3 ms·

I believe we are now in the 9th year of 8GB being the baseline Mac laptop RAM config. It’s incredibly stingy. For a while you could make the argument that a lo

I believe we are now in the 9th year of 8GB being the baseline Mac laptop RAM config. It’s incredibly stingy. For a while you could make the argument that a lot of Air purchasers wouldn’t need it, but I don’t think that’s the case any more. My wife has an M1 Air with 8GB and between Office, Chrome, Teams, and Slack she quite regularly gets beachballs and weird performance hitches.

jandrese 3y ago
My wife has been complaining to me about how she regularly gets the "choose which application to terminate" dialog on her Air. I knew in my heart that 8GB wouldn't be future proof, but I underestimated how fast it would be a problem. She pretty much just runs Safari and Libreoffice Calc too, nothing that should really tax the machine.
- dzhiurgis 3y ago
  What? I’ve caught Safari using 22GB of memory another day. Open 1000tabs and it will kill any machine.
  - Tagbert 3y ago
    Any browser can use massive amounts of RAM if you open a lot of tabs. Especially if they are running a lot of JS that doesn't release its memory properly. There are some sites I can go to that just continue to chew away at the RAM as long as the tab is open. In any case, it's pretty easy for the OS to swap out browser data as it is chunkable by tab. Just because it had allocated 22GB doesn't mean that it was all active. Must was certainly swapped to SSD.
  - Perepiska 3y ago
    Since a person cannot look at 1000 tabs at the same time, most of the tabs can be frozen. I'm writing to you from Firefox which has 826 tabs right now.
    - dzhiurgis 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - Dah00n 3y ago
        Clearly you are not a web developer. Safari is by far the worst browser today. The new Internet Explorer.
        sgarland 3y ago
        Until Netflix supports full res in Chrome, and until Chrome battery consumption is on par with Safari, I’ll keep using Safari.
      - nulld3v 3y ago
        Firefox is just really good for handling huge amounts of tabs because you can install alternative tab UIs like Tree Style Tabs and scroll/search tabs like they are bookmarks.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  That is interesting, I run Firefox, VSCode, containers and whatever code I'm working on. I never even need to look at RAM usage. It would be interesting to know what triggers the RAM limit in your case. The only application I ever need to terminate is Notes, which for some reason is extremely crash prone on the mac.
  - sroussey 3y ago
    I find that spouses never close apps, only close windows, or worse hide them and forget. If one of them is Photoshop...
- zarzavat 3y ago
  That sounds like she is running out of disk space, not RAM.
  - meatmanek 3y ago
    I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted -- macOS uses available disk space as swap, and if your disk is full (and thus has no more room for swap) then it will pop up this dialog.
    - Repulsion9513 3y ago
      If you're swapping you need more RAM.
- grecy 3y ago
  > "choose which application to terminate" What is that? I've been using macs for decades, and I've never seen or heard of such a dialog.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    Usually when an application go rogue with the memory allocation.
    - grecy 3y ago
      MacOS has had protected memory since the public beta of OS X... I don't believe an app can do that.
- richardw 3y ago
  I get this on an M1 Pro with 16GB. It's astounding. It claims to use swap but the trust is broken. I keep the Activity Monitor around and try to guess when it'll go flaky on me, but I never guess it right. I just restarted my machine now to reset whatever stupidity it has going on. Never had it with Windows. Or iPad, or iPhone. Why does the pro computer do this? My guess is 5k external monitor and a few desktops, but...really. I'm not running multiple layers of VM's, it'll crash it with a few VS code windows, browsers, command lines.
  - Repulsion9513 3y ago
    So what you're saying is you're running multiple browsers (VS Code is a browser), each of which takes anywhere from 1 to several GB of memory, and you're surprised that you're running out of RAM...
    - richardw 3y ago
      Correct. I often have hundreds of browser tabs open on my iPhone, but it knows how to manage resources by unloading the ones I'm not looking at right now. The Mac can also swap tabs or apps to disk. Or warn me when I hit 90%. The only wrong option is to start freezing when it's too late. I'm a software developer who has been coding for decades, and I'm surprised by this failure mode. What would a random non-techie need to learn to reason about this? It's not like Macs are marketed only to technical professionals who keep an eye on resources. Look, at least the Apple is smart enough to wake up basically in the same window state after having refreshed the resources. That's fantastic. But even better to fix it without going through the whole "have you turned it off and on again" routine.
      - skydhash 3y ago
        > I often have hundreds of browser tabs open on my iPhone, but it knows how to manage resources by unloading the ones I'm not looking at right now. The Mac can also swap tabs or apps to disk. Different models of computing. The iPhone only displays one tab inside one application at a time. And switching is slow enough that the OS can prefetch the swapped memory for the new view. A desktop app usually keeps everything alive as switching is very random and instantaneous. And you don't go open things that require a lot of RAM when you don't have that many (Each electron app is a whole new browser which is already a resource hog)
Repulsion9513 3y ago
> between Office, Chrome, Teams, and Slack she quite regularly gets beachballs and weird performance hitches Considering how bad all of that is about "weird performance hitches" (read: running an entire browser for every single app) are you sure that has anything to do with the memory?
vGPU 3y ago
I have a 14 MBP M1 16/512. It’s… not great. The other day photoshop was running super slow so I opened up process manager and discovered that not only had it eaten all 16gb of ram, it was also using up ~30gb of swap space. Even just general day to day safari use will give me random lags and slowdowns that I don’t get on my desktop which is running an i5.
skydhash 3y ago
> Office, Chrome, Teams, and Slack Those are like the heavyweights of the app world. And I think the 4 combined is running more code than the OS itself (the last three are 3xChrome).
diebeforei485 3y ago
Almost certainly the culprits are Chrome and Slack, but is Activity Monitor actually showing a memory pressure issue? It might be unrelated to memory. Using Slack as a web app[1] solved my issues with it. It runs using Webkit instead of Electron, which is far smoother. 1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/104996 https://support.apple.com/en-us/104996

jandrese 3y ago

My wife has been complaining to me about how she regularly gets the "choose which application to terminate" dialog on her Air. I knew in my heart that 8GB wouldn't be future proof, but I underestimated how fast it would be a problem. She pretty much just runs Safari and Libreoffice Calc too, nothing that should really tax the machine.

