Debating whether or not to replace my Mac Pro (trashcan) with 32gb of RAM with an M1 mini. All the benchmarks say its faster but I’m concerned about the max memory of 16gb. Anyone with an M1 Mac Mini have any issues with that?
Of course, I know it all depends on what you use it for but was just looking for some input on it.
The main reason I’m thinking about it is that I can get $750 trade in on my MacPro so my net cost would only be about $300 for a mini with 16gb RAM and 512gb SSD.
everything I have seen sys the M1’s with 8 or 16 work well
personally I’d opt for 16Gb if you can
and a big SSD as none of this is upgradable after the fact
Definitely would go for the 16gb model with 512gb SSD. Probably will also need some kind of a dock and definitely will need a a thunderbolt2->3 adapter so my net cost is suddenly going up.
There are bugs in Big Sur’s image handling libraries that make images take up considerably more memory on the M1 architecture, which in turn increases the use of VM making it one of the causes for increased SSD wear with an M1 Mac.
I am hoping that Monterey will fix these bugs, and when M1x or M2 comes out (some are saying next year now) it should be configurable with 32GB or RAM. 64GB is most likely going to be reserved for the series after.
However if you only intended to hold on to the Mac Mini for a couple of years, then why not?
I am at this same point, my old (not really) iMac 27 from 2012 has been left behind the OS update curve and just started to make silly squiggles on the screen now and again.
I seriously want to go M1 (in a mini) but also expecting M2 anytime soon.
I think the 8/16/32 ram thing is not so much of an issue as it used to be as I hope the OS is way better than previous thoughts, where MORE is better and you just have to have loads of RAM to do any serious processing.
My advice, wait, and see what the future will bring. If you are developing for multi-platform and want/have to test your software on different operating systems, IMO the change to M1 is big step back.
It is when the OS is inefficient for whole year. Apple have done great work to make it so that people can’t tell when it’s heavily swapping (thus masking the problem), but that will affect the lifespan of the machine and can lead to crashes.
Apple charge 5x the going rate for RAM, and with it being soldered on the board or the chip, there’s nothing you can do about it.
I read that the SSD wear issue has been fixed with 11.4. Apple claims that it was a reporting issue in the software, not an actual problem with the SSD.
Unfortunately after the evidence presented in the Epic v.s. Apple battle, it is a little hard to trust everything that Apple says nowadays. Mind you, I’d already lost faith when a small number of people having problem with Butterfly Keyboards turned out to be 1 in 2 people.
While Apple may be adjusting the figures presented by the drive monitor, modern macOS versions are far more memory hungry than before and I’ve seen a handful of people report that ARM apps use way more RAM than Intel apps. With everything using more and more RAM, an 8GB machine is going to hit VM much quicker than a 16GB machine (or 32GB), which then draws on the SSD.
The inability to upgrade the RAM means you either spend more now, or replace the machine if you realize that 8GB is not enough. Good 'ole Cook, saving the environment Apple’s profts.
