TRUTH | 1 week with 8GB M3 MacBook 

Sharing my experience here, good and bad. Trying to be neutral here, and make conclusions BASED ON ACTUAL TESTS, instead of rhetoric.

I have a friend(web developer) who bought an m1 with 8 gigabytes of memory. He used it with docker. His ssd died 1.5 years later...

I remember when you were sub 100K and look where you are now. Thank you for all your hard work! Let’s go 300K!

Yes, common sense. If the apps you run are RAM-intensive and you make your living from developing, then 8GB should not even be on your radar. The question would be 16GB or 24GB on the base M3, or 18GB or 36GB on the M3 Pro MB Pros? As a professional driver for 40 years (60-80K miles a year) I bought expensive cars like Audis and VWs. I could buy a similar car for 66% of the price, but it was my living so I bought premium due to quality and reliability. If it is your living, do not skimp out on RAM or storage; as a dev the computer is your livelihood, an investment...common sense.

I’ve decided to opt for a pre-owned M1 MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM, as it’s more affordable. In my experience, having ample RAM to ensure smooth program execution outweighs the marginal speed increase from a newer M3 MacBook Pro with only 8GB of RAM

I was tempted to get the m3 macbook pro base model for android development. But 8gb is just not enough everywhere you look. I ended up getting used m1 macbook air 1tb ssd 16gb ram config. The experience with this machine is amazing. It can handle the project I am working on pretty well (about 84 screens). It is super light and the battery is the best. If you are on a tight budget, m1 air is the best value.

I feel like if you are developing software professionally, then just go crazy and spec way more RAM than you'll ever need. $3k, $4k, it's a drop in the ocean for your primary professional tool. It's better to waste money and have more RAM than you will ever need, than to try to predict how much RAM you'll need and to come up short. Software devs are blessed, the tools of our trade are cheap compared to e.g. video or audio gear. If you're not a professional and you're on a budget, then find some way to buy a machine with 16GB, even if it's an older gen. A CPU upgrade just makes a machine faster, but a RAM upgrade gives a machine new capabilities.

I use the 16gb version of the m3 macbook from apple refurbished for unity. It gets the gpu results of a m1 pro, the battery life of an air, and the cpu results of like an m2 pro. If you are on edge about spending too much money, get an m3 refurbished you will not regret it.

My work laptop has 16G ram. It’s not enough for my work. I mean it runs very well considering the memory pressure but it is slower than if I could close some stuff. But closing some stuff would make me slower. Xcode, android studio, android and iOS emulator and simulators take up the most ram. Then there’s Teams, OneNote, Safari, Zed, iterm2, Figma, Mail, Music and those are just the ones permanently open. Sometimes need more too. It generally works just fine in terms of everything “working” and happening eventually. No UI hitching and such. Just compile times are longer than if I quit some things. Personal laptop with 32G of ram and same cpu compiles noticeably faster in the same setup

The problem is not about paying for 8gb of ram, the problem is that Apple doesn’t allow you to upgrade anything.

Totally you are the most amazing dev I have ever saw in my entire dev life since 2010, just wanted to tell you cheers,

I think Apple should be forced to allow us upgrade the SSD. They always argue environment as one of the reasons they do things. Not allowing us to upgrade RAM or SSD is complete against that same philosophy.

The HDMI port matters so much to me. To me this is the best presentation laptop. Dongles use 5-15 watts of power and plugging directly into the HDMI port gives phenomenal battery life when hooked to a projector. Videos can be shown in HDR, SD cards can be plugged in no sweat, speakers are great. Presentation presentation presentation. There is a very specific audience for this device. I have a m1 Max 32GB machine, and the M3 14inch Macbook Pro is a great secondary device.

Apple's miserly view of Pro memory is making the Snapdragon Elite chip look really attractive.

MacOS always tries to fillup the RAM with cache and improve performance for cold start and apps reopen. So even if you close things or have nothing opened, the RAM will look like it has a lot of data loaded. But actually MacOS handles RAM very well and these models do Swapping very fast.

