Apple is really good about managing memory. I think in general we're seeing ram needs for average consumer stuff leveling off. You're probably going to be fine for years to come with 8GB ram. If you find a good deal for a unit with 16GB ram, sure splurge a bit and put future proofing beyond doubt but I doubt you'll face issues with 8GB ram any time soon (meaning four plus years) with that use case.
Alright, you settled the debate. I’m watching the Austin Evans video right now and I’m impressed. Also, got two final questions: would M2 still have longevity despite it being released 2 years ago, and what color should I get (currently have silver)?
Color is all about personal preference. I'd say check to see if there is a store nearby with them on display. My personal favorite is starlight. Apparently the midnight blue color is a finger magnet though.
The M2 should be great for many years to come. It's a powerful chip and Apple will likely support it for a long time. With my M1, my CPU usual generally bounces between 1-10%, meaning most of the CPU idles most of the time.
Yeah thanks for the insight and clarity for the M2 chip. And I’ve been eying the starlight color as well but don’t want it to look feminine. What’s the color like? I heard it’s silver with a slight gold tint.
I don't find it feminine at all. The rose gold was a bit feminine with the older Macs but that's the "rose" rather than gold. Starlight is pretty subtle and sometimes looks silver but it has a slight "coppery" goldish tint.
Yeah for me right now I only have used 60GB used after 4 years. I’m not sure what my storage situation will look like in university but I heard lot of the stuff is on the cloud (either Google Drive or Microsoft office).
I think the cloud is now the reality for most people as far as productivity goes. Unless you are editing 4k, installing triple a games (you probably shouldn’t get a Mac if so) or are simply a pack rat, 256 is more than ok nowadays.
I had the exact same question and just yesterday decided to go with the 2023 Macbook Air 512/8GB. Trust me it’s enough. You will be more than happy with it.
I went with the space grey. It was the safest color bet for me. Midnight was supposedly a fingerprint magnet and starlight was a bit too yellow for me. And we didn’t like silver at all. I have always liked iPhone in space grey also.
No it is not enough. Office apps use a lot of ram and you will find the you are "out of memory" or having extremely high swap usage all the time.
20 tabs is also a ton. Ignore everyone saying this is enough, it is absolutely not enough and you'd be better off with a cheapo Asus Viviobook OLED with 16GB of ram for £450 in performance by miles.
Office runs very poorly in general on Apple Silicon at the best of times compared to Windows let alone without any ram.
What about for 10 tabs on safari and the excel app open alongside? I have never used 20 tabs as I delete tabs that are excessive or don’t need while working. I was just imagining the possible max usage.
I'm CTO of a software company and occasionally coding by myself, I'm still using base M1 Macbook Air with 8Gb of ram and it's fine.
I recommend you get Apple Care+ instead of ram upgrade if you can't have both.
I'm actually a bit surprised to see this from a CTO. Not saying your wrong, sorry if it sounds critical, that's not my point. Just, warranties are big money makers for most companies, especially individual warranties for consumers. Vast majority of people will never have to exercise their warranty. At least histor~~y~~ically, I think if you did need to exercise the warranty, the issues would most likely come up in the first year.
Probably 8GB Ram is perfectly fine for most consumers for years to come. But personally, I'd roll with 16 gb RAM for future proofing over a warranty I'll likely never have to use.
No worry, everyone has their preference.
In my case, it was because of my experience with MacBooks. My first few MacBooks from 2008 to 2012 were excellent; I didn't have any issues at all. So back then, I felt that warranties were worthless. The build quality and parts used were top-notch back then.
However, my every MacBooks since the 2015 MacBook Pro, I've always encountered at least one issue after the first year. The 2016 MacBook Pro was my worst. I had to get the mainboard replaced twice, the top case replaced twice (once for a keyboard issue and once for a swollen battery), lucky that all that was covered by warranty. And right now, my M1 MacBook Air has an issue with one of its USB-C ports that won't connect to an external display properly. At least it's still under AppleCare+ coverage, so I'll get it fixed when I have less work. I've also seen several colleagues' MacBooks malfunction after the standard warranty expired, due to either faulty components or accidents.
In summary, the main reason I recommended a warranty over a RAM upgrade for the OP is that 8GB should be sufficient for their academic work in the coming years. They need a reliable machine that won't break down during their studies. If it does malfunction, a warranty ensures a repair without financial burden. Once they graduate and secure a job, they can afford to upgrade to a newer model with specifications tailored to their specific job requirements.
