That Surface has 16GB RAM though.
> Your new MacBook Neo. Just the way you want it[sic]. 13-inch MacBook Neo in Indigo A18 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine Apple Intelligence Footnote ※
8GB unified memory
256GB SSD storage
U.S. English Magic Keyboard with Lock Key
20W USB‑C Power Adapter
Two USB-C ports, 3.5 mm headphone jack
Support for one external display
> 8 GB unified memory is brand-new e-waste today. macOS 26 makes it even worse.
One reason Apple can get away with 8 GB of RAM is their SoC does realtime compression of data in RAM and they use high bandwidth memory; the A19 Pro RAM bandwidth is 60 GB/s. This enables them to treat the SSD like an L3 cache.
It's nearly 5 years since the M1 was released; I suspect Apple has gotten really good with their RAM > compression > SSD system since then.
I'm going to give Apple the benefit of the doubt here until proven otherwise. I can't see them releasing something with a terrible user experience as it would cause a lot of reputational harm.
> I can't see them releasing something with a terrible user experience
I see you haven't upgraded to Tahoe yet!
I don't know what apps you run, but I'm typing this from an M2 Mac with 8 GB, running Tahoe. Performance is fine. It's always been fine.