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I don't think your average consumer has any idea how memory works, which apps are using it, or what a "reasonable" consumption is for a given task. If things d

by tyre 4mo ago

I don't think your average consumer has any idea how memory works, which apps are using it, or what a "reasonable" consumption is for a given task. If things don't work, they will blame the computer. Developers will check and see that their electron app is only using 5GB of memory. They will test on 32GB memory M5 MBPs. Complaints to support will lead to recommendations to kill other apps. What would make change is if MacOS killed processes above a certain limit, which obviously it would never (and should never) do.

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
> If things don't work, they will blame the computer Or the single app that slows it down.
j1elo 4mo ago
Oh but I have seen totally tech uneducated people saying that they are tired of so many apps in their phones that slow things down. People do notice, and as soon as you start asking around groups who use mid- to lower tier level of Android devices, they do develop a diffuse intuition of what is and what isn't a "heavy" app. It is unavoidable, the cruft and bloat can be observed very visually in some apps that don't care about performance.
alsetmusic 4mo ago
> I don't think your average consumer has any idea how memory works, which apps are using it, or what a "reasonable" consumption is for a given task. I had a brand new experience today. I emailed someone explaining to "right-click, then…" and got a reply saying that they are left-handed, so my instructions were not applicable for them. Average consumers, for the most part, have a magic box. Only when someone is motivated to learn, like wanting to have a better gaming experience or having an interest in media production (or code), is there incentive to learn.
hombre_fatal 4mo ago
There are a lot of things our devices could do to give users insight into basic things like which apps use a lot of resources, but they don't and it's a colossal failure for everyone (users, people who make efficient apps, pressure on people who make inefficient apps). iPhone's battery usage screen is a microstep in the right direction, but it doesn't go far enough since the user has to know it exists, then visit it regularly and mentally calculate if the app's energy consumption is proportional to the amount they use it. Just consider how an app can get stuck in a 100% CPU loop on macOS (Discord/Spotify used to do this to me if they had any animations on screen) and there's literally zero indication to the user that it's happening and which app is responsible. Best they get is that the computer's fans turn on, if it has them. One improvement would be for the app-switcher view on iOS/macOS to show you the app's battery impact and average memory consumption. Anything would be an improvement.
- hack1312 4mo ago
  I keep Activity Monitor in my dock for this reason. You can right click its icon and change it to be a real-time graph of a few different stats. I have mine set to CPU usage, it’s like a one-metric iStat Menus for the Dock
  - hombre_fatal 4mo ago
    One of the first things I got Claude/ChatGPT to vibe-code was a minimal iStats-Menus-like menubar app that shows total usage of CPU, RAM, and bandwidth all in a single small vertical stack at all times. Then I can click it to open a dropdown that ranks the top 5 processes of each category (CPU, MEM, NET) and the amount they are consuming. It's this kind of thing that should be built in to the OS. Makes it trivial to eyeball whether something unexpected is going on.

by tyre 4mo ago

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago

> If things don't work, they will blame the computer Or the single app that slows it down.

j1elo 4mo ago

Oh but I have seen totally tech uneducated people saying that they are tired of so many apps in their phones that slow things down. People do notice, and as soon as you start asking around groups who use mid- to lower tier level of Android devices, they do develop a diffuse intuition of what is and what isn't a "heavy" app. It is unavoidable, the cruft and bloat can be observed very visually in some apps that don't care about performance.

alsetmusic 4mo ago

> I don't think your average consumer has any idea how memory works, which apps are using it, or what a "reasonable" consumption is for a given task. I had a brand new experience today. I emailed someone explaining to "right-click, then…" and got a reply saying that they are left-handed, so my instructions were not applicable for them. Average consumers, for the most part, have a magic box. Only when someone is motivated to learn, like wanting to have a better gaming experience or having an interest in media production (or code), is there incentive to learn.

hombre_fatal 4mo ago

There are a lot of things our devices could do to give users insight into basic things like which apps use a lot of resources, but they don't and it's a colossal failure for everyone (users, people who make efficient apps, pressure on people who make inefficient apps). iPhone's battery usage screen is a microstep in the right direction, but it doesn't go far enough since the user has to know it exists, then visit it regularly and mentally calculate if the app's energy consumption is proportional to the amount they use it. Just consider how an app can get stuck in a 100% CPU loop on macOS (Discord/Spotify used to do this to me if they had any animations on screen) and there's literally zero indication to the user that it's happening and which app is responsible. Best they get is that the computer's fans turn on, if it has them. One improvement would be for the app-switcher view on iOS/macOS to show you the app's battery impact and average memory consumption. Anything would be an improvement.

hack1312 4mo ago
I keep Activity Monitor in my dock for this reason. You can right click its icon and change it to be a real-time graph of a few different stats. I have mine set to CPU usage, it’s like a one-metric iStat Menus for the Dock
- hombre_fatal 4mo ago
  One of the first things I got Claude/ChatGPT to vibe-code was a minimal iStats-Menus-like menubar app that shows total usage of CPU, RAM, and bandwidth all in a single small vertical stack at all times. Then I can click it to open a dropdown that ranks the top 5 processes of each category (CPU, MEM, NET) and the amount they are consuming. It's this kind of thing that should be built in to the OS. Makes it trivial to eyeball whether something unexpected is going on.