To be fair, M-series Macs are pretty insanely efficient with memory. Unless you’ve actually used one extensively, I can understand the attitudes here…BUT:

I’ve done broadcast animation for many years, and back in ‘21 delivered an entire season of info/explainer-type pieces for a network show — using Motion, Cinema 4D, and After Effects (+ Ai and Ps) — all of it running on a base-level, first-gen M1 Mini (8/256). Workflow was fast and smooth; even left memory-pig apps running in the background most of the time…not one hiccup. Oh, and everything was delivered in 4k.

So 8gb actually is plenty for most folks…even professionals doing some heavy lifting. Sure I’d go for 16 next one, but damn I was/am still impressed. (Maybe it sucks for gaming, I don’t do that so have no clue).

It doesn’t matter how ‘insanely efficient’ they are. If your tasks need to use more than 8Gb of memory you are going to run out and start swapping to disk.

8gb worth of data is not heavy lifting for professional use.

It mostly just shows how crazy fast modern SSDs are that they can do swap duties with performance that is acceptable to many people.