Looking at a new iMac M1 for the wife.

She’s a CPA and does mostly spreadsheets, printing and internet browsing.

I come from the PC world where base model only come with enough RAM to turn the machine on and start the OS.

Models available of the M1 come with 8GB RAM and i wonder if that is enough or do i need, should have more.
As a rule, i pay once and leave it alone. Rather not have anyone touch a sealed unit in the future unless is unavoidable.

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For what you've described, 8 is perfectly fine.

Agree the 8MB should be sufficient.

At my job we order 8MB for ‘regular’ employees and upgrade them to 16MB for our technical staff who compile code.

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Originally posted by 0-0:

Looking at a new iMac M1 for the wife.

She’s a CPA and does mostly spreadsheets, printing and internet browsing.

Having learned the hard way (expensive way), I will not buy another iMac. Yes, they're sleek, they work well, BUT the problem is that it's an all-in-one, therefore if something goes wrong, it's a real pain in the neck.

Going forward, I'm going to stay with the Mac mini for desktop use. Separate unit for the display. Easier to deal with if there's a malfunction.

Back to your original question, if additional RAM is not too expensive, I would upgrade. I always try for at least 16 Gb.

My experience says that buy more than the minimum. First it will extend the longevity of the machine in that as the OS version goes up the machine is more likely to be able to follow along. I have an iMac with 32 GB of RAM thar was bought in 2013. It still runs everything just fine. On the other hand I have a 2009 Mac Pro laptop thar has the then minimum of 2 GB of RAM and while it will run the newer OSes, it’s so slow it’s worthless. Same applies to a Mac mini that was my son’s (2010). The hardware in our case has stayed very useable, but the useable life was limited by the RAM. Granted the processors were behind the curve for the earlier models, but my iMac is definitely showing the RAM makes a difference.

I recently replaced my 8yr old MacBook pro and the only thing that I could add is that the M1 machine is blazingly faster, I was quite surprised and very pleased that it lived up to the M1 chip hype.

Both my MacBook Pro and iMac have 16 GB. To me, thats the absolute minimum. I do run a few programs that are Windows based under Parallels.

Since you can't upgrade the RAM on the M1 iMac, I'd go with the 16GB version.

I'm in the "you can never have too much (enough) RAM camp. However, with a modern Unix-based system like macOS, the usable RAM available to applications and the OS is extended by available mass storage-based swap space (a dedicated part of the disk, or a file created for that purpose). True that it is slower to access than hardware RAM, but the latter is not a limiting factor the way it is in other OS's. Besides that, macOS aggressively caches (in hardware RAM) those portions of virtual memory that are in active use, further reducing any performance penalty.

Practically speaking, if your mass storage is SSD or other fast media, you are not likely to suffer much on a "memory-limited" machine, as long as you are running macOS or some other modern design. If it were my money, I'd still buy the 16GB version.

With Macs I generally get the standard configuration that has the most RAM and largest hard drive. But I have never done a custom order that deviates from the "best" standard configuration.

Most of the performance reviews of the new M1 Macs show very little change in performance between the 8GB and optional 16GB RAM unless you are doing very processor intensive tasks like video editing. For the stated uses 8GB should be fine. Also remember that the M1 is an ARM processor similar to the ones in iPhones and iPads, and its memory needs are different than Intel processors. Does anyone worry about how much RAM is in their iPhones or iPads? Most of us don't even know or care. I think Apple is publishing the 8GB RAM in the M1 Macs because customers expect to be told how much RAM a computer has, and the custom build 16GB upgrade is mostly a revenue generator since most users will not see any benefit from it.

The M1 has the CPU, GPU, I/O bus, RAM, and many other things (DSP, NPU, and more) on the same chip and the connection to the SSD is very very fast which makes memory swapping to the SSD much more efficient, which mitigates slowdowns caused by insufficient system RAM now and in the future.

My current iMac is a 2017 27" Quad Core i5, and the 2TB fusion drive failed a few months ago. I'm running off external USB SSD's now because replacing the failed internal drive is a big pain. I may upgrade to a new iMac when the 27 is upgraded to the M1 (hopefully it will get a larger screen too) or I might get the Mac Mini like V-Tail. I will most likely buy the "best" standard config with whatever memory it has.

