Steve, I think your experience is in line with mine. My mid-2012 "retina" MBP (with an obscene 16GB of RAM) occasionally gets in a nearly zero free memory state. My only really big RAM user is VMWare Fusion running Windows 7 (I usually only give it 2GB of RAM, and it runs fine). By the time it gets in this state, there is usually about 4GB of "inactive" memory shown in the Activity Monitor. Doing a command line "purge" returns most of that. A full reboot, followed by opening all the same apps and docs shows much less memory used than before the reboot. I'm getting to be less of a "fanboi" for Apple than ever.
Gary On Jul 5, 2013, at 3:27 PM, Steve Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote: > 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
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