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mightymilk Author

Level 1

32 points

Lion - Memory Usage Problems

Why is Lion using all 4GB of RAM running Mail, Safari (2 tabs), and iTunes? Snow Leopard was bad enough at handling memory, eating up every available byte and Lion seems to be arbitrarily using even more RAM. Windows 7 has zero problems handling RAM, there's no reason OS X shouldn't be able handle memory properly.

Can someone explain what Apple is doing here? I'm at a total loss. For users who just need Safari, Mail, and iTunes... I guess this works. But how am I expected to reliably run Logic, Final Cut, or Aperture with OS X using every available resource for Web Surfing, E-mail, and Music. This is totally unacceptable for a multi-million dollar software company greated towards professionals as well as consumers.

The following responses are not acceptable by the way:

Buy more RAM - I did that already, it will eat up 2/4/8GB, doesn't matter. Not to mention Apple still sells numerous 2/4GB confirgurations.
Buy a newer/more powerful Mac - this is a improper handling of memory issue, not a hardware issue.

I'd really love some insight into this. Thanks for reading.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7), 13" (late-2009)

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 5:45 AM

957 replies

Aug 8, 2011 6:06 AM in response to mightymilk

I'm having big problems too with memory hogging. It's not only with Safari, any application does it too as I have been trying for the last hour and a half to get iWeb to upload my site changes! It has to be something to do with Lion as it wasn't a big problem before... maybe a little with Safari but no where as bad as this!

Come on Apple, get this fixed please! How about a responce from you?

Aug 8, 2011 6:09 AM in response to morayshire

morayshire. I replied to your earlier post with this link https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3238726

Also, be aware that these discussions are not monitored by Apple. This is for user-to-user communication.

Aug 8, 2011 8:50 AM in response to mightymilk

mightymilk wrote:

urabus wrote:

Also, if you have Xcode installed, simply type "purge" in Terminal and it will free up "Inactive Memory".

Thanks for the tip, I'll try disabling Java and see what happens. The purge feature is nice, I didn't know that command extisted.

I have been using "purge" the last few days as well. It does help but in my case at the cost of having the system stuck for 20 seconds or so. Since I have most of my memory problems with Safari I instead restart it when it goes nearly 1GB usage. By magic it reduces the amount if needed RAM by half.

Aug 8, 2011 8:57 AM in response to Michelasso

I recently wrote a hack that will periodically check Lion's Inactive memory usage, and which will automatically purge it if it exceeds a specified value.

See this article for details: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3248102?tstart=0

Aug 8, 2011 8:57 AM in response to John Kitchen

Yes John, I have read your post... this was a post in support of mightymilk to show I too am having problems.

Waffl3s

Level 1

0 points

Aug 8, 2011 9:26 AM in response to mightymilk

I am in the same boat. The Apple Genius I spoke with yesterday claimed ignore of this memory leak issue and said it was the first time he heard of it. I was unable to reproduce the issue on the spot for the Genius. I shown him the screenshot that I took of Safari web content using near 6GBs of memory with only 2 tabs open on Best Buy's website. They suggested I do a fresh install since the hardware was not having issues. This will be the 3rd install of Lion since I upgraded.

Aug 8, 2011 12:33 PM in response to Waffl3s

Has anyone found a fix for this Safari memory hog problem ? I'm having the same "Safari" ans "Safari web content" can go up to 250MB each in Activity Monitor.

Aug 8, 2011 12:52 PM in response to stamatgeorge

This brought me some relief

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

Its not a fix for all the lion performance issues but it does seem Lion is recovering memory a little bit quicker and hopefully will hold us until Apple puts something out there... Cheers

Aug 8, 2011 1:03 PM in response to w stewart

I did that PRAM reset but still the same.

Aug 8, 2011 1:06 PM in response to mightymilk

yes Lion like ram a lot ..

I was with 4GB and it use almost all with safari and mail.I upgrade to 12 Gb(Two 4GB for the two free slots plus the 2x2gb that come with my 2011 imac) and i shall say that now isn't using more than half,it use ram yes but if you upgrade to eight or 12 shall be fine,i can handle up to 16 but i think is a lot.It use all if you have 4GB or six or even 8 but after that is better.May apple was thinking that i already upgrade the ram with Snow leopard to be ready for the future ...

Aug 8, 2011 1:18 PM in response to w stewart

What about switching applications to run in 32bit mode? I am going to give that a shot tonight haven't tried that but cant get any worse..

Aug 8, 2011 5:54 PM in response to w stewart

Switching Safari in 32bit mode seems to be working so far. I don't get gigs of ram used up and I am left with much to spare... so far so good.

Does anyone know what are the advantages and disadvantages between running at 32bit vs. 64bit?

Thanks

Aug 8, 2011 7:31 PM in response to jesslorenzo

jesslorenzo, 64 bit addressing allows the use of larger amounts of RAM than 32 bits, so is suitable for large RAM Macs, that is, larger than 4GBs.

Aug 8, 2011 7:56 PM in response to John Kitchen

Thanks for the immediate feedback John.

Is there any performance advantage using 64bit? My MBP has 8Gig which puts me that category of having that capacity to run Safari at 64bit. However, if there are no clear or noticable advantage, I would rather keep safari at 32bit to save me the memory for other apps.

Thanks again

Aug 8, 2011 8:13 PM in response to jesslorenzo

jesslorenzo, I don't know for sure, but I think if you put Safari into 32 bit mode, you'd be unlikely to see any measurable negative performance difference compared to 64 bit mode. But if it stops your system from paging or reduces paging, you could see a significant performance advantage in 32 bit mode.

Lion - Memory Usage Problems