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this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
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My basic web dev Docker suite uses about 13GB just on its own, which - assuming you were on 16GB (double Apple’s minimum) - wouldn’t leave much for things like browser tabs, which also eat memory for breakfast.
A fast swap is not an argument to short-change on RAM, especially since SSDs have a shorter lifespan than RAM modules. 16GB remains the absolute bare minimum for modern computing, and Apple is making weak, ridiculous excuses to pocket just a few extra bucks per MacBook.
Skill issue
average webdev
Playing devils advocate here: As someone who deals with stuff like that, you also wouldn’t buy the base model mac. The average computer user can get by with 8GB just fine and it’s not like you can’t configure Macs with more than that.
That of course doesn’t justify the abhorrent price of the upgrades…
And here I am, putting 16gb in every machine I work on because it's so damn cheap there's no reason not to future proof
I mean, same. The difference in price for 8GB and 16GB is negligible, especially if you want dual channel on desktops
My girlfriends mum wanted to know why her laptop was slow... It was because HP thought that 4gb of ram is acceptable in 2022 (when the laptop was sold). Granted ram wasn't as cheap then as it is now... Still I paid £30 for a brand new 8gb DDR4 sodimm, there's not reason hp couldn't do that. It's annoying the corners these company cut.
My experience is, that 4GB is just about useable for a bit of web browsing and similar stuff. Even on windows 11. I have an old Surface Pro 4 laying around that, in a pinch, works perfectly fine with 11. Of course, it’s not fast. But it’s totally useable.
Her laptop just wasn't having it, windows 11, windows was using 3.7gb ram took about 30 seconds for task manager to open. As soon as I upgraded the ram is was usable.
I checked for any surprising background services or anti virus software and there was nothing really
That sounds more like issues Windows would have running on an HDD (or maybe eMMC) instead of an SSD… Bit that wouldn’t explain why it got better, when you upgraded the RAM…
It's not worth trying to understand windows ram usage, it will drive any same person insane. The laptop uses intel optane as it's main drive, which is slower than an SSD but much much lower latency so should actually be perfect for the job of being swap. But it shit the bed.
For apple, that difference is $200.. not negligible I'd say
Oh yea, absolutely. I meant that in regards to the price of memory itself, be it as modules for your desktop PC or the chips itself for soldered solutions. Apple’s markup is bonkers
That's because apple is a greedy grabby company who wants all your money. The easiest solution is to stop buying their products
I just slap in 32GB on every computer I build because the MoBos can take 128GB and anything less feels cheap and silly.
Hard disagree. The average computer user is idling at 5gb already because the average computer user is stupid.
Still leaves 3gb for the web browser and the average user isn’t using anything else anyways. And even on chrome that’s quite a few pages.
No they can’t. I ran 8gb of ram for years and it turns out that that’s why my computer sucked
Maybe you’re not an average user then. Most people just browse the web and maybe manage some photos or fill out a document once in a while. You could do that on 4GB if you wanted to, let alone 8.
I wouldn't say 4gb is usable for the average consumer. Using the assumption they're using windows 11 that'll eat 3.7 ish GB of ram just idling.
You forget there though, that a lot of the RAM, that Windows (and most modern operating systems) uses, while idling, is a cache of programs you’re likely to open and that gets cleared, if you open something else. That has been a thing since Vista and was btw one of the reasons why Vista was criticized for high memory useage. Windows 11 is very useable with 4GB of RAM, if you’re not planning to do something bigger than browsing the web or editing a word document.
I'm not forgetting that, but it won't just clear that ram it will want to put it into swap, and depending on your storage speed that can slow tasks down. Making it quite stuttery.
I mean, a (good) SSD is worth quite a lot, even on very old systems. I have an old 2008 MacBook laying around. It’s certainly not fast but with an SSD it’s totally useable, even on current macOS versions.
Oh for sure, I remember buying my first SSD and booting windows in under 10 seconds and being like whaaaat.
I am starting to think maybe I am a ram hog.
How? I have 108 tabs open and still use 2.67GB of RAM.
Tabs of what? Chromes ram usage is more of a meme than an actual ram issue, windows will only allow an application to use so much ram depending on ram availability
108 tabs in chromium. Mentioned RAM usage is total RAM usage including all system and kernel, but excluding page cache. Forgot to mention libreoffice in background.
The people need to know how you use 13GB of ram worth of containers for web dev.
Docker is awesome for a lot of things. But it's not particularly good for RAM.
PS5 has 16GB and it’s a toy.
Wow! 13GB! I did some heavy stuff on my computer with like a shit ton of Docker servers running together + deployment and I never reached 13GB!
Without disclosing private company information lol what are you doing ;)
not OP, but I have to run fronted and backend of a project in docker simultaneously (multiple postgres and redis dbs, queues, search index, etc., plus two webservers), plus a few browser tabs and two VSCode instances open, regularly pushes my machine over 15gb ram usage
pretty much like this
That is basically my use-case. You add a DB service (or two), DNS, reverse proxy, Redis, Memcached, etc... maybe some containers for additional proprietary backend services like APIs, and then the application themselves that need those things to run... it adds up FAST. The advantage is that you can have multiple projects all running simultaneously and you can add/remove/swap them pretty easily.
RAM is cheap. There is no excuse for shipping a 8GB computer... even if it's mostly going to be used for family photos and internet.
Running a suite of services in containers (DBs, DNS, reverse proxy, memcached, redis, elasticsearch, shared services, etc) plus a number of discreet applications that use all those things. My day-to-day usage hovers around 20GB with spikes to 32 (my max allocation) when I run parallelized test suites.
Dockers memory usage really adds up fast.
What do you bist that takes that much memory?
Have you seen the difference between the 8 and 16Gb Macbooks, it is ridiculously expensive.
Nah its about £13 retail.
Oh wait, you mean from apple... Its £200 from them.
Yes, my bad, I wanted to say the difference in price between the 8 and 16Gb model, I know that RAM became dirt cheap nowadays and there aren't any excuses for Apple to continue offering 8Gb model, as this is exactly a planned obsolescence.
Yeah I was just pointing out the insanity of their pricing, using sarcasm. Its the main way we communicate over here.
The price difference between the first 2 models where 8gb ram is the only change, is £200. Post 2025 I'm going to need some solution to replace my windows install which solely runs CAD/CAM software. If it wasn't for this scumbaggery I'd buy a Mac to replace win10, but at present apple are such a shower of cunts I think I may have to put up with win11.
What a fucking choice...
You know there's a third way...
I already run Linux for everything else. Its not an option for my CAD work unfortunately