

            • Shadywack@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              You do have a point, but I think the intent of the article is to convey the common understanding that Apple is leaning on sales tactics to convince people of a thing that anyone with technical acumen sees through immediately. Regardless of how efficient Mach/Darwin is, it’s still apples to apples (pun intended) to understand how quickly 8GB fills up in 2024. For those who need a fully quantitative performance measurement between 8 and 16GB, with enough applications loaded to display the thrashing that starts happening, they’re not really the audience. THAT audience is busy reading about gardening tips, lifestyle, and celebrity gossip.