7 ms·

Hidden gems in Mac OS X

345 points by ahalan 15y ago

mcav 15y ago
Is there anything that lets you view how much network _bandwidth_ an application is using? I've looked before with no luck.
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  On linux there's nethogs. http://nethogs.sourceforge.net/ http://nethogs.sourceforge.net/ Apparently there's ntop which works on all platforms and has all kinds of snazzy features but I've never tried it personally. http://www.ntop.org/products/ntop/ http://www.ntop.org/products/ntop/
- kalleboo 15y ago
  Since Lion, nettop ships with the system. Hit d to switch to delta instead of total usage, p for human-readable numbers, and left arrow to collapse into process names.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryduh 15y ago
    Awesome tip. Thanks!!!
- wesley 15y ago
  There's an app for that, http://rubbernetapp.com http://rubbernetapp.com (not free)
- sabon 15y ago
  iStat pro widget gives you this info (and much more). Once installed, one key press (F4) and you've got all the info you need.
atopuzov 15y ago
Nice one. Getting to know DTrace was on my todo list for the next few moths.
timc3 15y ago
Excellent list, one of those things that I keep coming back to hacker news for.
euroclydon 15y ago
One of the features that differentiated Macs from Windows early on for me was how they systemized PDFs. Not only could it read and write PDFs, it was eager to do so.
- tedmiston 15y ago
  It's really easy to create PDFs from Apple's built-in Quartz 2D drawing engine (of the Core Graphics framework). That probably has a lot to do with it.
  - rahoulb 15y ago
    And the reason for that is because NeXT used PostScript for rendering - use the same language for displaying on-screen as on paper. When NeXTStep became OSX PDF was used instead (I believe because of a bust up between Steve Jobs and Adobe over licensing)
    - euroclydon 15y ago
      OS9 seemed to have great PDF support if I remember. Is what you say the reason macs are preferred for desktop publishing?
      - rahoulb 15y ago
        It's going back a while but I believe it was the graphical nature of Macs, coupled with the LaserWriter printer that made DTP important for Macs. Which in turn prompted the use of Postscript in NeXTstep.
Terretta 15y ago
Not sure if it qualifies as a "hidden gem" in OS X itself, but the new Signature management in Preview, using the built in iSight to scan a handwritten sig off a sheet of paper, is an amazing time saver. // Number 8, bitesize.d, rocks.
- charlieok 15y ago
  This article is not like a lifehacker “10 neato things to be more productive on your mac” article. It's specifically about using DTrace to get detailed statistics on processes making system calls. It's also several months old :)
LeafStorm 15y ago
Honestly, so far none of these have been the major performance bottleneck on my Macbook. For me, it's been RAM. Even though I have 4 GB of RAM, I have at least 3 GB wired or active at any given time - Chrome alone takes up roughly 1 GB of it, with all its helper processes. But unfortunately I really have no idea how to bring my RAM usage down.
- yock 15y ago
  You don't really want to bring your RAM usage down. Unused RAM is a performance hit. Sure, some applications are hogs and that can result in a performance hit for background processes and task switching, but high RAM utilization is GOOD for performance, not bad.
  - spiffytech 15y ago
    High RAM utilization is only good when your RAM is topped off with cache and buffer use. It's bad when it's all consumed by program data that forces the OS to swap other running application stuff to disk, especially if you're using several programs at once.
    - sunkencity 15y ago
      why would all the memory of chrome be in RAM and other programs not? I suppose there must be lots of swapped data there too. Doesn't crome have a separate sub? process for each tab with not much shared between tabs? In looking for ways to free disk space on my SSD I find that the chrome ~Library/Cache can grow to insane proportions (5G?)
- larsberg 15y ago
  Agreed, particularly on my MacBook Air where ~1GB is reserved for the shared video memory. I have to close Firefox or Chrome if I want to do any development work (our research compiler is a bit of a memory hog) without having a process get swapped out. I would offer ridiculous gobs of money to upgrade to even 6GB.
brown9-2 15y ago
About "why is my Macbook fan so loud?", has anyone successfully attempted to clean out dust from inside the laptop to reduce the fan noise?
- dshep 15y ago
  I did on my older MacbookPro5,1. It didn't even seem like I dislodged much dust, but it made a huge difference. Now the fans don't go above 3-4000 rpm even with the cpu pegged, which is quiet. Before it would consistently spin the fan at max speed even with modest cpu use. This old beast is far quieter under load than the new MacBook Air 13" I had for a week and returned.
  - MobWalk 15y ago
    I'd suggest downloading smcFanControl. That's what I use on my MB Pro, and it works well. You can set different modes that will keep the fan at or below a certain RPM. If I'm gaming, I let it go up to 6200 rpm. If I'm not doing much (like now, just browsing on the internet and maybe running a couple other programs) I drop it to 3000rpm. That usually puts me around 45* C and keeps it nice and quiet. Then I've got a middle setting at about 4200rpm that makes some noise, but isn't quite as obnoxious as full throttle.
    - shearn89 15y ago
      +1 from me: smcFanControl is seriously handy if you do any sort of coding on a macbook. Was recently running a genetic algorithm on it and the app allowed me to bump the fan speed up to something ridiculous in order to keep the cpu at a comfortable temperature. I also tend to raise the speed if I'm watching flash video, since that's still ridiculously cpu intensive on a mac...
- eropple 15y ago
  Yup. Last time I opened it up (to replace the optical with a second SSD), I placed it electronics-down over open space (propped an edge against the table, held it up with a hand) and air-canned all the crap out of it.
vasco 15y ago
>> Why Unix? Mac OS X is Unix under the hood: the Darwin kernel Just beeing pedantic but I think Darwin is the operating system, not the kernel. The kernel is Mach 3.
- colinstrickland 15y ago
  Well if we're being pedants about it, then the kernel is XNU ( http://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-1699.24.23/ http://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-1699.24.23/ )
lysium 15y ago
I once tried to look into dtrace because I was missing strace from Linux. I gave up when I realized I had to learn a whole language just to do what strace did for me on Linux. Now I'm enlightened to see there is dtruss. It works different than strace and needs privileges, but I'm glad that I've found the strace alternative.
- Game_Ender 15y ago
  dtrace is not supposed to replace strace on Linux. It's allows you track and process all sorts of parameters of your operating system and it's programs. It's essentially a quick way to introspect into your application without tons of printf hacks, and get to the buttom of bugs and performance issues.
- lallysingh 15y ago
  The language is really just awk.
teeray 15y ago
I never knew about this tool--my mind has been blown. Thank you OP!

