If i was to buy a new MacBook today it would definitely be the 13" Air or Pro. It's a cool device, but not for anyone doing serious dev work.
The DO-IT-ALL-USB-C might be a neat idea, but it practice it means that i have to carry a ton of (expensive!) adapters around with me for the next few years. And then there is performance. I can live with 1,5GHz /w Turbo or whatever.... but 1,1GHz? That is painful.
OS X is pretty good about sharing memory, so 8 GB is fine. I routinely run about 15-20 Apps on my MacBook Air, including a VMware instance with Windows XP, Aperture, Google Earth, Excel/Word/Powerpoint/Outlook/Mail.app.
The only people who require more than 8 GB on OS X are those who have Apps that specially require a lot of memory to perform - Image Processing, Databases, etc...
I used to be in the "Buy as much memory as you can afford" - but I really would never buy more than 8 GB on a Mac (with the caveat about memory hungry apps above)
It got a lot better in Mavericks with compression and better subsystems, but I'm sorry, I still push the limits with 16GB. 8 isn't enough for OSX at this point.
Ironically - I'm still on 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) - My system is rock solid, no longer kernel faults, and I rarely have to reboot it more than once every two-three weeks because of a system hang.
Only specialists, or people with massive, massive data sets require more than 8 GB on OS X - I push my system really, really hard, and I rarely (if ever?) come close to maxing out memory.
This isn't to say there isn't a subset of people who can make do with more than 8 GB - but 95%+ of the average knowledge worker running the Office Apps, Google Earth, Safari, etc... will be fine for several years with that much memory.
Correct, 95% of the average knowledge worker will be fine with 8GB, but only 5% of the skilled knowledge workers who run specialized software, development stacks, VMs, etc.
In a software company I wouldn't stick anyone with an 8GB mac. But then, that is a specialist application technically.
I just bought a 32GB iMac because my Air with 8GB was sluggish with Unity3d and Flash (needed for work). I'm glad I did. This is the best system I've ever owned.
Buy as much as you can afford. If you expect to be using this laptop in 4-5 years time, the OSX and applications of that era will probably only perform well on >8GB RAM.
That used to be the theory - but four years now, and I've been fine with 8 GB, more than fine. I wouldn't recommend purchasing more right now - Unless you have special requirements (Running Oracle, or some intense image management/CAD system/Development platform) - Wait for the next round of upgrades in 5 years to see if more than 8 GB is needed - I'm guessing it probably won't be even then.
Thanks for the comment. Looking to buy 8gb soon, but it's disheartening to hear people call it sluggish or saying they're pushing 16gb let alone 8.
Hell I don't know how the people with 4 do it! In any case it's always useful to hear what people are actually doing. Can't imagine pushing 16gb when doing some basic front end work for example.
4 GB was fine on my previous 2011 MacBook air except when I started up my VMware Windows XP machine - then I had to shut down a few other applications. Other than that - the basic 20 apps that I usually have running, including Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook, Mail.app, Safari, Google Earth, and even a few custom ones, like GNS3/Dynamips, a Cisco Router Hypervisor/Simulator that I would run networks with 8-10 Cisco 7206 routers on, all ran just fine on 4 GB - and, once again, I have never, under any scenario, had memory pressure on my Mid 2013 8 GB MacBook Air.
What I've noticed, is that some apps, when left on my Windows 7 system, Like google earth, seem to eat a lot of memory, and then when I come back to them - I'm either getting a "Low memory warning", or I have to wait for everything to swap back in. For whatever reason, under OS X 10.8.x, this has never been an issue.
Honestly though - a lot (most?) of it probably has to do with flash drives - they make everything feel just so much more nimble.
The DO-IT-ALL-USB-C might be a neat idea, but it practice it means that i have to carry a ton of (expensive!) adapters around with me for the next few years. And then there is performance. I can live with 1,5GHz /w Turbo or whatever.... but 1,1GHz? That is painful.