Many are asking if they should go with a 16 GB RAM configuration for their new M1-based MacBook Air. Some others think Apple should have made a 32 GB of RAM configuration for the 13” MacBook Pro. According to this informal benchmarking video, 8 GB seems enough for most people. During his tests, the user opened many different apps and documents in Excel, tabs in Chrome, Photoshop and the MacBook Air stayed cool and never ever started to fall on its knees. At no time the idle CPU metric went down below 60%. The fan-less computer never got hot. Why? Three letters: SoC.

The M1 chip gathers many different components close together on the same chip so they don’t have to go through the PCI bus to move data around. I think it plays a big role in Apple Silicon Macs efficiency. We can no longer compare the RAM configuration of an Apple Mac with a Wintel machine, just like we cannot compare a 12 GB of RAM Android phone to a 6 GB of RAM iPhone. It’s just two different worlds.

Yet, I ordered a 16 GB Mac mini. 😳