Apple

Good day to all of you, the time has come to retire my mid 2012 MBP as my main machine. For context, it is a 13" 2.9GHz i7 model, with 16 GB of RAM, 4 TB of storage from an HDD/SSD combo with a DataDoubler, and it's been an overall great machine. However, it is beginning to have trouble turning on more regularly. It will power off and go unresponsive until I open it up and pull the battery. This machine has been outstanding to me over the years, except for this problem. I am looking at a Macbook Air 15", or the 14" Macbook Pro. I can get a Macbook Air 15" with M3, 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB SSD, and in Midnight for $1699 locally. Or I can get a Macbook Pro 14" with M3 Pro, 18 GB RAM, and a 512 GB SSD for $1799. I am concerned about the lock-in with memory on the new Macs. It is very much like an iPad in that I have to buy everything exactly like I want it, and that's it. Is 16 GB or 18 GB of RAM enough to last me several years? I know Apple says that RAM on their new devices isn't the same as normal RAM, but I struggle with that assertion. Use cases are various Office apps, a ton of Excel work, Photoshop, some video editing with iMovie, media conversion with Handbrake, maybe some Parallels Windows 11 work since there are some apps that still are Windows only. And I may have to use QEMU for this task, we'll have to see. I'm no stranger to virtualization.

Next, a similar question, I am looking at using an M2 Mini as a backup NAS/TimeMachine target with external disks (replacing my ancient TimeCapsule), an iPhoto (Photos) backup target, iTunes/videos/music host, migrate some Docker containers from Raspberry Pis, Android backup target, and an AirMessage host so that I can talk to family easier on Android. The only Mac Minis I can find locally are 8GB RAM. Similar to above, this bothers me. Is 8GB enough for what's gonna be a machine thrown in a closet and let to run all these tasks? I had an Intel mini (early 2009?) doing similar tasks years ago, but a power surge got it and i never replaced it.

Thank you for your time.