Apple’s 8GB M1 Silicon isn’t Magic, but it is Magical

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Apple’s 8GB M1 Silicon isn’t Magic, but it is Magical

Further proof that an 8GB M1 Mac can do the seemingly impossible.

Dan Hansen

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An 8GB M1 Mac mini running Xcode, PaintCode, and Simulator.

Let’s try this again, shall we?¹

In my story, Who Really Needs 16GB In Their M1 Mac?, I pushed back against Renee Ritchie’s assertion that anyone who can possibly afford to upgrade to 16GB when purchasing an M1 Mac should do so. My argument was that a large number of Mac users won’t derive a significant benefit from purchasing the upgrade. I’m not sure why that hit a nerve, but here is an abridged summary of the responses from people who had a problem with that argument:

  • 8GB is fine for reading email but isn’t suitable for “real” work.
  • Anyone who can get by with 8GB should probably use a tablet instead of a computer.
  • Anyone who writes software needs more than 8GB.
  • My current system has 64GB so there’s no way I can use an M1 Mac.
  • The author doesn’t know anything about computers².

The Ad Hominem Fallacy³

Starting with the responses directed against me, I’ve been writing high-performance network analysis software for over 30 years. My first development PC was an AST Premium/286 Model…