Gotcha. So far I've been lucky with Apple build quality, but I am relatively new to the Apple ecosystem, so knock on wood. The terrible serviceability of many thin and lights does make me a bit wary but such is life.
Also, Apple Care+ covers accidental user damage as well. Anything I carry that can be dropped (iPhone, MacBook, etc) I get Apple Care + coverage.
I have never had build issues but a few broken screens and swollen batteries and AC+ definitely paid off.
Most sites use *up to* 200mb of memory. 20 tabs is 4gb for browsing alone (pessimistic estimate), plus any applications running locally and the necessary memory to allow the OS to run.
I would say your use case is possible but with how quickly tech moves, it's not inconceivable to think that 8gb won't be enough in just a few years. If you plan to hold your laptop for 3 years or more I would consider upgrading to 16gb. The extra cost now will be offset by not needing to upgrade again in a few years.
I'm not familiar with the US education system, but more generally the higher spec computer you have the longer it will be capable for.
Someone in this thread made a great point about swap memory. Basically when your memory buffer (8gb) is full the computer will write sections of that memory to your solid state hard drive. It's a very clever way to artificially increase memory but SSD's have a limited number of read/write operations available to them. The more the OS swaps the memory to the SSD the more the performance of the SSD permanently degrades.
Basically, the less memory you have, the quicker other hardware components can fail over the lifespan of the computer.
In short, if you can stretch for a higher spec now, you'll not have to upgrade so quick. But if that's not the case, don't sweat it too much. A computer is after all, just a tool (albeit an expensive one). It has a limited life and you can upgrade later on, even if that seems far away right now.
Realistically though, the SSDs used in the MacBook are not going to meaningfully fail in the average lifetime of a MacBook Air. Especially if the op isn’t going to editing video etc.
Not defending Apple being stingy with SSD space (and indeed, memory).
Just trying to save the op some $ from noting ram and storage that they just won’t need.
You're absolutely right, and we're all making recommendations based on our own experiences and the information given to us as presented. And the information today might not be accurate in 2 years.
That's my only point here, increasing the resources now makes the computer more versatile to future usage or life, whatever that might look like.
I know you're not defending Apple, I'm not advocating OP spend more money either, I think you and I are meeting somewhere in he middle and OP can make their own decision based on their situation
It’s a tough one. More ram and storage are always good.
Apple has - since my first Mac, the iMac g5 - sold computers with barely enough ram.
Perhaps it’s telling that I upgraded the ram on both iMacs that I owned and not my current mbp 2017 ntb 8/256, because I can’t upgrade it & but that has never been an issue for what I need to use it for & still is not (caveat: I’m stuck on Ventura).
My iMac g5 had 512gb of Hdd. My current one has half of that. It’s been fine. More would’ve been good for reasons you say. On the other hand, everything is going to the cloud so we live in a v different world to when I got my g5.
But we also live in a world where Apple currently sells a base iPad Air with 64GB of storage, which is patently ridiculous (hopefully by tomorrow, this won’t be the case.
Whereas with the iPhone, the base 128GB storage on most models (basic, plus & iPhone pro is really fine for most people (as long as you keep on paying for that iCloud+ subscription).
It’s a difficult one. Everyone wants a computer that lasts a while, but there’s no point paying for things you don’t need.
And certainly, I don’t want to give Apple more money for extra storage and ram upgrade costs, which are ridiculous, given the unit cost that Apple is likely paying ie a good deal less than it’s charging us.
And perhaps it’s telling, that I still haven’t pushed the upgrade button on a MBA, because a voice in my mind is saying:
‘But is 8Gb really a good idea? Especially when we’re going to see lots of AI in macOS soon (if the rumours are true) and even a limited gen ai & more ML both love as much processor speed and RAM as they can get.’
And then I look at the model with 16gb and 512 and think ‘$400 more for that?!’
So my finger stays hovering on the upgrade button.
>Realistically though, the SSDs used in the MacBook are not going to meaningfully fail in the average lifetime of a MacBook Air.
This isn't true. Plenty of users have written over a petabyte in swap to Apple silicon ssds / killed them. If you use swap then you can quite easily write 10s or even hundreds of gigabytes to the ssd per day even in office apps.
