4 ms·

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 th

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 6mo 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 6mo ago
  Tragic
  - nwienert 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
        It's just closing the older tabs and re-rendering them from cache, when returned to. WebKit does the same thing.
      - Oreb 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
  Is that why settings search has been broken for years across iOS and macOS?
throwaway27448 6mo 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 6mo ago
Isn't Slack just mIRC with a skin? /s

HPsquared 6mo 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 6mo ago
Tragic
- nwienert 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
        It's just closing the older tabs and re-rendering them from cache, when returned to. WebKit does the same thing.
    - Oreb 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo 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 6mo ago
Is that why settings search has been broken for years across iOS and macOS?

throwaway27448 6mo 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 6mo ago

Isn't Slack just mIRC with a skin? /s