| ▲ | gyomu 11 hours ago |
| 8GB RAM was actually pretty workable for lightweight work… until they shipped Tahoe. Now macOS is just a slog doing even the most basic things unless you’re at 16GB. Sure hope macOS 27 comes with some serious performance optimization. But hey the colors are cute. |
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| ▲ | dubeye 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I'm typing this on an 8gb MacBook and Tahoe. it's mostly fine |
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| ▲ | gyomu 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You must not be doing much else then. My M1 8GB Air did great before Tahoe; even medium complexity Xcode projects ran fine on it with other apps running. Since I made the mistake of upgrading it to Tahoe, it’s too painful to work in those projects. | | |
| ▲ | ezfe 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah it sounds like you’re the target audience for 16GB of RAM. | | | |
| ▲ | dubeye 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It chugs if I launch a node server yes but that's an outlying use case for an 8gb air. AI is so good these days I am using the laptop for quick changes more often, as I just push every change. I rarely need to fiddle. The general experience of using my desktop and laptop are converging. | | |
| ▲ | jpc0 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Let me ensure I understand you. Running a node.js server on Tahoe makes your macbook sluggish and you feel like Tahoe is fine performance wise? May I reminded you that 10 years ago people also ran chrome and node js webservers and this was not a problem in any way with 8GB of ram. | | |
| ▲ | dubeye 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's very interesting to hear. I didn't know that. | | |
| ▲ | piperswe 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I developed Node.js applications 10 years ago on a 2009 MacBook Pro with 5GB of RAM, and it was only a little tight on memory. 8GB _should_ be enough for moderate complexity development, but everything has become more and more memory-hungry with time. |
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| ▲ | nateb2022 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It chugs if I launch a node server yes but that's an outlying use case for an 8gb air. May I ask if you have many 3rd party apps installed? What apps do you usually keep open at a time? Because 8GB should be more than fine for a node server. Is it an Apple Silicon Air, or an older Intel model? | |
| ▲ | teaearlgraycold 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What are you doing in your node server? That shouldn't take up a ton of RAM. |
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| ▲ | crazygringo 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Exactly. 8 GB still seems plenty for lightweight work, even under Tahoe. For general browsing and webapps and writing papers and watching Netflix and whatever, this is great. | |
| ▲ | elxr 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It used to feel way better, that's the issue. Tahoe is a massive regression in my personal experience (16GB here). So many random bugs and menu bar pop-up slowdowns (how is the system menu bar this unresponsive?). Spotlight has gotten so bad, I can literally count the time it takes between typing the app name and the result showing up in the dropdown. Ended up switching Spotlight to Tuna. | | |
| ▲ | gyomu 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Oh my god, yes. Spotlight on Tahoe is a joke. Why will it so often not display any results at all, even for system apps like Safari or Terminal? You’d think those would be in an always available cache guaranteed to always show up instantly? So many questions. | | |
| ▲ | elxr 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Why will it so often not display any results at all, even for system apps like Safari or Terminal? I've experienced this too, even after giving spotlight multiple shots months apart. For your sanity, I say just stop using spotlight. Don't let Apple steal your valuable waking hours with their crap QA. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway290 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | what to use instead to launch apps and find stuff? | | |
| ▲ | elxr 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Tuna (https://tunaformac.com), like I mentioned earlier. Made by a really creative solo dev, minimal, and not as complex as raycast. It's a night and day difference compared to the pile of garbage Spotlight. |
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| ▲ | dntrkv 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I’ve had issues like that in the past, had to clear the cache for the spotlight index or something like that. Fixed it right away. Not sure if you’re facing the same issue. |
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| ▲ | 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | noname120 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | For some reason Alfred is also a *lot* slower on Tahoe. I can often wait a whole second after pressing the shortcut before the bar appears whereas on Sequoia it was instant. | |
| ▲ | samat 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I ended up downgrading to Sequoia. Day and night difference! My air m2 16GB is snappy again! And settings app does actually work! |
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| ▲ | 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | tempaccount420 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How did you type this from the lock screen? |
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| ▲ | apparent 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Sure hope macOS 27 comes with some serious performance optimization. Ditto for iOS 26. They need some Snow Leopard action, for real. |
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| ▲ | Imustaskforhelp 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is the reason why I am not going to Tahoe. I have heard its very buggy at times and resource intensive. And I am quite happy with Sonama. |
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| ▲ | JodieBenitez 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Frankly... I see no difference on my M1 air. Maybe Jetbrains IDEs are not resource intensive enough ? |
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| ▲ | mft_ 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It would be sensible/wonderful for Apple to release a deliberately lighter version of MacOS for these laptops; but their intransigence and (e.g.) willingness to hold the iPad’s OS back year after year suggests they won’t. |
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| ▲ | happyopossum 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > willingness to hold the iPad’s OS back Sheesh - in iPadOS you’ve got multitasking, multitouch, full windowing support, external input and monitors, and a ridiculously accurate pen. If that’s holding back, what exactly are you looking for? I’d still argue a device that size works better with just split screen than the new windowing, but other than the walled garden approach it does pretty much everything today that us techies have been whining about. | | |
| ▲ | vikramkr 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm seeing a ton of comments like that one about how apple is holding ipados back but am I going crazy or wasn't the big story of iPad is last year how many updates it got to make it more of a desktop replacement? Like half the features you mentioned were added last year plus a calculator app right? There was specifically a whole iPad os refresh that was well received as finally massively boosting iPad pro capabilities? Like, very recently? | |
| ▲ | grvbck 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > what exactly are you looking for? File management that doesn't suck, incl. better handling of external drives. | |
| ▲ | TingPing 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The ability to install any software would be nice… |
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| ▲ | elzbardico 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Please use the correct names, despite whatever apple says. It's Mac OS Vista. This is the proper name for this abomination Apple calls Tahoe. |
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| ▲ | roblh 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Yeah, not even having an upgrade to 16gb or more makes this dead on arrival for anyone doing real work. Bummer, since otherwise it looks great. I guess it'd be the same price as a macbook air after that upgrade anyways though, so it doesn't really matter. |
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| ▲ | gandalfgreybeer 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > dead on arrival for anyone doing real work Honestly, we’re not the target market for this. I’m pretty sure at this price point though, it will sell like hotcakes. Once people get slightly into the ecosystem, it’s usually a big win for Apple since their stickiness ( from my experience of people around me) is undeniable once you get one product | |
| ▲ | icedchai 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's perfectly adequate for most office work: documents, spreadsheets, presentations, web browsing / research. The vast majority of users are not doing software development and never will. | |
| ▲ | prepend 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why would anyone doing “real work” want this? If you’re doing “real work” then 16gb won’t be sufficient, either. My “real work” machine has 96 and I sometimes wish it had more. | |
| ▲ | pier25 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is not for "serious work". It's for users who spend most of their time in a browser and/or using lightweight apps. | |
| ▲ | gyomu 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | People doing real work have money to spend and Apple wants them buying Airs/Pros. If only we could get fun colors for those… | |
| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | “real work” != “development”. |
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