What is Digg?110 Comments
- swdc17, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23But what average user has these applications? I think this guy is going for apps that are more frequently used by regular people.
- Rigbymatt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Fina Cut Studio, Shake, Maya and After Effects are apps that may be memory hogs, but those using them are aware that they are going to be memory hogs from the start, you dont buy a mac pro with 512 memory, these apps are dealing with huge amounts of data.
These are apps that should not be using this much memory (with the exception of somewhat photoshop and imovie) - camkerr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15129 words is not an article....and that is including the list.
- migurski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Ajax-anything eats RAM in Safari. I think this because javascript state is maintained in the history. I consider this a great usability feature: it's so nice to have the back button take you to your previous state as well as the page. As with all such conveniences, that state needs to be stashed someplace. In my case, Safari RAM usage often gets as high as 2GB.
I think if Safari used Photoshop's approach of putting all that history data into a temp file someplace, its memory usage would drop without a significant usability hit.
Meanwhile, the new version of SafariStand has a recovery feature, where all of your open windows & tabs are restored at launch time. It's much better than Firefox's version of this feature, because it's not limited to crash recovery. It helps me cut down on Safari memory usage considerably - when it starts to bog, I quit & reopen to find myself with my previous set of tabs open, but a much smaller memory footprint. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+24This guy is an idiot. This is VIRTUAL memory usage, not RAM.
Memory gets paged in when its needed. Physical RAM usage for Safari is about 50megs.
Marked as *****. - robdazomba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11The guy doesn't seem to understand how OS X's memory allocation works, and judging by the comments here, neither does the average Digg user. Just because an application has a ton of memory set aside for it does not mean it's a) using it all and b) unable to yield some to other processes.
The writer needs to understand what he's seeing before writing about it. So do many of you. - danisse, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I believe it. Safari is such a hog on my machine.
- daverules, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10what about Parallels? That takes up a gig of memory on my Macbook.
Yea, I know it's not that same thing. - bb4u, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I've noticed every browser on Mac OS X uses quite a bit of memory but I think that the 400+ MB number for Safari is misleading because there is no context. For Joe User, he probably will only have a single browser window open at one time with no tabs so that number would be well under 100MB.
BTW, Opera 9 was the biggest memory hog under Mac OS X. Camino seems to use the least memory overall. I haven't tested Firefox 2 yet. - rtini, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8This is how modern operating systems work. Memory is dynamically allocated according to how much memory you have. If you need more memory than is free, memory will freed up for you (or paged into virtual memory if need be).
Stop fussing about what "Activity Monitor" is telling you and just use the damn computer. - colonelpanic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7How about nix'ing dashboard. ever since i did, my macbook has performed much better.
- moisie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+68 of the 10 apps may be by apple but how many apps did he test? If they tested 10 then it's hardly surprising, even if they a lot more, chances are a large number would be apple since they make a lot of high profile apps that are common to the majority of systems.
- iamjaredc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7UHHH HELLO???/
this is called OSX. it gives available RAM to an app to make it fast.
if you ONLY have safari open, it should give it HUNDREDS of megs of RAM, so Safari's as fast as it can be. as you open more apps, OSX will re-allocate the RAM.
duh? - Jerk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I don't think the OP understands how unices manage memory. Marked as inaccurate.
- scb0825, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Just because an app is using a lot of memory, doesn't mean that it is hogging that memory. OS X is designed to allow apps to use available memory and then adjust as needed. I have 512 on my Mac, and I can have damn near as many apps open as I want. The memory usage between apps will change as I use the apps. Its called Multi-tasking.
- matt77, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5robdazomba,
Finally a sensible comment. People should realize that many apps SHOULD use lots of memory if it is available. It lets them run more efficiently. Open a 1GB file with TextEdit (and no other apps running) and see how much memory it uses - it should be lots, but that doesn't mean that text edit is a memory hog. Maybe safari does have a memory leak, but saying "safari uses 400MB" is meaningless.
I think this article would make more sense as "typical" memory usage for common apps in "normal" usage. Maybe it would be useful for someone who doesn't know much about computers and is trying to figure out how much ram to buy. However, given the comments so far, the numbers in the article may not be that typical anyway. - Ankh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Ha, it's gonna eat more
- ArizonaKid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6It's not about lying. I don't believe you are lying. You stated averages...average of what? Did you just take the memory usage once?
The point being made in these post is simply your results need better analysis.
In your article you presented that these applications are the top 10 memory eaters. What many are saying is simply your results are out of the norm, and should have included better data analysis.
Safari is most certainly not a top 10 memory eating application on a Mac (OS X). - TheRealStyro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4All the apps listed may take up a good deal of memory, but OSX can handle the load a whole lot better than WinXP. I have 1.5GB in my imac and rarely go below 1GB free. I don't run many ilife apps, but I'll have itunes, firefox, visualhub (or handbrake) and sometimes a video editor on the pc dumping output to the imac, all running at the same time while still maintaining a good amount of free memory & still responsive. WinXP can't get close to that.