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Originally posted by Lefty Sig:

My current iMac is a 2017 27" Quad Core i5, and the 2TB fusion drive failed a few months ago. I'm running off external USB SSD's now because replacing the failed internal drive is a big pain. I may upgrade to a new iMac when the 27 is upgraded to the M1 (hopefully it will get a larger screen too) or I might get the Mac Mini like V-Tail. I will most likely buy the "best" standard config with whatever memory it has.

AFAIK, the one we’are looking at is a 24’ iMac with an M1. Must verify….

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Apple introduced the new M1 24" iMac in April. They pushed back the large iMac to late 2021 or possibly early 2022. It will probably have a much larger display, going from 27" to a rumored 32". Also an upgrade on the M1 chip to M1X or even an M2.

I'm really pushing a mid-2011 27-incher that is definitely on its last legs, but I keep wondering if it will even make it to the refresh.

Agree that 8GB should be sufficient, but …

If your wife is like mine, it’s not.

My wife is not a power user: just web browsing, e-mail, and listening to podcasts.

Earlier this summer, I got her a new Macbook with the basic configuration: 8GB RAM and 256GB harddrive. A couple of days later she says “it’s broken”.

I take a look and she’s got three or four browser pages open with 10+ tabs open on each page. She won’t close them because she still wants to look at them. She won’t bookmark or save them because it’s too difficult. I explain that all these open tabs are gobbling up all her RAM. Her eyes glaze over.

So, I returned it to Apple and exchanged it for a Macbook with 16GB of RAM. Cost $200 more, but ‘Happy Wife, Happy Life’.

You cannot upgrade the RAM on an M1 Mac.

Get 16GB.

Got it!

I´ll ask for a quote on the 16GB iMac (takes over a month) and if it ain´t reasonable we´ll go for the 8GB RAM machine.

My guess is that the 8GB should do fine, same as on her M1 MBP but I personally would feel much better with 16GB.

Both are absolute noobs in the Apple Universe and the worst that can happen is that we might need to run Parallels for as specific Tax program.

Thanks

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quote:

Originally posted by 0-0:
Both are absolute noobs in the Apple Universe and the worst that can happen is that we might need to run Parallels for as specific Tax program.

Thanks

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Doing my taxes today. TurboTax 2020 won’t run on High Sierra, and I don’t want to upgrade my Macs. I instead installed it on my Dell that lives in the basement near the furnace, and use Microsoft remote on the Mac in my office to access the PC. It runs like as fast as if the PC were on my desk. It’s better for me to have a spare PC than to emulate one. It rips movies when it’s not busy doing other things like my taxes.

I paid $180 for the Dell from the Amazon refurb store.

(Remote) Too sophisticated for the Spousal Unit.

She has 3 Windows PCs at her disposal. Just for her. Doesn´t care for them, they are just tools.
We met when I was the external IT at her office and she wouldn´t let me near her computer. Hasn´t changed that much in 25 years

I have my own 5 PC to tinker with. I´m the computer maniac.

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Nick, your post led me to look this up because I remembered that the use of RAM in the M1 Macs was different--and it is.
The RAM is incorporated into the CPU chip; but memory is dynamically allocated, and the Mac can go to the SSD for RAM if needed (slower of course).

This article explains this and tells what kind of CPU activity might necessitate getting more RAM:

MacWorld: M1 Mac RAM is not what it used to be

8 gigs of RAM on Apple Silicone goes a lot farther than 8 gigs on any x86. I'm still stunned how fast my MacBook Air is while only sipping very little of the battery.

However, I don't run Parallels, so I don't know if that's a problem. There is a way to get Windows on ARM for free through Parallels, but you have too sign up to Microsoft's developer program.

I personally find the Apple way of doing things quite awkward after 35 years of using PC and a few years of Android. Can’t stop bitching about my iPhone UI…

It is more likely that we will handle the windows based program using some sort of Remote Desktop.
The (local) IRS program is a half polished turd and should be on it’s way out on the next years. It has been mostly phased out and replaced with web based database access.
Never worked properly under Windows anyway.

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