Went for the 24GB 15" to replace a loud 16" M3 Max and I'm happy so far. I have similar workflows to you but drivinga Pro Display XDR with it. I noticed slight stutter a couple of times when typing in Spotlight and closing a tab but the load was low so I've no clue what that was. Using the Hot utility to easily see if I'm thermal throttling. No issues so far, using Android Studio next week though so 🤞 I'm only missing the display quality a little but prefer the how light the 15" Air feels compared to the 14" even though they're similar in weight. 120hz OLED MBA 15" would be my perfect laptop I think.

I have a 2013 MBAir which is still used regularly. It has 4GB of RAM and the SSD is still alive. The charger died a few months ago, but before that MacBook was still used regularly by kids. I started freelancing and my own app development using that MBAir and it was fine. 8GB is okay for beginner iOS developers today, you will need a few years of experience to hit the limits of it :) Sure, upgrade RAM if you can, then MB will last longer.

I had an Macbook Air M1 with 8gb because I had a notebook(Dell) from my last job, I started to work in a new place where you had to use your own computer I worked with a Macbook Air for 1 month to see if I could but was insane the amount of swap, in the end I bought a Macbook Pro with 16gb which still doing some swap but works fine (I have a friend who have a 64gb MBP but never reached more than 30gb, the ideal for development I think would be 24-32gb)

I absolutely loved your review here. One of the best MacBook reviewers on RU-vid in my opinion. You leave no stone unturned in your reviews. Please continue. I love your videos. ❤❤

Excellent video. I love videos that have a lot of useful information and a little bit of appropriate rambling.

If you plan on reselling or trading-in, it's a good idea to stick to base models. for instance, if you need 16GB of RAM and plan on reselling, get the M3 pro mbp. It's more expensive than the M3 mbp upgraded to 16GB, but you make up for it in resale value

Hey Alex, Which mac should I buy for computer science engineering undergraduate.

@8:42 "... before I truly understood the value of time." 🤣🤣🤣

I actually was about to buy a 16Gb M2 Air. Fortunately they didn't have that spec so they offered me to put a little bit more money and get 24GB 512GB SSD version which i'm absolutely happy with. this thing can run vscode and ios simulator and android emulator at the same time without using swap and best part is it doesn't even make a sound. It's literally a powerhouse for programmers. oh and btw don't worry about the fan, it's doesn't even get warm let alone getting hot

Awesome moving timelapses!

I use my base M1 Air for web,office,tuner studio/megalogviewer setting up my track car and media consumption...8/256 is just fine for my use.You should choose your machine based on usage.

what would recomen for softwea dev? m3 18GB, m2 max 32GB , what will you pick? and tell me why

Thank you for the information. I am interested in running ai linux mixtral on a macbook pro. How much memory do you recommend or should I just go with a studio?

But can it connect to 3 devices on bluetooth and one of them being a headset, and yet not lagg on the sound? (My M1 cant)

Thanks for finally putting a video of real world usage of 8gb M3. Been looking for this for years now. Would like to see the same tests on 16gb

The worst part isn't the 8GB of RAM, but the fact that is not even upgradable.

Great content Alex! I've been using Windows machines since 1995, but last year I also started using M2 Max 64GB and I can tell that my life is mostly better now ;) The only pain I experience is switching every day from a Win machine (work) to my Mac or to my Mac with an external Win keyboard 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

Could u kindly make a video showing how to setup MySQL and Oracle server on Apple Mac M series and .NET connector ? i am planning to renew my mac intel but still struck on how to setup both database for my working projects.

My old 16G M1 Macbook Air died because i spilled water over it. I needed a quick replacement. So i bought the M3 8G Macbook air and it is enough. I mostly develop Apps for Android and even with Emulators, 25 Chrome tabs and more it does not struggle. It is amazing.

Is there a triple display (usb c) for MacBook Air M3 you would recommend ?

Thanks Alex! Very informative as always. Especially about mobile development with Xcode and Android Studio. Also, how much RAM would be ideal for doing parallel Xcode and Android Studio development along with emulators and simulators?

