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Apple claims the use of 8GB on M chips is more efficient than Intel with 16GB, therefore needs less physical capacity to match functionality.

Remember AMD Athlon CPU versions? Athlon XP "Barton" 3200+, running at 2.2GHz was equivalent of an Intel running at 3.2GHz.

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Unless they've figured out how to let you store two bits per bit, it's still obviously a dubious claim. My x86 desktops have also had zswap for a decade, so whatever magic fairy dust they have can't be that simple.

The magic fairy dust is "really fast NVME" and "really low latency memory access" which for most users makes the 8GB give a performance comparable to slower 16GB memory (and not need to read from disk).

That's about it. If you're doing anything other than regular web browsing and word processing it's not going to be the same as having 16GB. But I'm certain the average Mac user is not a developer, video editor, or other power user.

Like it or not, tech nerds are not the average consumer of Apple hardware.

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