M1 Pro Macbook ram memory usage

Poisoning Internet performance:

By far the easiest way to cause instability and crashing is to install ANY third-party speeder-uppers, Cleaners, Optimizers, or Virus scanners. or a VPN that you installed yourself.

The idea that a third party, with no special knowledge of the inner workings of MacOS, can somehow find a simple way to protect your computer — that is not already being done by MacOS itself — suggests that the MacOS developers are somehow "holding out on you". That is absurd.

You should remove any and all (other than Apple built-in) virus scanners, speeder uppers, optimizers, cleaners, App deleters or VPN packages you installed yourself, or anything of that ilk.

Third-party file Sync-ers such as DropBox, BackBlaze, OneDrive, or GoogleDrive can ruin performance, but are not inherently dangerous.

The current versions of MacOS have protections so good, there are currently no known Viruses that can SPONTANEOUSLY infect your Mac. Random ‘stuff’ is NEVER allowed to be Executed, so all your files do not need to be scanned, again and again. Only software from know developers is allowed to be considered for becoming Executable, and then only after you enter your Admin password to allow installation. Potentially-executable files are then scanned at first run by MacOS Gatekeeper, locked, and moved to the /Applications folder.

Effective defenses against malware and ot… - Apple Community

The drive in this computer is more than 100 times the typical speed of drives in computers a decade older. If you have installed software that wastes computer resources on a regular basis, it will do busywork at previously-impossible speeds. This software used to run as fast as it could, then would have to wait for the disk drive to catch up before continuing to waste resources. With a really fast drive, that drive-speed restriction is gone.

I began to wonder if the alerts I'm getting from CleanMyMac ...

I think you have your answer. The macOS has, cat-like, cleaned itself for over twenty yearsa and need NO OUTSIDE HELP! You paid Apple good money to built that elegance into your OS.

Outside "cleaning" apps compete with these elegant self-maintenance routines Apple includes for you. Completely remove CleanMyMac and any other cleaning or anti-virus apps per the developers' instructions. Right now, their interference is masking any real problems that might be present.

A real thing is that some web pages can use far more RAM and battery power that they should. Activity Monitor will show that as well if you select the %CPU column or the Energy column.

I can produce that at will by leaving the Amazon home page open in the background. When I discovered it, I had 14 tabs open including Amazon. My battery runtime showed a precipitous reduction. Active Monitor showed the single Amazon page using far more CPU and energy that the other 13 tabs (sites)combined.

Are you really saying that no matter how many apps I run on my Powerbook it will never run out of memory and never display degraded performance?

No. You are putting words in my mouth. That may be what you expected me to say but that would be wrong. I am not a Apple apologist. I deal with facts. What I am saying is precisely summed up in this sentence in my first post:

Right now, their interference is masking any real problems that might be present.

You cannot get a full picture when something is running that, based on my 20+year of analyzing posts here, is a known cause of anomalous happenings that go away when "cleaning" apps are removed.

If you don't trust Apple, keep running those third-party apps and accept the known performance penalties. It's no skin off my back. I own Apple computers, not Apple stock.

Hey plschmehl,

We'll be happy to help in your decision about upgrading!  For this, we'd like to get you in touch with our Sales Team with these questions. They'll have the best tools to look into this with you. Get in touch here: Contact - How to Contact Us - Apple

Have a great day.

Your post will be here on this Apple-Provided Discussions server for a long time.

I volunteer to help users here, and it is my policy that if I possibly can, I provide discussion contributions that are deliberately WIDER that the original queries the Author posted.

Then 'what is here' will appear in searches for similar topics and keyword, and has the possibility to move general understanding along.

If you REQUIRE a specific, narrow answer to your own query ONLY, rather than a broad discussion of topics related to exactly what you asked about, I invite you to contact Apple support where Apple employees will be glad provide you the best personalized service and support they know how to provide.

Official Apple Support

Thanks for the follow-up.