I have found 8GB RAM to be completely unusable on Windows and Linux these days. Once you've got Chrome open with half a dozen tabs and any even slightly memory hungry program (VS Code or Android Studio etc.) you're out of luck. Actually I had to have my last work laptop replaced because 8GB wasn't enough for Chrome and a Teams video call! If I tried to screen share a browser tab of Jira everything would start paging.
I have zero recent experience with MacOS or the M1,2,3 ARM hardware but I doubt even the very fast RAM is going to make that much difference to the above.
I have been a minimum-16GB-of-RAM guy since 2012 or so, but I got a great deal last year on a base model M1 Air that I mostly just use for web/email while traveling, and as a thin client back to my Linux desktop with 64GB of RAM. I've found it surprisingly adequate, even as someone who is not so good about closing browser tabs.
I can certainly get it to start swapping easily enough, so I don't necessarily agree with all of the people I've seen claiming that these machines are revolutionary and 8GB is the new 16GB, but it does seem to manage better than I would have expected.
Apple's pricing on memory and disk upgrades really aggravates me, though, and was a significant factor in deciding to switch to Linux for my primary computer.
RAM usage even vs Intel Mac was completely different - I did push my M1 Air a while back and it complained about running out of memory but that was once in the past 1.5 years after I'd skipped rebooting for 4/5 weeks. On my Intel with 16GB this happened more often.
For my kids and parents, the M1 Air has been flawless (even for me - it's my travel Mac). But if you know you're a heavy user definitely get more RAM.
8GB of RAM is extremely usable on macOS - until last year I was using that for VSC, Podman, etc. and the only time I noticed it was running x86 Java containers in emulation. Beyond the much leaner base OS, they have hardware memory page compression which seems to make a huge difference. My corporate Dell with 16GB feels slower in every way even running the same apps (Teams, Edge, etc.).
> I have found 8GB RAM to be completely unusable on Windows and Linux these days. Once you've got Chrome open with half a dozen tabs and any even slightly memory hungry program (VS Code or Android Studio etc.) you're out of luck.
Honestly, even 16GB isn't enough if you keep a modest (say, O(100)) number of tabs open. I regularly find my MBP slowed down due to "memory pressure" (swapping) at that point, with closing/restarting the browser to be an instantaneous fix.
I’m writing this from an x230 with Windows and 8GB of RAM. It’s a pretty old machine I’m using for FreeCAD, 3D printer slicers, and simple admin stuff, and it’s pretty usable?
I have zero recent experience with MacOS or the M1,2,3 ARM hardware but I doubt even the very fast RAM is going to make that much difference to the above.