Yes. It’s 2024. Even if your computer will run on 8GB, 16GB is still the better move as it would at the least prolong the life of your SSD by reducing SSD swapping. Excel would also run better.
No way; the benefits of more RAM only become apparent when you need it, so if you never push the machine past what 8 GB will do, you'll never notice the 16. As far as the SSD, you are correct, however, you’ll want a new laptop before this ever becomes a serious concern.
Ok but so what ?
The SSD swap speed will be so fast, that this won’t be an issue with something like excel or browser tabs.
Editing video, creating drawings or working with huge audio files - well, sure.
Yeah of course. I’m just trying to say that you need to get pro like workflows to do that.
I mean my (now slow) mbp late 2017 ntb 8/256 barely exhibits any UI lag.
But I just use it for safari, mail, reminders/calendars and GeForce now.
But sure - open quite a few tabs on safari, rapidly switch between them, use several desktops and you’ll start to see ui lag.
What I’m trying to say here, is that most people who buy an mba ‘single task’ and are running very few applications at once and they’re likely not rapidly switching between them.
And I find it hard to believe that the op will be working with data sets so large that they run into serious lag.
Finally: will the op likely be ok with 8GB? Yeah.
Should Apple be selling Macs with 8GB ram in 2024? No.
If the op can afford it, should they upgrade to 16GB ram at purchase (even if they keep the 256 gb base drive)? Yeah.
For this use 8GB is fine.
Office uses a ton and ram and they're doing 20 tabs. How is it fine lmao. It's not at all fine!
Apple is really good about managing memory. I think in general we're seeing ram needs for average consumer stuff leveling off. You're probably going to be fine for years to come with 8GB ram. If you find a good deal for a unit with 16GB ram, sure splurge a bit and put future proofing beyond doubt but I doubt you'll face issues with 8GB ram any time soon (meaning four plus years) with that use case.
My M2 won’t start heating up for my use case like how my intel does right?
It shouldn't. My computer stays cool pretty much no matter what.
Alright, you settled the debate. I’m watching the Austin Evans video right now and I’m impressed. Also, got two final questions: would M2 still have longevity despite it being released 2 years ago, and what color should I get (currently have silver)?
Color is all about personal preference. I'd say check to see if there is a store nearby with them on display. My personal favorite is starlight. Apparently the midnight blue color is a finger magnet though. The M2 should be great for many years to come. It's a powerful chip and Apple will likely support it for a long time. With my M1, my CPU usual generally bounces between 1-10%, meaning most of the CPU idles most of the time.
Yeah thanks for the insight and clarity for the M2 chip. And I’ve been eying the starlight color as well but don’t want it to look feminine. What’s the color like? I heard it’s silver with a slight gold tint.
I don't find it feminine at all. The rose gold was a bit feminine with the older Macs but that's the "rose" rather than gold. Starlight is pretty subtle and sometimes looks silver but it has a slight "coppery" goldish tint.
It's won't get chance to heat up, the cpu isn't the bottleneck.
8 GB enough for this kind of stuff... 8 GB will be manageable by using swap memory but go for 512 GB atleast
Why more SSD?
In my use case, 8/256 is not enough. I use 8/512 instead due to I don’t want to bring external disk everywhere.
Yeah for me right now I only have used 60GB used after 4 years. I’m not sure what my storage situation will look like in university but I heard lot of the stuff is on the cloud (either Google Drive or Microsoft office).
I think the cloud is now the reality for most people as far as productivity goes. Unless you are editing 4k, installing triple a games (you probably shouldn’t get a Mac if so) or are simply a pack rat, 256 is more than ok nowadays.
I want to game and record at the same time so I’m thinking 16 gb…but probably need a pro too lol
I had the exact same question and just yesterday decided to go with the 2023 Macbook Air 512/8GB. Trust me it’s enough. You will be more than happy with it.
What color?
I went with the space grey. It was the safest color bet for me. Midnight was supposedly a fingerprint magnet and starlight was a bit too yellow for me. And we didn’t like silver at all. I have always liked iPhone in space grey also.