8 G ram is only good for very light loading users. Before I upgrade my Fujifilm X H1 to 40MB pixel sensor X T5, I was very happy to work with my 8G M1 MBA. I usually take landscape photo, and sometimes for panaroma photos. Sometimes I might combine at least 10 or more raw photo. This is not possible with my M1. And therefore I upgrade for 16M M3 MBA. Even with this upgrade, I just manage to handle this task. Therefore the investment on hardware is well worthy. We are forced to catch up with new technology advancement.

I wonted to bye my first mac and doing a lot of search for AIR m3 15 some same good some say bad, I want to know what will happen with multiple chrome tab, vs code, xcode, androdi studio need help

should i upgrade from macbook pro 2020 (intel core i5 8th gen quad-core 1.4ghz) to macbook air m3 15 inch for coding?

I'm getting my diploma in computer science and I'll go on to get a bachelors degree that'd be roughly around 5 years looking at my use case being not that intense would you suggest I buy the m3 base model or should I go with an windows laptop instead

There's nothing "Pro" about 8GBs of RAM since at least 2014. The last PC I built with only 8GBs of RAM was in 2010.

which software does he use to to track fan rpm and temperatures?

Loving the tongue in cheek editing, Alex!

Although I still personally struggle with the idea of 8GB ram on a laptop $1500+, I completely agree with your conclusion. Re: how well macs depreciate and resale value ... I can see older but higher-speced macs reselling well, but do lower end macs also have that great a resell value? I imagine a M3 MBA 8gb model wouldn't resell as well in a few years.

Can you do the same with 16GB model?

I bought the 13" M1 base model (8/256) during my final year in Computer Science. It was a huge upgrade over my Lenovo Ideapad s340 which had a 1TB HDD (I upgraded it with a 512GB SSD) and 8GB RAM. I definitely enjoyed the upgrade but recently when I've had to run 3 or more simulators and multiple Node servers I've been able to easily max out the RAM. I think 16 should be a minimum for devs.

Hey! Can you please make videos on how M3 handles Premiere Pro and After Effects compared to Windows laptop? I love your objective comparison videos.

What are good options for an app to measure the temperature inside the MacBook Air?

How long is the battery life with the fan constantly running ?

I went with the 8 GB base model simply because I know this year for some personal reasons I'm not going to work that intensively with my machine and not going to push it that far anyways, until I need to, then I will buy whatever the new model they lunch and max it out.

awesome please could you do the same kind of test for other modal and end result which one is best for no-lag high performance development

i'm on a budget , i need the cheapest mac for work, i have found a mac mini M2 with 24gb ram and 265gb of ram and of course i will add an external ssd , so you think the machine will do fine for android and ios dev >?

Great video, I have a doubt and would be happy if you can help me. I'm a Fortnite Player, I would like to know if is possible to play fornite on Macbook M3, or even if is possible to play through Windows on VM as you are using on this video. Thanks

Hi Alex This is an off-topic question. What’s your primary machine as a .net developer? Mac or windows?

if someone's confused like me on 8GB and 16GB, i bought a m2 air 8 gb for my development, but, i was very wrong for my decision, yes it worked well but, it was lagging in many places. 8gb will never be enough for development, its better to go for 16gb always, i sold my laptop after using for 5 months and also had to work with minimal apps open, so, i upgraded to 18gb m3 Pro. And after that life changed :D

Where is the site you use to sell your MacBooks? 💻

what if you kept your MacBook running, but except waiting for the system automatic fan to kick in, you're going to set it to max speed the whole time? (not related to video, just a video idea)

I am gonna buy it mostly for word excel and intensive hdr 4k movie viewing? Is the 8gb enuf?

Hey bro can u help, im planning to buy 15 inch m2 8/512 or mbp14inch m3 base 8/512 for starting dev work as python backend jun. in my country i cannot find the models with 16gb of ram. Ones with 16 is overpriced af

I'll keep my Legion 9i with a 4090 and 64GB ... I can do anything and not worry about "do I need" or "is it enough".

I loved the video! Thank you. Learned a ton! xo

Hi, which program do you use tu view your temperature and RPM in the menu bar?

Hello Alex, I like yr videos and sense of humor. May I ask if u have done review for the mini PC u have on yr desk? I 'm looking to buy one but in a question should I use cheaper laptop instead of mini PC?

