Owen ( and other OSX fanbois) -
I'm guessing that a few others here will be interested in the technical
details of this topic...
I did not become interested in OSXs memory management until about 6
months ago when my PBPro with 4G running 10.6.x started throwing me the
rainbow frisbee of death (or at least tedium) often. I began to look
at the process table (via Activity Monitor) and noticed that *all* my
applications seemed to be bloating up with memory... as if each and
every one had memory leaks.
Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype were the most notable. I kind of
assumed that the problem was a system library that they all shared, and
aggravated by the fact that they were all naturally
wanting/needing/using lots of their own internal cache (well, maybe not
Tbird so much?)... I also assumed that I had not updated my system
properly (I tend to be pretty cavalier about keeping up with suggested
updates, but trust the system (at large) to know what needs to be
updated and not leave anything in the cracks)...
I recently finally buried that machine after stripping it down to
replace the charging port only to find afterwards that the problem was
NOT that my battery was zeroed and my charge port too fried to take
power... I finally gave up and blamed the easy/last-resort "logic board
failure". I give my machines a lot of abuse. One of the SFX interns
inherited the one my wife ran over in Iowa (shattered screen... he used
it with an external monitor).
Anyway... back on topic. The 15" 2010 MBP I bought to replace it had
8G and Mountain Lion installed. I assumed (hoped futilely) that my
problems would evaporate with a full (up to date) fresh system (10.8.4
install and max memory). I didn't fret about it much but within a few
days I started noticing (mostly because my previous machine had taught
me to compulsively check the Memory Usage monitor) that I was operating
on virtually 0 free memory as before. The big difference was that I
was not getting the whirling frisbee of death very often and nearly 1/2
of the memory is labeled "Inactive", though under the 4G 10.6
circumstance I also had significant "Inactive" memory available at all
times...
I am postulating (very tentatively) that this new machine/configuration
is more efficient at reclaiming "Inactive Memory" just-in-time...
perhaps because it has the quad-thread version of the duo core or
perhaps 10.8 fixed it up, or because my old system was just poorly
configured (memory management libraries out of date?).
One thing I am wondering is if others have had this problem (saturating
physical memory and NOT getting efficient reclaiming of Inactive
memory)? Or if others understand whether this is a real problem or
just my lame understanding of how the memory management is supposed to
work (I would sort of expect the Apps themselves to be managing memory
more effectively than they seem to themselves, not just trusting the VM
to keep them out of trouble?).
- Steve
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