345 points by ahalan 15y ago

mcav 15y ago

Is there anything that lets you view how much network _bandwidth_ an application is using? I've looked before with no luck.

JonnieCache 15y ago
On linux there's nethogs. http://nethogs.sourceforge.net/ http://nethogs.sourceforge.net/ Apparently there's ntop which works on all platforms and has all kinds of snazzy features but I've never tried it personally. http://www.ntop.org/products/ntop/ http://www.ntop.org/products/ntop/
kalleboo 15y ago
Since Lion, nettop ships with the system. Hit d to switch to delta instead of total usage, p for human-readable numbers, and left arrow to collapse into process names.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- ryduh 15y ago
  Awesome tip. Thanks!!!
wesley 15y ago
There's an app for that, http://rubbernetapp.com http://rubbernetapp.com (not free)
sabon 15y ago
iStat pro widget gives you this info (and much more). Once installed, one key press (F4) and you've got all the info you need.

atopuzov 15y ago

Nice one. Getting to know DTrace was on my todo list for the next few moths.

timc3 15y ago

Excellent list, one of those things that I keep coming back to hacker news for.

euroclydon 15y ago

One of the features that differentiated Macs from Windows early on for me was how they systemized PDFs. Not only could it read and write PDFs, it was eager to do so.

tedmiston 15y ago
It's really easy to create PDFs from Apple's built-in Quartz 2D drawing engine (of the Core Graphics framework). That probably has a lot to do with it.
- rahoulb 15y ago
  And the reason for that is because NeXT used PostScript for rendering - use the same language for displaying on-screen as on paper. When NeXTStep became OSX PDF was used instead (I believe because of a bust up between Steve Jobs and Adobe over licensing)
  - euroclydon 15y ago
    OS9 seemed to have great PDF support if I remember. Is what you say the reason macs are preferred for desktop publishing?
    - rahoulb 15y ago
      It's going back a while but I believe it was the graphical nature of Macs, coupled with the LaserWriter printer that made DTP important for Macs. Which in turn prompted the use of Postscript in NeXTstep.

