Great article! I have, (probably pointlessly & stupidly), spent hours replying to inane questions & answers on Quora and other forums that are aimed at nothing other than running down Apple & their 'ecosystem'. I wish I could have written what I've just read in reply to many of them. However, even then, I suspect it would have only satisfied the open-minded and seriously interested.

The one thing that does continually puzzle me is the question of RAM.

I have a 2011 17" MacBook Pro that I still use daily & regard as one of the best machines I've ever owned. It has 16gb RAM a 128gb SSD and an additional 1TB drive in place of the original Superdrive. I also have a 2012 iMac with 1.2 TB Fusion drive and, again, 16gb RAM.

I am neither developer nor coder though I have a very basic grasp of what is what and used to write reasonable html scripts and made many useful applications with the largely forgotten Hypercard, which incidentally also gave me an understanding that translated well into learning about relational databases in the days when consumer products were largely of a flat file nature.

I apologise, I'm raving/reminiscing, please excuse me. The point about RAM is that, particularly on the iMac, (though it does happen on both), I often get warnings that I'm running out of RAM, despite the 16gb on each machine.

I no longer do even the relatively intense database work that I used to do for I'm 73 and retired. I keep my machines clean and virus and malware free & don't pirate software or download free applications other than from genuine open source developers with what I consider to be a valid FOSS license.

My main use now is with word-processing, occasional photographic work, (but not intensive graphics use), playing music, and building and maintaining web sites. Other than that, I write and contribute to many online forums & discussion groups.

So, finally, he says at last, I don't understand why I continually read that 4gb or 8gb is enough RAM or why Apple and other manufacturers continue to produce machines with so little memory. To me, it seems clearly no longer enough for other than the most basic use - and in my case not even for that.

The alternative seems to me that I must be doing something that is very poor practice or that both of my computers have some terrible flaw - and I don't believe that, having run various tools, such as CleanMyMac, Techtool Pro and Drive Genius, as well as Apple's own utilities to check them out and always coming up with a clean bill of health.

I offer one more apology and that is for my making this lengthy comment if anyone feels it is not appropriate here. I do so only because I believe that those here are those with both fondness & understanding of Mac computers and the computer environment, at least for consumers, generally and in the hope that I may get some feedback that provides some clues for me as to what might cause my apparently different viewpoint to almost all others that I read.