this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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Technology
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8GB is not enough RAM. however, Apple memory management feels kinda magic? my base m2 air is fast enough even when swapping. i like to have a lot of apps open at once and i don't close them until I've finished a project so it's not enough memory for me. for the average person id argue it's fine... and i bet apple is going to do a base spec upgrade anyways in a year or two and make a ton of money because of it :p
Pretty sure it uses memory compression, Linux equivalent would be zram. Due to the speed and compression ratio of modern compression algorithms like zstd you can usually get double your RAM capacity in fast low latency on-memory swap. Not sure what macOS uses specifically but the compute is easily there.
8gb I more than enough ram for most things that are not called gaming or video editing, the cast vast majority of people will be fine with 8gb and hopefully with the RAMpolcalypse in full effect we can start seeing some better software optimizations.
I run a dinky little self hosted server in my basement, and when I spin up a VM to test something or just play around with a new distro I never give the VM more than 4-8gb of ram
This isn't a power user device, this is an iPad with a keyboard and trackpad instead of touch. This is your boomer parents next computer not your next computer
Thinking 8gb of ram is not enough is your windows-brain talking bro, break the m$ conditioning!
It might be enough today, but a MacBook is expected to last a decade. These might have a few good years at best
Swapping is a nice way to burn that soldered on SSD fast!