During last week’s product announcements, Apple quietly increased the base memory in the MacBook Air to 16 GB, up from 8 GB, all without increasing prices. This applies to the M2 and M3 13-inch MacBook Air and the M3 15-inch MacBook Air. The M1 MacBook Air for sale exclusively through Walmart remains at 8 GB (see “Walmart Sells M1 MacBook Air for $699,” 15 March 2024).
Some have speculated that the increase is meant to ensure the optimal performance of Apple Intelligence, but it’s hard to evaluate that speculation. I’ve been testing Apple Intelligence on an M1 MacBook Air with 16 GB of memory, and some features like Clean Up in Photos aren’t always as responsive as would be ideal. I can’t compare against Apple silicon Macs with more or less memory—or faster chips—but I hope we’ll see some Apple Intelligence benchmarks that reveal the importance of memory and processor power. Future Apple Intelligence features like Image Playground may also be more resource-intensive than those available today.
We’ve long recommended 16 GB as a worthwhile baseline upgrade for the MacBook Air, which raises another question. Does Apple’s raising of the base memory level to 16 GB suggest that those whose apps might require more memory should now consider upgrading to 24 GB?
Given that the RAM of an Apple Silicon Mac is not upgradable (in any way that normal people are going to be willing to attempt), I think it’s always a good idea to consider maxing out the RAM.
in the case of the Air, bumping a 13" M3 model from the base 16GB to 24GB bumps the price $200 (from $1100 to $1300). This is a lot to pay for 8GB of RAM, but if you think of it in terms of extending the longevity of the whole system, I think it’s a good idea, if you can afford to pay the extra $200 in the first place.
For myself, my current Air (a very old 2011 11" model with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage, running macOS Sierra 10.12.6) is still working fine for what I use it for - Microsoft office and web browsing when I’m away from my home office. So I could probably do just fine with the absolute minimum configuration, but most people do more than this with their laptops and for them, I’d say maxing out the RAM is a good way to increase the useful lifespan of the computer.
The original post mentions apps requiring more RAM than 16GB. What apps I might use which would require a “little more” RAM, say 24GB or 32GB ? (Not concerned about truly pro video or graphics programs.)
I think most consumer apps will work just fine with 16. My recommendation to max it out (to 24 or 32) is primarily because we don’t know what future apps may require and you can’t upgrade it later.
If you’re someone who upgrades every 3 years or so, this may not matter. But if you’re someone like me who doesn’t replace computers until they fail or are otherwise unable to run key apps, then that kind of future-proofing makes more sense.
As for what apps might require more than 16 GB, it will depend on your usage. For instance, if you’re someone who leaves web browsers running all day with dozens of open tabs, you will be using a lot more memory than someone like myself, who rarely keeps more than 4-5 tabs open at a time and quits the browser when it’s not actively being used.
Likewise for office apps - if you work with big documents, or keep a lot of documents open at once, you’re going to use more memory than someone who doesn’t.
If you’re not sure, you may want to launch the Activity Monitor, go to the Memory tab and look at the “Memory Pressure” graph at the bottom of the window. Look at it when your system is under a heavy load. If you see the pressure turn yellow or red, you may want to consider more RAM than what you currently have.
I got a Studio M2 Max this time last year (nice 10%-off helped!) with a decent 96GB. I maxed the RAM available on the Max chip version, not because I use data intensive apps, but because I use a lot of them at the same time for long periods.
Often I’ll have 10-12 virtual screens open on my two Studio displays, with several windows of Finder/browsers/etc spread across them along with other apps. It’s just how I work.
On macOS, over the years I’ve noticed whatever RAM you have will eventually be sucked-up and used over time regardless of whatever you have, and even with improved efficiency of Apple Silicon, the same remains true. Eventually a restart will have to be done to clear it back down again.
This is not a bug or a memory leak. All modern operating systems will use unused RAM to cache stuff - shared libraries, system frameworks, files you’ve loaded, and anything else you can think of. If an app needs the memory, then some of the cached data will be freed to make it available.
This is a good thing, because it improves system performance and responsiveness.
You don’t want the system freeing every resource used by an app when the app quits because it may be used in the near future, either by relaunching that app or by launching something else that also uses those resources.
In other words, you should not be trying to maximize the amount of “free” memory reported by the system. That number will always be low, after the system has been running for a while, and that is not indicative of any kind of problem.
This is why Apple invented the “memory pressure” statistic. It measures the requirements of currently-running apps relative to what can be provided from free memory or by freeing cache or by employing other techniques. As long as the pressure is low, you are fine, even if the report of “free” memory is a low number.
Thank you. I had wondered what memory pressure was; now I have a better idea.
FWIW, I’m running 17 apps right now on my MBA M1 with 16 GB of memory and the green graph of memory pressure is not quite 1/3 the height of its window pane.
Sure, but after a couple of months the system eventually slows as it starts to swap with the SSD, so forcing a restart anyway.
For example, recently I’ve had 40GB free SSD available but the swap starts to eat into it, continually lowering it to near zero, forcing me into a restart in order to do anything (eg. recently, wanting to install latest OS updates).
If your swap space is growing without bound, then you’ve got a memory leak in something you’re running (impossible to know what without additional information).
If it’s an app, you can try quitting them and/or logging out (which force-quits all your apps). If that doesn’t work and you have to reboot, then it’s either a macOS bug or a bug in something you installed that’s running in the background (e.g. a server task of some kind).
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