Apple Silicon

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

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

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…