Comment by jp_nc
10 hours ago
FWIW, my son has a 2020 M1 Air with 8gb and it runs just fine still. 8gb in the Mac world is much different than 8gb in the Windows world. Also, I am guessing most of the Chromebooks currently used in schools are running 4gb. If you need more ram, go up to an Air... reality is this will work fine for most kids and casual browsing scenarios.
> 8gb in the Mac world is much different than 8gb in the Windows world.
Yes, according to the Apple marketing pamphlet.
It's not wrong, it just only works if you stick to the native apps, which you probably should do on a Mac.
The problem is when you start throwing half the modern tech stack crap on top which is built on standalone browser engines. They are NOT memory or CPU efficient compared to native apps. Really kills a nice machine dead.
Why would you think the cheapest MacBook available would be intended to use those applications? Apple makes MacBooks for people that need more RAM.
Having used both... it's 100% true
I still use my M1 Air with 8gb as well. I don't do my daily dayjob work on it, but it's more than fine for everything else I do.