dzhiurgis 3y ago
What? I’ve caught Safari using 22GB of memory another day. Open 1000tabs and it will kill any machine.
- Tagbert 3y ago
  Any browser can use massive amounts of RAM if you open a lot of tabs. Especially if they are running a lot of JS that doesn't release its memory properly. There are some sites I can go to that just continue to chew away at the RAM as long as the tab is open. In any case, it's pretty easy for the OS to swap out browser data as it is chunkable by tab. Just because it had allocated 22GB doesn't mean that it was all active. Must was certainly swapped to SSD.
- Perepiska 3y ago
  Since a person cannot look at 1000 tabs at the same time, most of the tabs can be frozen. I'm writing to you from Firefox which has 826 tabs right now.
  - dzhiurgis 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - Dah00n 3y ago
      Clearly you are not a web developer. Safari is by far the worst browser today. The new Internet Explorer.
      - sgarland 3y ago
        Until Netflix supports full res in Chrome, and until Chrome battery consumption is on par with Safari, I’ll keep using Safari.
    - nulld3v 3y ago
      Firefox is just really good for handling huge amounts of tabs because you can install alternative tab UIs like Tree Style Tabs and scroll/search tabs like they are bookmarks.
mrweasel 3y ago
That is interesting, I run Firefox, VSCode, containers and whatever code I'm working on. I never even need to look at RAM usage. It would be interesting to know what triggers the RAM limit in your case. The only application I ever need to terminate is Notes, which for some reason is extremely crash prone on the mac.
- sroussey 3y ago
  I find that spouses never close apps, only close windows, or worse hide them and forget. If one of them is Photoshop...
zarzavat 3y ago
That sounds like she is running out of disk space, not RAM.
- meatmanek 3y ago
  I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted -- macOS uses available disk space as swap, and if your disk is full (and thus has no more room for swap) then it will pop up this dialog.
  - Repulsion9513 3y ago
    If you're swapping you need more RAM.
grecy 3y ago
> "choose which application to terminate" What is that? I've been using macs for decades, and I've never seen or heard of such a dialog.
- skydhash 3y ago
  Usually when an application go rogue with the memory allocation.
  - grecy 3y ago
    MacOS has had protected memory since the public beta of OS X... I don't believe an app can do that.
richardw 3y ago
I get this on an M1 Pro with 16GB. It's astounding. It claims to use swap but the trust is broken. I keep the Activity Monitor around and try to guess when it'll go flaky on me, but I never guess it right. I just restarted my machine now to reset whatever stupidity it has going on. Never had it with Windows. Or iPad, or iPhone. Why does the pro computer do this? My guess is 5k external monitor and a few desktops, but...really. I'm not running multiple layers of VM's, it'll crash it with a few VS code windows, browsers, command lines.
- Repulsion9513 3y ago
  So what you're saying is you're running multiple browsers (VS Code is a browser), each of which takes anywhere from 1 to several GB of memory, and you're surprised that you're running out of RAM...
  - richardw 3y ago
    Correct. I often have hundreds of browser tabs open on my iPhone, but it knows how to manage resources by unloading the ones I'm not looking at right now. The Mac can also swap tabs or apps to disk. Or warn me when I hit 90%. The only wrong option is to start freezing when it's too late. I'm a software developer who has been coding for decades, and I'm surprised by this failure mode. What would a random non-techie need to learn to reason about this? It's not like Macs are marketed only to technical professionals who keep an eye on resources. Look, at least the Apple is smart enough to wake up basically in the same window state after having refreshed the resources. That's fantastic. But even better to fix it without going through the whole "have you turned it off and on again" routine.
    - skydhash 3y ago
      > I often have hundreds of browser tabs open on my iPhone, but it knows how to manage resources by unloading the ones I'm not looking at right now. The Mac can also swap tabs or apps to disk. Different models of computing. The iPhone only displays one tab inside one application at a time. And switching is slow enough that the OS can prefetch the swapped memory for the new view. A desktop app usually keeps everything alive as switching is very random and instantaneous. And you don't go open things that require a lot of RAM when you don't have that many (Each electron app is a whole new browser which is already a resource hog)

Repulsion9513 3y ago

> between Office, Chrome, Teams, and Slack she quite regularly gets beachballs and weird performance hitches Considering how bad all of that is about "weird performance hitches" (read: running an entire browser for every single app) are you sure that has anything to do with the memory?

vGPU 3y ago

I have a 14 MBP M1 16/512. It’s… not great. The other day photoshop was running super slow so I opened up process manager and discovered that not only had it eaten all 16gb of ram, it was also using up ~30gb of swap space. Even just general day to day safari use will give me random lags and slowdowns that I don’t get on my desktop which is running an i5.

skydhash 3y ago

> Office, Chrome, Teams, and Slack Those are like the heavyweights of the app world. And I think the 4 combined is running more code than the OS itself (the last three are 3xChrome).

diebeforei485 3y ago

Almost certainly the culprits are Chrome and Slack, but is Activity Monitor actually showing a memory pressure issue? It might be unrelated to memory. Using Slack as a web app[1] solved my issues with it. It runs using Webkit instead of Electron, which is far smoother. 1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/104996 https://support.apple.com/en-us/104996