As someone who has a similar desktop (128gb RAM w/ 12 core 3.3ghz Xeon Mac Pro) and the aforementioned late 2016 MBP w/ touchbar, I can definitively state you're being hyperbolic.
Last week I noticed I had Android Studio, Xcode 8.3b4, Xcode, IntelliJ, VMWare w/ Windows 7 Enterprise running Simplicity Studio and IAR Embedded Workbench, and Adobe Photoshop all at once. I was happily running along just fine without realizing I hadn't closed anything while switching tasks until Google Docs started consuming 6gb of RAM in a single browser tab.
Are you talking about a 2015 MBP or the 2016 with touchbar in the second paragraph? I honestly can't imagine all of that running on my 2015 MBP.
2016 w/ touchbar. I've done similarly heavy workloads on a 2015 MBP with same RAM and it was "ok", but certainly noticeable. I think the biggest contributing factor is likely SSD speed, but that's just a guess.
Depends on what VMs and what other software you're running, no? You could comfortably fit a LAMP VM in what an Electron app like Slack uses...
Re:iPad 9.7‑inch
by geerlingguy on Tuesday March 21, 2017 @09:24AM
(#13921926)
The SSD is crazy fast, and can make up for a lack of RAM in many circumstances. Swapping isn't as painful when your disk can read and write at 1.5-2 GB/sec.
I'm spoiled though - these days I spend most of my time on a machine with 128GB RAM and an i7-6900K :). I can barely recall what it's like for a machine to hang.