Except... when apps are using a lot more memory than they do on other OS, you tend to get a low-memory situation anyway.
If I've got a 4gig machine, and running 5 apps takes up 3.8 gig, trying to run another app with necessitate swapping/paging some of the existing apps around to accommodate my new app. If those initial 5 apps only took up, say, 2.8g, I'd have less chance of hitting 'low-memory' situations in the first place.
I say this as someone with 16g mbp and SSD who still hits beach balls and unexplained pauses on a daily basis. Fewer than I used to, but it gets annoying. Not quite as annoying as win95/2k blue screens of 12+ years ago, but getting my ire up.
Beach ball is not necessarily a low memory warning (or memory related). It's showed (only) when a GUI application fails to respond to UI events. Sometimes it's because of bad threading in applications or things like that.
If you're interested in seeing what's happening, fire up Activity Monitor and hit Sample on the app when you see the beach ball. It records the call frames of all threads a couple of thousand times over a few seconds, so you can see what that app is waiting for.
If the entire system has ground to a halt such that it's difficult to actually get to Activity Monitor to do the sample, then it's likely to be a memory problem. If it's just one app, it's probably something else.
If the system is hung such that you can't get Activity Monitor to sample, use command-option-control-shift-period to run sysdiagnose. Attach the resulting /var/tmp/sysdiagnose_$(TIME).tar.gz to your bug report.
And inside that tar.gz file is a spindump.txt file, which will have the samples of whatever application is spinning at the moment, just like if you used Activity Monitor to sample it.
Odd - I've been using an 8 gig mbp with swap disabled and I've yet to crash due to running out of ram. That's running a few browsers, editors, VM instances, possibly photoshop for some tweaking. Beachballs are very rare and would be due to software errors, not out of memory conditions - those would just crash.
Comments
Except... when apps are using a lot more memory than they do on other OS, you tend to get a low-memory situation anyway.
If I've got a 4gig machine, and running 5 apps takes up 3.8 gig, trying to run another app with necessitate swapping/paging some of the existing apps around to accommodate my new app. If those initial 5 apps only took up, say, 2.8g, I'd have less chance of hitting 'low-memory' situations in the first place.
I say this as someone with 16g mbp and SSD who still hits beach balls and unexplained pauses on a daily basis. Fewer than I used to, but it gets annoying. Not quite as annoying as win95/2k blue screens of 12+ years ago, but getting my ire up.
Beach ball is not necessarily a low memory warning (or memory related). It's showed (only) when a GUI application fails to respond to UI events. Sometimes it's because of bad threading in applications or things like that.
understood they're not always the same thing - I often see a beachball with 6gig free, which used to perplex me a bit, now it just bugs me. :/
If you're interested in seeing what's happening, fire up Activity Monitor and hit Sample on the app when you see the beach ball. It records the call frames of all threads a couple of thousand times over a few seconds, so you can see what that app is waiting for.
... and report the bug to the app's developer! Be sure to include the sample.
If the entire system has ground to a halt such that it's difficult to actually get to Activity Monitor to do the sample, then it's likely to be a memory problem. If it's just one app, it's probably something else.
If the system is hung such that you can't get Activity Monitor to sample, use command-option-control-shift-period to run sysdiagnose. Attach the resulting /var/tmp/sysdiagnose_$(TIME).tar.gz to your bug report.
And inside that tar.gz file is a spindump.txt file, which will have the samples of whatever application is spinning at the moment, just like if you used Activity Monitor to sample it.
I had never heard about it... Wonderful.
good idea - upvoted! :)
Odd - I've been using an 8 gig mbp with swap disabled and I've yet to crash due to running out of ram. That's running a few browsers, editors, VM instances, possibly photoshop for some tweaking. Beachballs are very rare and would be due to software errors, not out of memory conditions - those would just crash.