4 ms·

I've experienced these UI hangs. It's the OS reacting poorly to memory pressure.

by wl 10y ago

bsdetector 10y ago
Seen this on a family member's Mac. It ground to a halt in exactly the same way computers have for ages when too much virtual memory is being used. I think what's happened is that every single developer at Apple has SSDs on their work and home computers so they get wasteful with memory. When iPhoto needs 150% memory to update an index you're not even going to notice that with an SSD, but with an HDD the system can freeze up. This will eventually resolve itself once every computer has a SSD, but in the meantime the existing Macs with HDDs will be a mess.
- wl 10y ago
  I see memory pressure cause even SSD-equipped Macs grind to a halt in this way.
acdha 10y ago
Parts of the UI hanging can be memory pressure (or, at least in the past, things like network issues with e.g. LDAP or network home directories) but I've never seen that halt animations, mouse motion, or stop the clock from updating. I do agree that Apple needs to get better at I/O scheduling – even with an SSD the experience is less responsive than BeOS was on 90s PC hardware — but the animation loop has typically been a reliable diagnostic cue in my experience for distinguishing between swapping / disk failure and other issues.
- wl 10y ago
  > I've never seen that [memory pressure] halt animations, mouse motion, or stop the clock from updating. This is exactly what I've seen. If I catch it early enough and can get the UI to respond to me tabbing to the terminal, I can kill Safari's web content processes or whatever it is that's leaking memory and it goes away.
  - eridius 10y ago
    The only thing I've seen stop the clock (besides SystemUIServer itself hanging) is a forkbomb. But even that didn't stop the cursor. If the cursor is stopping, that indicates something more serious is going on.

4 ms·

I've experienced these UI hangs. It's the OS reacting poorly to memory pressure.

by wl 10y ago

I've experienced these UI hangs. It's the OS reacting poorly to memory pressure.

bsdetector 10y ago
Seen this on a family member's Mac. It ground to a halt in exactly the same way computers have for ages when too much virtual memory is being used. I think what's happened is that every single developer at Apple has SSDs on their work and home computers so they get wasteful with memory. When iPhoto needs 150% memory to update an index you're not even going to notice that with an SSD, but with an HDD the system can freeze up. This will eventually resolve itself once every computer has a SSD, but in the meantime the existing Macs with HDDs will be a mess.
- wl 10y ago
  I see memory pressure cause even SSD-equipped Macs grind to a halt in this way.
acdha 10y ago
Parts of the UI hanging can be memory pressure (or, at least in the past, things like network issues with e.g. LDAP or network home directories) but I've never seen that halt animations, mouse motion, or stop the clock from updating. I do agree that Apple needs to get better at I/O scheduling – even with an SSD the experience is less responsive than BeOS was on 90s PC hardware — but the animation loop has typically been a reliable diagnostic cue in my experience for distinguishing between swapping / disk failure and other issues.
- wl 10y ago
  > I've never seen that [memory pressure] halt animations, mouse motion, or stop the clock from updating. This is exactly what I've seen. If I catch it early enough and can get the UI to respond to me tabbing to the terminal, I can kill Safari's web content processes or whatever it is that's leaking memory and it goes away.
  - eridius 10y ago
    The only thing I've seen stop the clock (besides SystemUIServer itself hanging) is a forkbomb. But even that didn't stop the cursor. If the cursor is stopping, that indicates something more serious is going on.