[armincerf]

I have been using the base model 8gb m1 Mac mini as my main work machine since it came out, the only time I have noticed a ram limitation was when I ran out of storage space and it couldn’t swap anymore. Pretty amazing since this computer cost $2000 less than my 2019 MacBook Pro and is noticeably faster (Clojure development and some hobby music production)

Maybe I’ll regret it in a few years if the ssd dies due to the extra load though… I do really wish the storage was easier to change

[giantrobot]

Both iOS and macOS support compressed memory pages which helps a lot with memory pressure. On modern hardware decompressing a memory page is orders of magnitude faster than swapping.

Even relatively modest compression ratios add up in aggregate. Swapping compressed pages is also more efficient (when it happens) because less data needs to be persisted to the disk.

That's not to say 8GB is enough for everyone but it punches a bit above its weight in a lot of use cases.