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> There’s also a silver lining to the tight memory envelope: Apple has to keep macOS running well within 8GB, which is actually a nice forcing function against

by jorisw 5mo ago

> There’s also a silver lining to the tight memory envelope: Apple has to keep macOS running well within 8GB, which is actually a nice forcing function against bloat and inefficiency. We could all use a little more of that. Love this

dlcarrier 5mo ago
Eight gigabytes is orders of magnitude more than an OS could ever use, or even the pre-installed software. It's web browsers and the software that uses them that occupy all the RAM, and those are usually made by third parties. Open a few news web pages, and run Discord, Slack, VS Code, etc, and you'll quickly run out of RAM.
- HPsquared 5mo ago
  Ironically these are all text-based applications where the actual content on screen is in the order of a few hundred bytes. They've managed to reach a bloat factor of one million.
  - Affric 5mo ago
    Tragic
    - nwienert 5mo ago
      If you decry bloated web apps and use Chrome on their Mac... there's Safari. It's far more efficient and has a far snappier UI.
      - dlcarrier 5mo ago
        There's also Epiphany web browser for cross-platform desktop support and the Fulguris browser for Android. It is noticeably faster, but Chrome is the new Internet Explorer in more ways than one, and many web pages don't work in WebKit browsers.
        ttoinou 5mo ago
        Chrome is the most advanced browsers on each platform. For example I have hundreds of tabs And chrome is the best at saving up RAM in the backgrouns
        dlcarrier 5mo ago
        It's just closing the older tabs and re-rendering them from cache, when returned to. WebKit does the same thing.
        Oreb 5mo ago
        Posts like this makes me feel like I’m using a different World Wide Web than everybody else. Where are all these pages that don’t work in WebKit browsers? I use Safari as my main browser, I open Chrome only when I encounter a web site that doesn’t work in Safari. It happens maybe once or twice per year, and half of the time, it turns out that it doesn’t work in Chrome either.
- ben-schaaf 5mo ago
  Apple is no stranger to using a web browser for basic OS functionality. Several pages in the settings app are actually WebKit, source: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-macos/ https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-ma...
  - dlcarrier 5mo ago
    That reminds me of Microsoft's Active Desktop in Windows 98, when the desktop had widgets that were web pages and would show webpage-related errors when something went wrong. We've really gone full circle over the last three decades.
    - throwaway27448 5mo ago
      It's not so much "full circle" as we never came up with a better way to render general purpose rich text content than html/css to begin with
      - dlcarrier 5mo ago
        It's not really using it for much text, though. It's mostly buttons and controls, which GDI, QuickDraw, and Motif did much better back then and newer toolkits like GTK, Tk, wxWidgets, DWM, Cocoa, etc are great at today.
        throwaway27448 5mo ago
        > It's not really using it for much text, though. That's exactly the opposite of my perception—for instance, it's been used to render help/support databases on my Mac for at least twenty years.
  - tencentshill 5mo ago
    Is that why settings search has been broken for years across iOS and macOS?
- throwaway27448 5mo ago
  Web browsers come preinstalled and come embedded throughout the os. But, webkit is much better than chrome in memory usage. If only we could force slack and vs code to use the engine better suited for the job.
- berbec 5mo ago
  Isn't Slack just mIRC with a skin? /s
sho_hn 5mo ago
I occasionally port software I make to MacOS, while mainly being a Linux user, and I settled on a base model, 8 GB M2 Mac Mini for this as well. If it's zippy there, it'll be zippy on the larger models. On the PC/Linux side I keep an old thermally-constrained i5 Sony Vaio ultrabook with a lowly 4 GB from 2015 around for the same reason. The main dev box is a Ryzen 9950X3D/128 GB monster, so it's a bit of a difference :)
nicce 5mo ago
Meanwhile GitHub tab in Firefox/Chrome eats 6GB RAM alone.
- himata4113 5mo ago
  because they decided that running elasticsearch on your machine is a great idea!
- DANmode 5mo ago
  GitHub, GitHub…where else have I seen that name recently?

by jorisw 5mo ago

dlcarrier 5mo ago

Eight gigabytes is orders of magnitude more than an OS could ever use, or even the pre-installed software. It's web browsers and the software that uses them that occupy all the RAM, and those are usually made by third parties. Open a few news web pages, and run Discord, Slack, VS Code, etc, and you'll quickly run out of RAM.

HPsquared 5mo ago
Ironically these are all text-based applications where the actual content on screen is in the order of a few hundred bytes. They've managed to reach a bloat factor of one million.
- Affric 5mo ago
  Tragic
  - nwienert 5mo ago
    If you decry bloated web apps and use Chrome on their Mac... there's Safari. It's far more efficient and has a far snappier UI.
    - dlcarrier 5mo ago
      There's also Epiphany web browser for cross-platform desktop support and the Fulguris browser for Android. It is noticeably faster, but Chrome is the new Internet Explorer in more ways than one, and many web pages don't work in WebKit browsers.
      - ttoinou 5mo ago
        Chrome is the most advanced browsers on each platform. For example I have hundreds of tabs And chrome is the best at saving up RAM in the backgrouns
        dlcarrier 5mo ago
        It's just closing the older tabs and re-rendering them from cache, when returned to. WebKit does the same thing.
      - Oreb 5mo ago
        Posts like this makes me feel like I’m using a different World Wide Web than everybody else. Where are all these pages that don’t work in WebKit browsers? I use Safari as my main browser, I open Chrome only when I encounter a web site that doesn’t work in Safari. It happens maybe once or twice per year, and half of the time, it turns out that it doesn’t work in Chrome either.
ben-schaaf 5mo ago
Apple is no stranger to using a web browser for basic OS functionality. Several pages in the settings app are actually WebKit, source: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-macos/ https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/inspecting-web-views-in-ma...
- dlcarrier 5mo ago
  That reminds me of Microsoft's Active Desktop in Windows 98, when the desktop had widgets that were web pages and would show webpage-related errors when something went wrong. We've really gone full circle over the last three decades.
  - throwaway27448 5mo ago
    It's not so much "full circle" as we never came up with a better way to render general purpose rich text content than html/css to begin with
    - dlcarrier 5mo ago
      It's not really using it for much text, though. It's mostly buttons and controls, which GDI, QuickDraw, and Motif did much better back then and newer toolkits like GTK, Tk, wxWidgets, DWM, Cocoa, etc are great at today.
      - throwaway27448 5mo ago
        > It's not really using it for much text, though. That's exactly the opposite of my perception—for instance, it's been used to render help/support databases on my Mac for at least twenty years.
- tencentshill 5mo ago
  Is that why settings search has been broken for years across iOS and macOS?
throwaway27448 5mo ago
Web browsers come preinstalled and come embedded throughout the os. But, webkit is much better than chrome in memory usage. If only we could force slack and vs code to use the engine better suited for the job.
berbec 5mo ago
Isn't Slack just mIRC with a skin? /s

sho_hn 5mo ago

I occasionally port software I make to MacOS, while mainly being a Linux user, and I settled on a base model, 8 GB M2 Mac Mini for this as well. If it's zippy there, it'll be zippy on the larger models. On the PC/Linux side I keep an old thermally-constrained i5 Sony Vaio ultrabook with a lowly 4 GB from 2015 around for the same reason. The main dev box is a Ryzen 9950X3D/128 GB monster, so it's a bit of a difference :)

nicce 5mo ago

Meanwhile GitHub tab in Firefox/Chrome eats 6GB RAM alone.

himata4113 5mo ago
because they decided that running elasticsearch on your machine is a great idea!
DANmode 5mo ago
GitHub, GitHub…where else have I seen that name recently?