So something happened when we published our MacBook Neo review (spoiler alert: it’s very good). Outside of those asking “bUt DoEs It RuN LiNuX” (I see you), a lot of folks looked at the amount of system memory and laughed.
“Don’t do 8GB of RAM…we aren’t living in 2010,” one commenter said. “8GB of non upgradeable RAM in 2026 is a joke,” another balked. All very fair points…if this were a Windows laptop. But it’s not, and this is a very different situation — a breakthrough in achieving affordability through ruthless optimization of RAM usage.
So much so, in fact, that in my own testing, I found that a Windows 11 laptop could use nearly 4X more RAM for the same set of tasks as a MacBook Neo does. What is causing this? And will Microsoft see this as a wake-up call given the impending RAM price crisis killing affordability?
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To answer this, I have to get a bit geeky here and tell you about the difference between RAM on a Windows 11 laptop and unified memory on a MacBook. Put simply, it’s not about how much you have, it’s about how it’s used.
MacBook Neo vs Windows PCs: By the numbers
I set up a simple test. On both the MacBook Neo (with 8GB of unified memory) and the Asus ProArt GoPro Edition (with 128GB of RAM…yes this is a huge mismatch), I ran the following:
- Google Chrome with 20 tabs — one of them a 4K YouTube video stream and memory saver turned off.
- Apple Music with music playing
- Adobe Photoshop
And then we ran the numbers to see just how much memory each of them ate up, and the difference on paper is stark.
|
Laptop |
MacBook Neo |
Asus ProArt GoPro Edition |
|---|---|---|
|
Google Chrome + 20 Tabs RAM usage |
1.67 GB |
4.76 GB |
|
Adobe Photoshop RAM usage |
3.86 GB |
3.85 GB |
|
Apple Music RAM usage |
157.6 MB |
239.1 MB |
|
System memory usage TOTAL |
7.24 GB |
27.1 GB |
Of course, the total memory usage is complicated to explain in terms of the way each treats background tasks (more on that in a minute). But even on an app-by-app basis, outside of Photoshop munching up roughly the same amount of memory, Chrome is virtually twice as consuming on Windows compared to macOS and Apple Music being very much the same!
So what’s going on here? Let me break it down.
RAM vs Unified Memory explained using pizza
I’ve got a slice next to me, and my explanation of M5 Pro and M5 Max with tasty ‘za did well. So let’s go back to the well! To explain the different philosophies, think of them as two different pizza parties.
The Windows party is a full blown two-table buffet (a system RAM table and a VRAM table) — throwing all the pizzas into the oven and having them available. Even if nobody is eating them, they’re ready if you suddenly get a craving.
Windows 11 is designed to fill your RAM as much as possible to speed up the UI — looking at your habits and preloading parts of your apps into the RAM before you click them. You’ll often notice this caching trap in the Task Manager with a lot of “In Use” apps. A lot of these you’re not actually using, but the OS has given it a portion of RAM to ensure they open fast.
Put simply, it looks like you’ve “used” all the pizza but in reality, half of it is sitting there just in case. Then, there’s the background services — the number of which will depend on a lot of different things like what you have installed and whatnot. But as a baseline, Windows 11 will typically use around 3-4GB of RAM when idle (vs the 1.5-2GB of macOS).
Empty pizza boxes are being left on the table until that table is literally falling over, because Microsoft is thinking someone may want to lick the grease later (that’s the caching part).
Unified memory, unlike a Windows PC, gives Apple Silicon and macOS control to delegate chunks of the same pool of memory to different tasks.
Meanwhile, there’s the MacBook Neo party: the just-in-time kitchen. The chef only serves exactly what you’re chewing on the table — having complete control over the distribution of pizza, while having extra slices in a high-speed warming drawer ready to serve, rather than just leaving it on the table.
Unified memory, unlike a Windows PC, gives Apple Silicon and macOS control to delegate chunks of the same pool of memory to different tasks. There is a level of caching on here (otherwise your computer would feel like it’s from 2005). But it treats caching differently like a single fast conveyer belt of stuff you need rather than a warehouse of items you may refer back to.
So what you’re left with is a magical chef who is literally living inside the oven — no need for extra boxes, as they can just grab a slice the second it’s cooked and shove it in your mouth. Oh and that messy table? The MacBook Neo is a neat freak. The moment a slice is finished, the chef will recycle that plate straight away and give it to someone else.
Pizza party representation
Of course, there are some other things going on in the background here, such as macOS’ legendarily aggressive RAM compression, or going into more detail about reserving buffers of RAM on Windows 11 laptops. But the pizza principle is sound.
And what that means you’ll get is a Task Manager/Activity Monitor reading that seems way over the top. I mean I was floored when I saw a 4x difference (more on that in a second), but there’s an explanation to it.
You see, with the way Apple Silicon handles unified memory means that you’ll only see what is actively being used in the Activity Monitor (only the pizza currently inside people’s mouths), whereas in Windows 11 Task Manager, you’ll see the pizza, the boxes, the napkins, and the just-in-case leftovers.
Bottom line: It’s a bad-faith argument
So, before Windows fans come at me in the comments, I do need to make it clear. While the numbers do tell this story, they miss a whole other side where the Windows 11 way of doing this does beat the MacBook Neo handsomely:
- Gaming: Having a dedicated GPU is always going to reign supreme over a MacBook’s capability to game.
- Wasteful can be good sometimes: Having apps cached like this makes Windows 11 more prone to throw RAM at background projects so it never has to touch the SSD. Whereas macOS’s tendency to compress data ruthlessly is actually a performance penalty.
Put simply, Windows pays a heavier RAM tax so that when you click on a window, it’s already rendered and ready. And while MacBook Neo is a dream machine for minimalism, Windows 11’s hoarding techniques make it better for power users.
However, that is not to say that Microsoft can’t learn a thing or two here from the numbers. The biggest tax being paid is some of those stupidly massive background tasks, and efficiencies have to be made — especially for machines with far less memory than the one I used to run this test.
Because simply saying “lol 8GB of RAM is not enough” is completely missing the point when you’d struggle with what I just did even on a machine with 4x the amount of memory. The idea of a budget laptop was something that Windows 11 dominated — now Apple has pulled a bright green tank onto its front lawn.
The risk is significant. Take action now.
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