OneDrive and MS Teams are just pieces of shit software and a waste of code. Answer (1 of 11): Many people are looking at this question with older computers in mind. There Is no longer RAM soldered onto the motherboard. The architecture of the Apple M1 chip changes the way memory is used in a Mac. Choose wisely because the memory in this iMac is not upgradable. Will add more to this when I get some more time. 8GB vs 16GB - longevity and good for multi tasking. Use the additional cash for a good 4K monitor and apple care.
Both run under rosetta, the issue isn’t rosetta just those apps, in example AutoCAD also under rosetta don’t hog enormous amounts of ram.Ĩ gb is enough for most, but you have to look at your use case. You can choose from seven available colors, either a 7 or 8 core GPU, and either 8GB or 16GB of memory. Upgrade the Ram and HDD for longevity and better multi tasking usage. The second worst app is MS Teams that usually use around 2 GB. The worst apps I run memory wise are OneDrive, that hog 2-3 GB unless I get the memory leak bug where it baloons in RAM (caught it once using 30 GB ram+swap). MacOS memory pressure metric is better and I usually sit at 15-20%.īut my system usually ”use” about 10 GB of my ram. Thanks to the UMA, the 8GB MacBook Air performs as well as (if not better than) an Intel MacBook Air with 16GB of memory, and it should be more than enough. My bigger memory just makes MacOS grab more RAM because it can so looking on used numbers isn’t really that telling. I personally got a 16 GB M1 Mini but would probably do just fine with 8 GB. The SSD write issue is (according to me) a storm in a water glass and not a problem for the general user.
Also the swapping is stupidly efficient so in most cases you really don’t notice that the machine is swapping. The lower-end MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini models feature 8GB RAM, which is non-user-upgradable, however, you can configure them with 16GB RAM for an additional 200. But it all depends on what you do on your machine.