This week’s new Macs all had one thing in common: a minimum of 16GB of RAM. That was true of the new Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, and iMac, which were all refreshed with M4 processors this week. The MacBook Air was refreshed to start at 16GB of RAM, too, even though it didn’t get a bump up to the M4 chip. The change brings an end to the long-running era of 8GB of RAM as the default on consumer-grade Macs.
Apple had transitioned most of its Macs to 8GB of RAM by 2016. But now, after eight years, that quantity feels increasingly insufficient. Reviewers have criticized the entry-level RAM as limited since at least 2022. Local AI features like Apple Intelligence, which need constant RAM to work, have only accentuated the need to change things.
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