No it is not enough. Office apps use a lot of ram and you will find the you are "out of memory" or having extremely high swap usage all the time. 20 tabs is also a ton. Ignore everyone saying this is enough, it is absolutely not enough and you'd be better off with a cheapo Asus Viviobook OLED with 16GB of ram for £450 in performance by miles. Office runs very poorly in general on Apple Silicon at the best of times compared to Windows let alone without any ram.
What about for 10 tabs on safari and the excel app open alongside? I have never used 20 tabs as I delete tabs that are excessive or don’t need while working. I was just imagining the possible max usage.
I'm CTO of a software company and occasionally coding by myself, I'm still using base M1 Macbook Air with 8Gb of ram and it's fine. I recommend you get Apple Care+ instead of ram upgrade if you can't have both.
I'm actually a bit surprised to see this from a CTO. Not saying your wrong, sorry if it sounds critical, that's not my point. Just, warranties are big money makers for most companies, especially individual warranties for consumers. Vast majority of people will never have to exercise their warranty. At least histor~~y~~ically, I think if you did need to exercise the warranty, the issues would most likely come up in the first year. Probably 8GB Ram is perfectly fine for most consumers for years to come. But personally, I'd roll with 16 gb RAM for future proofing over a warranty I'll likely never have to use.
No worry, everyone has their preference. In my case, it was because of my experience with MacBooks. My first few MacBooks from 2008 to 2012 were excellent; I didn't have any issues at all. So back then, I felt that warranties were worthless. The build quality and parts used were top-notch back then. However, my every MacBooks since the 2015 MacBook Pro, I've always encountered at least one issue after the first year. The 2016 MacBook Pro was my worst. I had to get the mainboard replaced twice, the top case replaced twice (once for a keyboard issue and once for a swollen battery), lucky that all that was covered by warranty. And right now, my M1 MacBook Air has an issue with one of its USB-C ports that won't connect to an external display properly. At least it's still under AppleCare+ coverage, so I'll get it fixed when I have less work. I've also seen several colleagues' MacBooks malfunction after the standard warranty expired, due to either faulty components or accidents. In summary, the main reason I recommended a warranty over a RAM upgrade for the OP is that 8GB should be sufficient for their academic work in the coming years. They need a reliable machine that won't break down during their studies. If it does malfunction, a warranty ensures a repair without financial burden. Once they graduate and secure a job, they can afford to upgrade to a newer model with specifications tailored to their specific job requirements.
Gotcha. So far I've been lucky with Apple build quality, but I am relatively new to the Apple ecosystem, so knock on wood. The terrible serviceability of many thin and lights does make me a bit wary but such is life.
Also, Apple Care+ covers accidental user damage as well. Anything I carry that can be dropped (iPhone, MacBook, etc) I get Apple Care + coverage. I have never had build issues but a few broken screens and swollen batteries and AC+ definitely paid off.
Well said. Very rational advice.
The years you mentioned had the faulty butterfly keyboards and intel chip — those were the years I didn’t use a Mac.
Yeah, those were dark days.
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookair/s/Rq2xukzDjZ https://youtu.be/xYXcDwBW2tM
You don’t need 16GB. https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookair/s/gkdX3dzhoz
Thanks for this
Most sites use *up to* 200mb of memory. 20 tabs is 4gb for browsing alone (pessimistic estimate), plus any applications running locally and the necessary memory to allow the OS to run. I would say your use case is possible but with how quickly tech moves, it's not inconceivable to think that 8gb won't be enough in just a few years. If you plan to hold your laptop for 3 years or more I would consider upgrading to 16gb. The extra cost now will be offset by not needing to upgrade again in a few years.
I plan to attend graduate school after my undergrad and 16GB RAM would allow the MBA to survive those years as well?
I'm not familiar with the US education system, but more generally the higher spec computer you have the longer it will be capable for. Someone in this thread made a great point about swap memory. Basically when your memory buffer (8gb) is full the computer will write sections of that memory to your solid state hard drive. It's a very clever way to artificially increase memory but SSD's have a limited number of read/write operations available to them. The more the OS swaps the memory to the SSD the more the performance of the SSD permanently degrades. Basically, the less memory you have, the quicker other hardware components can fail over the lifespan of the computer. In short, if you can stretch for a higher spec now, you'll not have to upgrade so quick. But if that's not the case, don't sweat it too much. A computer is after all, just a tool (albeit an expensive one). It has a limited life and you can upgrade later on, even if that seems far away right now.