Before the MS fanboi base tries to lay into me - yes, the imac has more memory and cpu power than my pc (2ghz core duo + 1.5gb ram vs. 3ghz P4 HT + 1gb ram). The imac was bought to help the pc, not beat it into obsolescence. - iamjaredc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4yes, it's also called harmless because osx will tone down safari's memory usage as you do more. if i can run my ProApps and Safari at the same time with 1.5gb RAM, then OSX's doing something right.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Inaccurate - Should be 'Top 10 Memory Hogs on MY Mac'
- donsmith, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Apps!? How about telling us things that normal users could not find, like background system stuff.
- astrosmash, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3VM size is simply the size of the virtual address space into which shared code, plugins, devices, and memory is assigned. The maximum VM size is 2GB per process on 32-bit machines. VM size if only of concern if a process starts to approach the 2GB limit, and has nothing to do with the amount of RAM allocated for the private use of a particular process.
My rule of thumb: when my web browser get over 100MB of private memory it's time to restart the browser. You simply cannot leave tabbed browsers open for extended periods of activity; over the course of a browsing session they will eventually load every plugin available and exercise every feature of the rendering and scripting engines, consuming a lot of memory that cannot be returned to the OS until the application exits. On top of that, there are leaks.
Judging from your screenshot, everything looks OK. Low "green" memory, which means that your machine is utilizing most of your RAM, which is good. A decent amount of "blue" memory, which is stuff that's been cached in memory but hasn't been accessed in a while and can be quickly released to make room for other things. 250 MB and up here is healthy, but if you find the Blue dropping below 150MB, being consumed by "Yellow" memory, then you might benefit from either increasing RAM or reducing the number of applications. - robdazomba, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'm sure there are more memory leaks than any of us know about. It's very common for large applications, but memory allocated != memory required (which is what you're wrongly implying.) And that's true even if there is a memory leak. That's a whole other issue and you're confusing it. Big deal. Kill the process and restart it.
I just started Safari and it's using a little over 100MB. Are you actually claiming that it uses 450+MB when you start the app?
Do some reading on the topic and stop overreacting. - Ryan001, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Marked as lame because of the lack of detail and support for statements offered. It would have been interesting to see a screenie of the author's activity monitor. Currently I have Safari open with a couple tabs and my activity monitor is showing
- TheCheeks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4VERY innaccurate, as every user's results will vary depending on what they use and don't use. Right now Firefox is running with the most memory at 80megs.
The reason that 8/10 are Apple programs that are using the most memory is because, like you said, you only used what you had. So if you have a stock Apple laptop, of coarse it's going to be mostly Apple products that take up the most ram! - axcess99, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Yes safari has a memory leak. If you wish to test the extent of the leak in an app. Open terminal and run "leaks Safari" (I have the dev tools installed, so this command may not be present in normal installs). This will tell you how much of the allocated memory is leaked memory; the remaining memory is still technically useable/reachable by safari and it is just holding it for some legitimate reason (caching or active usage).
On my system Safari is currently using 112MB real 421MB virtual. Leaks says it is just
"514 leaks for 15984 total leaked bytes." or 15KB.... hardly an unreasonable amount (and that will be reclaimed as soon as Safari quits). - skingers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The problem here is that the article makes no effort to distinguish real memory usage vs virtual memory usage. The two are not only substantially different but also mean substantially different things under OSX compared to Windows. Under OSX not only does VM not equate to real RAM usage but it doesn't even necessarily mean you are consuming swap space to the extent you may think is implied.
Furthermore the actual memory usage of applications like safari, photoshop and garage band are going to vary considerably depending on what you have open at the time. - Ankh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Nice point. It's got to be virtual memory stuff. Everything is using a stunning amount of memory in the virtual memory section.
- Ryan001, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5*Digg error*
Marked as lame because of the lack of detail and support for statements offered. It would have been interesting to see a screenie of the author's activity monitor. The author failed to mention if he was speaking in terms of actual memory or virtual memory. I would assume virtual. With several tabs open I am under 100MB of actual memory. I don't get the point of this... - MoofTheStoof, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"I am not an Idiot."
Maybe not, but you also don't understand the dynamic memory allocation and virtual memory system under UNIX. But that's ok because you don't *need* to. It knows what it's doing and it's pretty damn efficient.
I've been around the mac-world since right after System 7 was released and I remember actually booting in what's now "Classic," and having to manually tweak RAM allocation of apps - but in OS X we no longer have to do that. We don't even have to manage CPU cycles by shutting down background apps. The OS is pretty damn effective at managing all this for us. Which, of course, is the point. You can run tons of apps at once even on low physical RAM and the machine runs extremely well. As a matter of fact, if I have one performance complaint about OS X, it's that it's a more secure microkernel instead of a speedier monolithic kernel. Performance testing shows that OS X's only significant performance hit comes from the kernel bottlenecking the system under extremely heavy load. That's why you still want to use Linux boxes as your servers - but for personal workstations you just can't beat OS X. - Rigbymatt, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6do you have to "repair your registry" on occasion on your PC?
maybe "reformat" every year or so?
nothings perfect dude, OS X has its weak points, as does windows.
each has different applications and uses in the world, and each does what it needs to quite well, but each has flaws. - slundal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You are an idiot because if you look at the picture in the "article" you clearly see that it is not virtual memory that is being shown!
