Deals: Apple's 24-Inch iMac Hits Record Low Prices at Up to $150 Off

Just be sure not to buy an 8GB M1 Mac. While they work for web browsing (limited tabs) and text edit, as soon as your spin up a serious multimedia app (photo or video), the game is up. 8GB as shared memory for CPU and GPU is a dead end, like the old 2GB and 4GB i5 machines.

Do you own or regularly use an 8GB M1 Mac?

I have two and they function fine and beyond the limits you describe.

Just be sure not to buy an 8GB M1 Mac. While they work for web browsing (limited tabs) and text edit, as soon as your spin up a serious multimedia app (photo or video), the game is up. 8GB as shared memory for CPU and GPU is a dead end, like the old 2GB and 4GB i5 machines.

16GB is okay for a single multimedia application open at a time with some small helper applications and a web browser. Or of course and office machine. The M1 unified memory architecture with starts to really breathe at 32GB.

My 8GB M1 MacBook Air runs just fine..

Just be sure not to buy an 8GB M1 Mac. While they work for web browsing (limited tabs) and text edit, as soon as your spin up a serious multimedia app (photo or video), the game is up. 8GB as shared memory for CPU and GPU is a dead end, like the old 2GB and 4GB i5 machines.

16GB is okay for a single multimedia application open at a time with some small helper applications and a web browser. Or of course and office machine. The M1 unified memory architecture with starts to really breathe at 32GB.

This comment is without merit.

Professional software developer here. The only scenario where I've seen any slow-down whatsoever is when I attempt to run Docker which, on a mac, requires spinning up a VM and just gobbles up RAM. EVERYTHING ELSE including my multimedia hobbies run fantastic.

I own both an 8GB M1 iMac and a 16GB M1 Pro and observe almost no difference whatsoever in terms of the user experience. Only when I'm rendering out long running tasks does the M1 Pro exhibit a meaningful difference.

YMMV with heavy multimedia workloads that require Real Time performance, but those people aren't making decisions based on comments in a message board.

Just be sure not to buy an 8GB M1 Mac. While they work for web browsing (limited tabs) and text edit, as soon as your spin up a serious multimedia app (photo or video), the game is up. 8GB as shared memory for CPU and GPU is a dead end, like the old 2GB and 4GB i5 machines.

16GB is okay for a single multimedia application open at a time with some small helper applications and a web browser. Or of course and office machine. The M1 unified memory architecture with starts to really breathe at 32GB.

That has not been my experience on an M1 MacBook Pro with 8 GB unified memory. I’m a software developer and I have yet to see any serious performance issues. I often have apps running in NodeJS and .NET in the background at the same time without any issues.

I always keep at least 60% of the flash storage free for the inevitable virtual memory needs, and to extend the usable life of the machine.

Full fledged 4.5k computer: $1,199. 5K screen only: $1,599.
…if only they brought back target display mode!

Keep in mind, base model not only has fewer ports and active GPU cores, but also lacks the second cooling fan (for sustained cpu load).