I am using 8gb M1 mac pro for last year as work machine for flutter development. Works fine for me, I have no issues at all with emulator and simulator, android studio and other programs. Swap file are huge, but I don't care much. My company want to change machines to 16gb M3 macs, so I waiting for replace now :D

I like the tune at the end

I am the demographic for the macbook air 8gb lol. i just need it for every day use/ light gaming... (very light) its perfect for me, and i know it will last YEARS!

Paid 800 for my Lenovo with Gpu, 1tb SSD and 16gb of ram new. Installed Ubuntu. Had good use of it as web dev and better system. Sold it for 500. Got new Lenovo. For MacBook I would have to pay 1800 and sell for 1200. Better screen and battery on MacBook, but would cost me double the money over 2 years. Lenovo model I had was Ideapad pro 16. Base models of apple macs are keeping value well but the more expensive ones are not.

Is possible to use mac m1 or m2 for working and gaming

I'm front-end developer for 1.5 years(job, not pet projects). Bought my first Mac a half year ago for work. I'm using Air M2 8gb for web and mobile development. 90% of time it is enough. If you are starting programming journey moast of the time you don't need M3 Max 64gb. Don't spend money if you are not sure.

I started using apple products due to how tired I was being vulnerable with windows and having to micromanage all the silent process behind my knowledge making the pc slow. Now a Mac user I must say that as data scientist and AI dev I am decoupling from the MS environment. Every technology tree has pros and cons, my recommendation is to spend a bit more on memory or use an external memory for your OS , that will eliminate the abuse of the OS on the hard drive.

My experience, it's definitely not enough. The moment I start using docker, firefox browser, visual code (worse if jetbrain rider) , performance start crawling on my 8gb M1 macmini. Memory utilization already peaking red lines. In my opinion 32 GB is the minimum for developers. I have the 2020 MacBook pro 16" with 32GB from work and it's still power horse for all of my development workflow.

Yup, i have a MBA 15 M2 and I thought it would be enough for my angular development environment and it kind of is ... but once I start my docker server or just anything else "heavy", its struggles definitely 16GB has to be the new minimum

I'm more than satisfied with my 16'' Macbook Pro M1 Pro, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD

What would be required to run windows for x64 development with some level of performance? how much memory? and does X64 development even work in ARM version of windows?

8gb is the weak link with my m1. Hope to jump to a pro.

My M2 Max with 96GB Ram does not seem to have these issues ... 🤔 Giving 40GB to Windows Allows me to run Studio and Rider at the same time with zero lag, which was my plan when I bought it.

Hey Alex. Big fan of the videos. I’m thinking of getting a m3 MacBook Pro 8gb. I usually have about 20 chrome tabs + and IDE for code + notes + a couple of light applications at the same time. Will this be a good purchase for me?

What developer is buying base model laptops?

Immense battery life for the pro? My M1 lasts around 6 hours. MBA lasts way more and much lighter. I just wish Apple would put a decent screen on it so I can replace my Pro with MBA.

can it run LLM ai models or do standard diffusion?

I have a 8gb m1 air that I use for development when I'm traveling. As you mentioned it is perfect for most tasks and I do enjoy using it, but as soon as you need virtualization (windows/android/...) it's rough. I have to do tricks like doing 80% of the mobile cross-development on iOS and using a physical Android for the rest, remoting into a cloud Windows PC, etc.

H! I like your videos i never had an apple product before. And i am just aboute start to learn mobil dev on flutter...... can u tell me something aboute M2 pro 14' 16gb ram and 512 ssd is a good choice to start with and it will be enough for everithing ?

I am a doctor was thinking of getting 8gb m3 .. will it be enough! Things i will be doing is power point,taking notes ,and some web browsing( i have at least 10 tabs open)???

Alex what software is that you are using for coding

Brasil dev: I have a base 14-inch MacBook Pro m2 pro, 16gb ram and 512gb hd. I previously had the 8gb m1 13 pro, and I couldn't develop in c#/unity on it. I don't even do 3D, but even just opening Unity and Rider would make it slow and sometimes crash. So I don't recommend the 8gb to anyone who develops software, not even for web development because I also tested it and had a bad experience with 8gb. The tests disregard apps opened for several hours and tabs opened in browsers, IDEs. If your budget only allows for a base Mac mini, buy it and be happy. The important thing is to get started. I highly recommend 16gb of ram, much more than 512gb of HD, even though I know that after installing everything I use, I use about 250gb.

the docker container argument definitely holds on any computer.

