Hacker News Reader

Comment by zeptonix | Hacker News Reader

Anyone think you'll actually be able to do anything on a Mac with only 8gb of RAM? I had a Macbook Pro before with 16gb of RAM and it was constantly running out of RAM and showing me the Force Quit Applications dialog. Constantly...

View on HN

I am using a M1 Mac Mini 8GB as a home server/desktop, and it works just fine. It can run games and a Minecraft server in the background while serving video and home automation, and I've never had anything force quit because of it. I agree with the people who are saying 8GB should be kept as a target spec for the low end. It's really only bloated software that has made it necessary to get so much RAM, and now that prices have gone up, if Apple forces developers to do more with less for a segment of their market, I'm all for it.

I'm typing this on a 2012 MBP with 8Gb of RAM. That seemed like plenty when I bought it, and I did dev work in Xcode on the thing. Granted, it can only run Catalina, but it still gets the job done for what I use it for now. "Now" being web browser and running the Numbers/Pages/Keynote apps, which is about what anyone buying the Neo is going to do with it.

After 14 years of service, though, he'll get to retire soon, probably taking it easy running some version of Linux in his old age. Just as soon as that new M5 MBP (with 32Gb this time) shows up tomorrow.

There are millions of people using 8GB or RAM with MacOS without issue right now. I would bet 80% of all MacBooks in use right now have 16GB or less of RAM.

Wondering how it decided to show the force exit program dialog. I used to use 8g macbook for development. But instead warning on serious memory exhaustion, it just decided to lag and suicide with everything freezed (including the restart button).

People run million dollar businesses out of 8GB MacBooks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com