> 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 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.