Terretta 15y ago

Not sure if it qualifies as a "hidden gem" in OS X itself, but the new Signature management in Preview, using the built in iSight to scan a handwritten sig off a sheet of paper, is an amazing time saver. // Number 8, bitesize.d, rocks.

charlieok 15y ago
This article is not like a lifehacker “10 neato things to be more productive on your mac” article. It's specifically about using DTrace to get detailed statistics on processes making system calls. It's also several months old :)

LeafStorm 15y ago

Honestly, so far none of these have been the major performance bottleneck on my Macbook. For me, it's been RAM. Even though I have 4 GB of RAM, I have at least 3 GB wired or active at any given time - Chrome alone takes up roughly 1 GB of it, with all its helper processes. But unfortunately I really have no idea how to bring my RAM usage down.

yock 15y ago
You don't really want to bring your RAM usage down. Unused RAM is a performance hit. Sure, some applications are hogs and that can result in a performance hit for background processes and task switching, but high RAM utilization is GOOD for performance, not bad.
- spiffytech 15y ago
  High RAM utilization is only good when your RAM is topped off with cache and buffer use. It's bad when it's all consumed by program data that forces the OS to swap other running application stuff to disk, especially if you're using several programs at once.
  - sunkencity 15y ago
    why would all the memory of chrome be in RAM and other programs not? I suppose there must be lots of swapped data there too. Doesn't crome have a separate sub? process for each tab with not much shared between tabs? In looking for ways to free disk space on my SSD I find that the chrome ~Library/Cache can grow to insane proportions (5G?)
larsberg 15y ago
Agreed, particularly on my MacBook Air where ~1GB is reserved for the shared video memory. I have to close Firefox or Chrome if I want to do any development work (our research compiler is a bit of a memory hog) without having a process get swapped out. I would offer ridiculous gobs of money to upgrade to even 6GB.

brown9-2 15y ago

About "why is my Macbook fan so loud?", has anyone successfully attempted to clean out dust from inside the laptop to reduce the fan noise?

dshep 15y ago
I did on my older MacbookPro5,1. It didn't even seem like I dislodged much dust, but it made a huge difference. Now the fans don't go above 3-4000 rpm even with the cpu pegged, which is quiet. Before it would consistently spin the fan at max speed even with modest cpu use. This old beast is far quieter under load than the new MacBook Air 13" I had for a week and returned.
- MobWalk 15y ago
  I'd suggest downloading smcFanControl. That's what I use on my MB Pro, and it works well. You can set different modes that will keep the fan at or below a certain RPM. If I'm gaming, I let it go up to 6200 rpm. If I'm not doing much (like now, just browsing on the internet and maybe running a couple other programs) I drop it to 3000rpm. That usually puts me around 45* C and keeps it nice and quiet. Then I've got a middle setting at about 4200rpm that makes some noise, but isn't quite as obnoxious as full throttle.
  - shearn89 15y ago
    +1 from me: smcFanControl is seriously handy if you do any sort of coding on a macbook. Was recently running a genetic algorithm on it and the app allowed me to bump the fan speed up to something ridiculous in order to keep the cpu at a comfortable temperature. I also tend to raise the speed if I'm watching flash video, since that's still ridiculously cpu intensive on a mac...
eropple 15y ago
Yup. Last time I opened it up (to replace the optical with a second SSD), I placed it electronics-down over open space (propped an edge against the table, held it up with a hand) and air-canned all the crap out of it.

vasco 15y ago

>> Why Unix? Mac OS X is Unix under the hood: the Darwin kernel Just beeing pedantic but I think Darwin is the operating system, not the kernel. The kernel is Mach 3.

colinstrickland 15y ago
Well if we're being pedants about it, then the kernel is XNU ( http://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-1699.24.23/ http://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-1699.24.23/ )

lysium 15y ago

I once tried to look into dtrace because I was missing strace from Linux. I gave up when I realized I had to learn a whole language just to do what strace did for me on Linux. Now I'm enlightened to see there is dtruss. It works different than strace and needs privileges, but I'm glad that I've found the strace alternative.

Game_Ender 15y ago
dtrace is not supposed to replace strace on Linux. It's allows you track and process all sorts of parameters of your operating system and it's programs. It's essentially a quick way to introspect into your application without tons of printf hacks, and get to the buttom of bugs and performance issues.
lallysingh 15y ago
The language is really just awk.

teeray 15y ago

I never knew about this tool--my mind has been blown. Thank you OP!