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I typically don't upgrade my MacBook Pro until I can buy a machine with at least twice the RAM. (I rarely find the CPU to be the primary limitation of any machine I use.) When Apple released a MacBook Pro with 64 GB I was interested in getting it, but it would have totaled close to $4000, so I held off and kept using my 16 GB MBP from 2015. Now my current machine is having issues that I've been unable to resolve, so I'm in a hurry to replace it. However if I want to buy anything with the new "Apple Silicon" M1 chip, it will max out at 16 GB, and anything more will require buying a legacy CPU, which seems ridiculous at this point.

Is there some reason that the newer machines can do more with the same amount of RAM? Are they somehow more efficient with memory? Or is this simply part of rolling out low-end machines first, with no particular technical justification?

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  • It's more that less RAM is offered in the 1st generation M1 chip macs, not that intel macs need more RAM. The operating system that the machines come with runs fine on the minimum amount of RAM offered for that line of machines, the use case of additional RAM is based on customer requirements.
    – Scottmeup
    Commented Jan 5, 2021 at 10:11
  • yes, but of course we all run more than just the OS. With Docker containers, VMs, multiple browsers with many tabs open in each window with bloated web sites & apps, video conferencing apps, text editors based on Electron with bazillions of plugins, etc. 16 GB can be exhausted in a hurry.
    – iconoclast
    Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 3:17
  • Of course we do. For decades now operating systems have used paging. Combined with high secondary storage speed it's possible to have far more than 16GB of memory usage on a machine with 16GB of RAM with negligible performance issues. What you won't be able to do is load more than 16GB of a file into RAM at once. The requirement to have >16GB of a single file open at once isn't the typical use case that I've seen for portable mac users.
    – Scottmeup
    Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 10:32
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    yes, but paging is much slower than having more RAM, so my everyday use case demands as much RAM as I can get.
    – iconoclast
    Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 18:02
  • That could well be the case. For anyone who isn't paging massive amounts of data in & out frequently the difference should be fairly negligible. If you're use case is something like manipulating a 32GB dataset this effect could well be noticeable, but then I wouldn't recommend using a portable mac if performance is a priority.
    – Scottmeup
    Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 18:17

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The 'technical justification' is that the RAM in the Apple Silicon chips is part of the chip itself, it is not a separate entity like all other processors before.

Presumably, they'll perfect how to enlarge this with successive generations.

The broad strokes of how they do this are on the announcement page - https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/

You could probably consider this first generation to be a more than adequate 'proof of concept'.

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  • By the last sentence, do you mean to suggest that you don't feel the first generation is fully baked, and that it's not a good idea to buy now?
    – iconoclast
    Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 3:14
  • i couldn't make that call. If you need more RAM, wait until they make one with more RAM.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 7:27
  • Is there any reason to believe that paging with the new Apple Silicon will be much faster than with previous Macs?
    – iconoclast
    Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 18:03
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    Sure there is. Shorter journey = quicker. That they're down to a 5nm process isn't going to hurt either. Wait for it to mature & it's going to be blindingly fast.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 6, 2021 at 18:11
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You will be fine with 16 GB of ram. It will not feel like your old machine. Take this for example: The best selling Android has 12 GB of ram The iPhone 12 Pro has just 6GB of ram The iPhone is MUCH faster and has better performance. Okay back to your question: because of the tighter integration between your Mac, M1, and the manufacturing, you should be fine with 16 GB.

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