Those apps don’t need every single byte of memory you see in Activity Monitor to be active in RAM all of the time. The OS swaps out unused parts to the very fast SSD. If you push it so far that active pages are constantly being swapped out as apps compete then you start to notice, but the threshold for that is a lot higher than HN comments seem to think.

Everything from apple to modern software is rotten to its core.

…in reply to someone who just said their experience is fine, and included details. If you just want to rant about Apple, have at it, but you’re going to have to do better than “nuh, uh” if you want to be convincing.

8GB really shouldn't be an option in 2026, it is just shortsighted and an insanely uneven build.

I could rant about Dell too. Or most other manufacturers (surprise, greed isn't apple exclusive). But Apple at least tries to keep the appearance of a higher profile.

Fair enough; though experience says 8Gb will run VScode, it would very much depend on the use case, I agree. OTOH, I would argue that anyone working VScode that hard probably isn’t buying 8Gb machines, but OP did say they’re running it so it’s up for discussion.

Can we please just move on? Maybe get your hardware checked if you’re legitimately still having these issues.

My M1 Air would slow down a little, but was still usable doing the same thing. And they both had 8GB of memory.