As a devops/sre i need minimum 32gig. And quite often i find myself in a situation then i have 20gb+ of swap used on my m1 max mp pro with 32gb ram. BTW i never seen less than 98% of ssd life left on any of my macbooks. Currently im looking to buy micropc with linux for VMs/docker.

My spare MacBook that I only use with Neovim and serious zig development has 8gb, and never needs to reach for swap. Plenty of room.

I love to see you do the exact same thing using your Macbook Air 24 gb model. I bet it would be fine for that week. But love to know for sure.

I feel like something you missed is that most of apple’s sales are through other retailers like best buy, and at those places, getting a 16gb model is even more absurd. For example BB has 8gb models for the m2 air at $850 on sale, and the cheapest 16gb model is $1300 on sale. So for most people don’t even have the option unless they want to shell out $450+

Should I go for the 24GB RAM M3 MacBook Air instead? As a Developer

i develop in both windows and linux (windows 10 and debian), and i was using 8 gigs of ram as of recent on a 1185G7 (cheaped out on ram) and my oh my was it painful. all i remember was the pagefile being thrashed profusely when compiling or running a kvm under debian. upgraded to 32 gigs and it was legit a night and day difference(i even disabled my pagefile in windows and i can still run it withour maxing it out) id say minimum would be 16, especially with how bloated things are getting. dont skimp out on ram.

what apple did 4 years ago with the 8G M1 is simply amazing, for a lot of ppl out there it is still "sufficient", but I won't bet my money on an 8G M3(and PRO) hopping it will last for another 4 years. when M4 (or M5) comes out with 16G base, the M3( and PRO) 8G won't hold the value as good as the M2/1 had.

i had to return my m3 8 gb mbp 14 after a few days because even using just safari i could tell when it started using swap by looking at the screen. it started lagging and screen refresh rate taking a plunge. idk why they did that. awesome machine but no way to push it.

Hey Alex, I had a suggestion. Why don't you compare the M2 Air 16gb 256gb variant with the M3 Air 8gb 256gb variant. They cost the exact same.

it gave me sleepless nights when choosing my new m3 a couple of weeks ago. Apple is a genius salesman. When looking at all the options they gave to us, you can fall into their matrix that you can not solve ( if you have a very tight budget), no matter what option you choose there will be something missing or not enough unless you get the highest product they provide. It is even worse for your decision when you go deep down into tech reviews, topics, blogs ... 8GB RAM is fine for developers if only working with no any kind of virtual machine (container docker is considered too?) . 16/18 GB RAM is far enough for you, even when you work on multitasking full-stack developer, your machine only sweats when it runs VM Window, but why you should pay 500$ more for 36gb ram instead of building a PC window case with same money (you even can play some decent AAA games with Full HD 60 FPS), not to mention if you already have a pc window. For my workflow, in sporadic cases, requires me to touch on Windows OS, so i can use my own pc when it needs This is my opinion, for the one who intends to use your MacBook for a decade, trust me you will replace it soon (you can not stuck in the same tech for too long), why do you have to choose 36 GB or more RAM right now when you will buy a new one in the next couple of years, just buy enough and upgrade late. Ps: i saw a lot of people talk about using swap kill SSD, can you make a topic about this, Alex!

It's the one screen only thats frustrating me. Do you have any work arounds. (I have a 16gig and 1tb HD Macbook pro M3) and loving it so far.

Hey Alex, love your videos, could you do a competition between a windows snapdragon VS a MAC air? Thanks man keep it going !

Except Lenovo's Thinkpad lines also have relatively good re-sale values, and they are developer friendly running in Windows. But used Apple products demand high prices 4sure.

I’ve still got my M1 MacBook Air. I mostly do Xcode, Python 3, and Xojo for programming and Pages for reading the occasional MS Word document. 😅