[keep_reading]

The magic fairy dust is "really fast NVME" and "really low latency memory access" which for most users makes the 8GB give a performance comparable to slower 16GB memory (and not need to read from disk).

That's about it. If you're doing anything other than regular web browsing and word processing it's not going to be the same as having 16GB. But I'm certain the average Mac user is not a developer, video editor, or other power user.

Like it or not, tech nerds are not the average consumer of Apple hardware.