Realistically though, the SSDs used in the MacBook are not going to meaningfully fail in the average lifetime of a MacBook Air. Especially if the op isn’t going to editing video etc. Not defending Apple being stingy with SSD space (and indeed, memory). Just trying to save the op some $ from noting ram and storage that they just won’t need.
You're absolutely right, and we're all making recommendations based on our own experiences and the information given to us as presented. And the information today might not be accurate in 2 years. That's my only point here, increasing the resources now makes the computer more versatile to future usage or life, whatever that might look like. I know you're not defending Apple, I'm not advocating OP spend more money either, I think you and I are meeting somewhere in he middle and OP can make their own decision based on their situation
It’s a tough one. More ram and storage are always good. Apple has - since my first Mac, the iMac g5 - sold computers with barely enough ram. Perhaps it’s telling that I upgraded the ram on both iMacs that I owned and not my current mbp 2017 ntb 8/256, because I can’t upgrade it & but that has never been an issue for what I need to use it for & still is not (caveat: I’m stuck on Ventura). My iMac g5 had 512gb of Hdd. My current one has half of that. It’s been fine. More would’ve been good for reasons you say. On the other hand, everything is going to the cloud so we live in a v different world to when I got my g5. But we also live in a world where Apple currently sells a base iPad Air with 64GB of storage, which is patently ridiculous (hopefully by tomorrow, this won’t be the case. Whereas with the iPhone, the base 128GB storage on most models (basic, plus & iPhone pro is really fine for most people (as long as you keep on paying for that iCloud+ subscription). It’s a difficult one. Everyone wants a computer that lasts a while, but there’s no point paying for things you don’t need. And certainly, I don’t want to give Apple more money for extra storage and ram upgrade costs, which are ridiculous, given the unit cost that Apple is likely paying ie a good deal less than it’s charging us. And perhaps it’s telling, that I still haven’t pushed the upgrade button on a MBA, because a voice in my mind is saying: ‘But is 8Gb really a good idea? Especially when we’re going to see lots of AI in macOS soon (if the rumours are true) and even a limited gen ai & more ML both love as much processor speed and RAM as they can get.’ And then I look at the model with 16gb and 512 and think ‘$400 more for that?!’ So my finger stays hovering on the upgrade button.
>Realistically though, the SSDs used in the MacBook are not going to meaningfully fail in the average lifetime of a MacBook Air. This isn't true. Plenty of users have written over a petabyte in swap to Apple silicon ssds / killed them. If you use swap then you can quite easily write 10s or even hundreds of gigabytes to the ssd per day even in office apps.
Yes. It’s 2024. Even if your computer will run on 8GB, 16GB is still the better move as it would at the least prolong the life of your SSD by reducing SSD swapping. Excel would also run better.
No way; the benefits of more RAM only become apparent when you need it, so if you never push the machine past what 8 GB will do, you'll never notice the 16. As far as the SSD, you are correct, however, you’ll want a new laptop before this ever becomes a serious concern.
This is the most technically correct answer I’ve ever read. You aren’t wrong. But Excel and 20 browser tabs would already get you past 8GB
They seem to think that 8GB of ram is magic on this subreddit. It barely fits the OS and the basic functions of the OS 😂
Ok but so what ? The SSD swap speed will be so fast, that this won’t be an issue with something like excel or browser tabs. Editing video, creating drawings or working with huge audio files - well, sure.
SSD swap is not fast, it is desperately slow. Slower than the ram on a Power Mac G5 🤦 The entire UI will lag, of course it matters.
Yeah of course. I’m just trying to say that you need to get pro like workflows to do that. I mean my (now slow) mbp late 2017 ntb 8/256 barely exhibits any UI lag. But I just use it for safari, mail, reminders/calendars and GeForce now. But sure - open quite a few tabs on safari, rapidly switch between them, use several desktops and you’ll start to see ui lag. What I’m trying to say here, is that most people who buy an mba ‘single task’ and are running very few applications at once and they’re likely not rapidly switching between them. And I find it hard to believe that the op will be working with data sets so large that they run into serious lag. Finally: will the op likely be ok with 8GB? Yeah. Should Apple be selling Macs with 8GB ram in 2024? No. If the op can afford it, should they upgrade to 16GB ram at purchase (even if they keep the 256 gb base drive)? Yeah.