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Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

Is anything known about the chip? The deal breaker of M1 (for me) as it currently stands is the amount of RAM it can handle (16 GB).

Edit: Mistyped 16 as 1, sorry about the confusion

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Also the relatively low number of cores.

I've only read very rare workloads actually be constrained by 16GB on the M1, what use case do you have that you know will be hampered on a M1?

My current laptop has 64 GB. Could probably be fine with 32, but I'm seldom under 20 in usage. I run certain services locally in Docker, and then have 5+ instances of IntelliJ for various stuff open, some of them running a java server or node building the frontend, and others on my team may be running Android+iOS simulator at the same time as well.

I could alter my usage patterns and work with less. But people not used to having loads of ram don't know what they're missing out on.

I went from a 64GB XPS 15 as a developer utilizing ~10-20GB during general workloads and I can get the same work done on my new M1 MacBook Air 16GB without a hitch. Unless you are reading and writing to ram incredibly quickly or need a specific massive amount of data in memory like for rendering type tasks, running general applications beyond the 16GB point is totally fine, and the OS will figure out the rest.

I’m curious to know if it’d work for you, do you have access to an M1 to try out your workflow on? The max ram ‘issues’ seem to be way overblown.

side-question, isn't iOS simulator running natively on M1? That would mean it consumes less RAM than on x86. If that's true, it should be possible to fit Android+iOS workflow.

As a data point: I am running node + iOS Simulator (along with XCode + VSCode + Chrome with 50+ tabs) setup on M1 16GB and it works fine, I also keep them running while I take a break to play a LoL match. Works great for me.

Simulators run natively in x86 they simulate the api/abi as opposing to emulating the processor

My Ableton starter template project takes about 22GB of RAM to open. Music production is a pretty common use case that can be very heavy on RAM.

I think you mean 8GB?

I think he meant 16GB.

I own an M1 Macbook Air with 16GB of RAM

Yep. Unfortunately the M1 MacBook Pro currently only goes up to 8GB.

I am typing from an M1 MacBook Pro with 16GB.

edit: you have to select the SSD size then you can choose the RAM.

Ah, you are right! Thanks for the edit. I didn't click through on the presented options to see if they offered additional upgrades.

I think you mean 16GB?

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