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Operating systems should being pointing fingers at egregiously heavy apps. It’s not perfect but the battery menu on macOS pointing out apps consuming a lot of

Operating systems should being pointing fingers at egregiously heavy apps. It’s not perfect but the battery menu on macOS pointing out apps consuming a lot of energy has inspired a good amount of efficiency work for macOS ports of things because users see it and gripe at developers about it. I would like to see that taken a step further. Something like the system showing a notification banner saying something to the effect of, “BadApp is consuming excessive amounts of energy. Quitting it will increase your battery life by approximately 3 hours and 15 minutes.” I believe quantifying the loss that the user is suffering as a result of the developer’s laziness will go a long way to inspire displeasure in users, who will then apply pressure on developers to fix it and opens up space for competitors who sell themselves with better efficiency.

fabiospampinato 5y ago
I think this is a great point. The delta in performance must be visible for people to even care about, and that's not obvious even for technical people (if something takes 15ms or 0.15ms to render the difference is massive, but probably you can't even perceive it with your eyes). Energy usage is a proxy for that that anybody can understand, and care about on a portable machine.
kvark 5y ago
Power optimization doesn’t improve memory footprint. In fact, it can do the opposite and increase memory allocation. Think tradeoffs between memory and processing, e.g. caching of intermediate results.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  Sure, but that’s just a single facet of optimization, and I think it could be argued that just requiring developers to take a closer look at their usage could in many cases free up enough memory to cancel out intentional increases memory usage, meaning in many cases memory usage is nearly unchanged while other facets of performance are improved. It’s still an overall win.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  That's a corner case. 99% of bloated software is just bloated.
zaps 5y ago
SDD—Shame-Driven Development. I like it.

fabiospampinato 5y ago

I think this is a great point. The delta in performance must be visible for people to even care about, and that's not obvious even for technical people (if something takes 15ms or 0.15ms to render the difference is massive, but probably you can't even perceive it with your eyes). Energy usage is a proxy for that that anybody can understand, and care about on a portable machine.

kvark 5y ago

Power optimization doesn’t improve memory footprint. In fact, it can do the opposite and increase memory allocation. Think tradeoffs between memory and processing, e.g. caching of intermediate results.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
Sure, but that’s just a single facet of optimization, and I think it could be argued that just requiring developers to take a closer look at their usage could in many cases free up enough memory to cancel out intentional increases memory usage, meaning in many cases memory usage is nearly unchanged while other facets of performance are improved. It’s still an overall win.
goodpoint 5y ago
That's a corner case. 99% of bloated software is just bloated.

zaps 5y ago

SDD—Shame-Driven Development. I like it.