Not that you can’t use plenty of GPU RAM, but 8GB gives you a lot of room to work with. (Video decoding need all that much — probably three buffers worth per stream, and at the size of the video, not the screen.)
Just as it was before, with the Intel chips. Sure you had 64MB of eDRAM or whatever they called it as a cache but you were still using system memory for video.
I think Apple has a far better understanding, backed by actual data, of the circumstances than you, or indeed anyone here. My wife is still using her 2015 Air and has yet to plug it into anything, let alone 4k or 5k monitors that appears to be the "end game scenario" for posters here.
If you are posting on HN, then 8GB is not enough for you. I bought a 16GB M1 Air and it was great, and the day it came out I bought a 64GB M1 Max. But 8GB is more than enough for most of Apple's customers, and I'm sure they have the data to back that up.
In the cheapest M2/disk combo, threads here have said Apple have crippled the storage bandwidth relative to the M1, so relying on fast virtual memory is no longer an option. In that scenario 8GB is even more constraining than it was a year ago.
Remember the 16gb iPhone? It really just existed to make the 32/64gb models look more reasonable and so Apple could say “From $lower_price_point”.
That depends. Your average 1080p display doesn't really use a ton of video memory, but a 5k display connected to an internal 1440p display? That's a pretty huge framebuffer. AFAIK, Quartz also has a separate video buffer for each individual window, ranging from 50-150mb for the average application. Add it all up, and I agree that 8gb is pretty low, even with swap. Macs are memory-hungry devices, limiting your physical memory to 8gb is going to be really difficult to work with on anything that isn't text editing or light web browsing.
Air with 8 GM of ram is perfect for a personal laptop where your primary focus is web browsing, watching media and occasional video/photo editing.
It's not just the GPU that shares memory with the CPU. The "media engine" buffers are in there, too at 18 megabytes per frame for 4k reference pictures in the decoded picture buffer. The decoder, scaler, GPU, and DRAM are fast enough to have several tracks of 4k (which even the iPhone 11 & SE can shoot), so don't let RAM size be your limit. I'm happy to see a max of 24GB vs. the M1's 16GB.
I hear people say that today, but how is it going to feel in 2025, when you try loading up MacOS 16 on it? Given the trend of Apple's development, I don't think 8 gigs is going to be sufficient for most people going forward. That's basically iPad-tier memory constraints on a desktop-class operating system.
One thing that is a problem is that web pages get bigger and bigger and more resource intense. I doubt my 2011 air could handle a modern day web page with videos and a bunch of css transforms like on the apple site.
I believe Apple is pretty good about keeping people on the latest versions of their software, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were a few stragglers or people using EOL devices that are stranded on an older build. I can definitely believe that it's a PITA supporting them, though. Working around MacOS shenanigans is the most frustrating part of my job too.
> One thing that is a problem is that web pages get bigger and bigger and more resource intense.
Eh... I'm not sure if I agree with that sentiment. In the early 2000s there were also people saying "desktop apps are going to get bigger and more resource-intensive", but that never really happened. In fact, the Java runtimes people used in that era were usually heavier than modern applications today, or evestn Electron-bundled programs. IMO, the web has been resource-intensive ever since Javascript became the lingua franca. Nowadays, I think we're making progress to reduce the resources used on websites. Things like WASM and lighter JS frameworks are going to make all the difference here. In fact, I can even see ourselves in another Web2 golden age in a few years. I personally don't think the SAAS landscape is long for this earth, and once it fades away, there will be less incentive to make bloated, broken applications and more of a focus on refining user experience and performance.
Everyone from the sounds of it. Half the threads on /r/mac are from people that want to connect 2/3 monitors to their M1 MacBooks
I think 8gb is borderline criminally low in the circumstances. At least this thing has the option for 24gb though. I just wish that was a stocked model so you could just walk into a store and buy one without having to order it.