2014 retina 13" 8GB RAM enough?

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Level 10

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2014 retina 13" 8GB RAM enough?

This is a crystal ball question.

My wife just bought a 13" 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro retina with 256GB drive, 8GB RAM. So the 2 week return clock is ticking.

This is one of the newer models where nothing can be upgraded. After recommending going with more than the 128GB drive base model and getting the 256GB drive I was next concerned about RAM. Now I am the owner of a 12 year old Mac so I have a slightly different take from your standard Apple Store salesperson who have a hard time conceiving keeping a computer more than 5 years or so. Not that I feel modern computers are built like the old ones and that you'll see as many 12 year old models 12 years from now anyway. Anyway, the one running in the Apple Store had the standard 8GB RAM and was only running a few basic applications but was already using 4 GB RAM (I checked Activity Monitor). I mentioned this to the sales person and he said Apple had just increased the base RAM in new MBP models to 8GB in response to this. He regarded having 8 GB was plenty for future use unless you're a power user and running FCP and Photoshop and lots of other things (maybe me but not my wife).

Apple seems to have been more tempered in its RAM requirements than in days of yore. Still I seem to frequently use my 1.5 GB RAM on my G4 to its max. vs. the 256 MB RAM minimum recommended with the original Tiger OS install. Mavericks tech. specs state 2GB RAM but it, along with a few modest applications open, jumped to realistically needing 4GB which doesn't strike me as much leeway for OSX 13 days.

My basic question is given that you can no longer upgrade new Mac hardware to adapt to new system and software requirements as you go along, is 8GB RAM really enough if you plan on keeping a computer out to Apple's nominal 5-7 year use expectancy? My wife is the user and probably the biggest demand will be very occasional iMovie editing.

Unfortunately it's either 8GB or 16GB with a fairly notable price difference.

One consideration: Flash drives are faster than old ones. When computers run out of RAM they may start using drive space. On old computers this slowed things down because disk drives are slow. On new computers maybe this isn't so much a problem because you're using chip memory for drive as well as RAM?

Posted on Aug 4, 2014 9:08 AM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,470 points

Aug 4, 2014 9:36 AM in response to Limnos

How long do you expect to own this machine, and what application demands due you expect in the product lifetime?

OS X is continuing to expand in functionality and resource demand like the Andromeda strain. In kind, so are newer Apple and third-party applications.

If your personal work style is launching several concurrent browser windows, and multiple memory thirsty applications, or running a virtual machine with a guest operating system — then in forward planning, you may need 16 GB for future proofing. With all the advertised, and unannounced, feature creep within OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), perhaps 16 GB is no longer an unreasonable choice.

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Answer 2

Limnos Author

Level 10

428,321 points

Jan 9, 2015 11:21 AM in response to VikingOSX

Boy, I am terrible at keeping track of old questions. They aren't right in front of you like they used to be with the old forum software.

How long? Well, at least the 4-7 years mentioned above. Basically until it dies or can no longer be used on the Internet. Lack of modern browser is what made me mothball my G3 back in 2006 but my 2001 G4 with Tiger is still viable thanks to TenFourFox. My wife's use is less demanding than me except she doesn't have patience for workarounds sometimes needed with old machines. Still, she doesn't play the game of chase-the-Apple when the latest and greatest is announced.

We stuck with what we bought. She really isn't a power user. Mostly Mail and browsing Internet one tab at a time. It's probably unrealistic but we may just try and stick with Mavericks for the life of the machine. I still use 10.4.11 10 years on my G4 after it came out so it isn't impossible if you don't absolutely require the newest from Apple all the time. No virtual machine (now if it were my computer...). Maybe I'm old school but generally computers are happiest running their original OS or at most one or two upgrades later. I don't see us constantly trying to keep up with Apple in its mad game of chase the upgrade.

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