> macOS 15 uses ~5GB on startup without any app open. I'd be swapping all the time on 8GB of RAM.
I have an older 8GB MacBook I use for testing. It’s actually fine for normal use with a web browser, Visual Studio Code, Slack, and Spotify running. You’d think it would be an unusable mess from the way some people talk about RAM, but modern OSes are good and swapping lesser used things to the SSD is fast.
Your OS may show 5GB used, but that doesn’t mean all 5GB need to be active in RAM all the time. Letting the OS swap rarely used things out to the SSD is fine.
> Letting the OS swap rarely used things out to the SSD is fine.
if this is the philisophy of osx and apple in general i dare not ask followup questions :)