- kethraal, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"you have to run "maintenance scripts" on a mac?"
No. You don't. Cron does that for you. (In Tiger and above, they're handled by launchd instead, but the functionality is exactly the same.)
You can force them to run though, and occasionally (and I mean really, really rarely) you might have to. That said, I have dealt with literally hundreds of OS X machines, and I have only ever had to for the maintenance scripts to run once. - lickmygiggle, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Why is Firefox not on there. I can open the same 4 tabs in Firefox and Safari, and Firefox will use FAR more memory every time.
- MoofTheStoof, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Having gotten this far down the thread, it's becoming painfully obvious that MadMac thought he'd uncovered an Apple conspiracy to cover up a major performance issue with it's in-house browser and he wanted to be the hero who brought us all this shocking revelation. Instead, all that was revealed was that MadMac simply didn't understand how memory allocation works under UNIX.
- gerkin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hardly conslusive. The author should do a little more research before inserting foot into mouth. As for the Safari memory leak ... how long was it open? How many tabs? How many FLASH movies did you load? How many quicktimes? Other plugins?
OSX/BSD/*nix, as others have posted above, has pretty advanced memory management. If the memory is there and not hard wired chances are it'll be used by some app. Try opening 50 apps and see if Safari still uses 400+ MB of ram :) - xioner, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Just to test, I now have Safari open with 50+ tabs spread over 4 windows, including (kill me now) 5 tabs of myspace.
Real memory usage is at 220megs, virtual is 478megs.
I will now close this bugger and get back to Firefox.
Safari is very nice, but doesnt have ad-block and wordpress tools dont display properly. - yahoofrom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Top 2 memory eaters on my XP.
Firefox and XP itself. - Marfanity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The title should be, "Top 10 Memory eaters on My Mac" ...but nobody would digg that.
- OutlawSamurai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Show the resident private memory usage. What you're showing is the total resident memory, which may be shared by other processes...
- kethraal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I believe you. I also believe that Safari tries to hold onto previous page states (including memory-intensive JavaScript pages) in memory as long as possible.
That said, there is no way in _hell_ that those are average memory usages. Unless you regularly browse with twenty tabs of wasteful AJAX sites, you won't typically see usages that high.
iPhoto, I understand (especially if you have a ton of high-res photos that it's trying to precache.)
Photoshop, I also understand. Given the size I'm guessing you have an Intel Mac (since translated loves to preload anything/everything into RAM)... but even if you didn't, that's not unreasonable.
NeoOffice.... well... yes. It's RAM intensive. It's also rather heavily dependent on Java (hence the thirst for memory.)
iMove HD -- the last two characters of the name explain why it needs RAM.
GarageBand -- one word: plugins. I use GarageBand and Logic all the time, and I'm quite familiar with plugins (AU especially) that gobble down memory.
With the exception of Safari, that's more or less normal memory usage (although I think it's at the upper extreme for some of the apps.) Keep in mind though, that OS X avoids swapping as much as possible, and as such likes to keep things in RAM as long as it can. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1BSE!!!
- autocracy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3As I read this, my Safari's Real Memory usage is 184.57Mb. I've seen the real break 400. Nothing sucks RAM for me like Safari does. Of course, I tend to open tabs and track RSS, which I think contributes. Memory usage doesn't drop substantially upon closing all windows,though. Safari has to be quit & restarted.
- blackbookdesign, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1please test for me 100 000$ of software so you can know where your memory goes..... duh? but i still reckon that final cut pro would have been interesting to know...
- aknowles5139, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2yes it would
- Itkovian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Right now, Safari claimed 187 MB of physical RAM, and it's VM size is 655.82MB. I'm not certain that this VM size is actually used or that it's the range of memory that had once been allocated. Since starting Safari, I've been browsing some flickr.com pages, some digg.com pages, and a few apple.com pages. Nothing special. I'm on 10.4.8 BTW. If I check the actual VM that's been swapped to disk, using e.g. the iStat nano widget, I find that VM size goes up constantly when I'm using Safari. Browsing using e.g. Camino affect this far less (a subjective feeling, I know). I still prefer Safari though. Too bad it claims that much VM disk space.
- Itkovian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Screenshot at http://www.flickr.com/photos/itkovian/304050027/
- nick0909, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think most people think a page fault means the computer had some error, when in reality they should learn about how secondary and primary storage works in a modern OS. If only such a forum existed where people could post accurate ideas and information for all to read...
Ah screw it, just read any old blog and trust it as truth, who needs an editorial process. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1marked innacurate
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