My 2013 15" MBP will reach the end of its life at some point and I'm looking to replace it with a 16" ARM MBP when they're released.
I do full stack web dev with PHP, and JS/Vue/static site generators on the front end. I also do some visual design, and occasional lightweight video editing (iMovie only).
I'll use the new machine for at least 3 years, and maybe even 5 or 6 years. I'd like to get 32GB of RAM, but it is an expensive upgrade, it's not something I'll add just for the sake of it.
How useful do you think the extra 16GB of RAM will be for this sort of work?
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For me, I like doing my work using remote desktop. Just bought a Thinkcentre Tiny with 32GB RAM and 6 Core CPU and use Google Remote Desktop to do work on it. Using it for PHP, MySQL and Flutter development on Windows slong with Go + AWS CLI on Ubuntu VM, I don't have to worry about power anymore on my laptop. Just to have to use a laptop that has a nice keyboard, battery life and a nice internet connection.
16Gb is generally good, but in my case running a bunch of docker containers, two browsers with tons of tabs, slack, terminal, zoom, and a hungry ide starts to take a toll on my ram and the computer, so I'd expend as much as possible on that.
I also want to get M1 16 in and I am thinking to go for 32 gb. Here's why I had 16 gb hackintosh and it was working all fine until i got a project which has multple internal projects and all dockerized.. When i had to run more than 2 projects the docker alone would take up to 14 gb so I had to add another stick of 8gb.
This was hackintosh .. upgradable .. M1 wont be upgradable and you don't know in 2-3 years what kind of projects you will be working and some time multiple memory eating things running at a same times ! so better go with 32 gb! Hope this helps
yeah, the non-upgradability is a thing. I went for 16GB for various reasons, but would err towards 32GB for my next generation.
The Apple Silicon chips are interesting as I believe they are more memory efficient due to their architecture. Having the memory integrated with the chip reduces churn and the need for RAM. Still, VMs and Docker aren't light!
Being honest, I use 4 gigs of RAM, 16 gigs of eMMC storage, and Intel Celeron 😓 and I have little problems running Microsoft Edge, Zoom, and VSCode, (and I am developing an electron app) all at once. Except for when the computer just crashes and I have to replace the operating system and wipe my storage. :)
You probably already decided on that, but for everyone stumbling upon this post, here you can find my comparison between MBP 16" i9/64G and i7/16G for development that includes docker, some npm scripts and occasional Xcode.
nowicki.io/macbook-pro-16-64g-i9-v...
tldr;
I feel no difference.
When the 16G is idling after start it takes 8GB of RAM (compared to 20GB on the higher version).
When I'm fully in the working mode (IntelliJ open, docker containers running, npm frontend bundlers + chrome tabs with devtools) I always have little spare RAM. Looks like MacOS is just being awesome in the memory management aspects.
Thanks for this – interesting read.
I wonder too if the fast SSD MBPs have mean that a bit less RAM is even less of an issue?
I'm hoping to hold out until the ARM based 16" are available and maybe the memory offering will be different then. If not 16GB might be enough.
128 GB of RAM
There's no pressing reason to upgrade to 32GB based on your usecase, but there no reason not to either other than expense.
I still do some development on a thinkpad from 2011 with 8GB and an i5. Mostly with .NET or node.
I recently changed job, and they dropped a new Mac on me with 32gb. I never paid much attention before, but it seems I am often using around 16-17gb without trying. I think 16 does the trick and 32 is perhaps a luxury or for running a lot of electron apps lol.
16 Gb is more than you'll ever need for web development unless you start dockerizing the hell out of an application, in my opinion. I work on a 8 Gb and it's perfectly fine too for a similar stack. Also, consider that 16 Gb is double than 8 Gb, it's not a little more.
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