Q: Lion - Memory Usage Problems

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.

thanks John.

At 32bit, the memory usage of safari, including safari web content has decreased.  However Safari web content is still at a very high level at 800Megs even at 32bit.  Better but still not good.

I've also started using Chrome to see it would be better.  I don't use them at the same time though but I try to be conscious of their resource usage.  I really like the gestures in safari but i am in the process of reconsidering using this app.

My thoughts and frustrations:

For the first time in 20 years, I shifted to a mac from a Sony Vaio S series (i5 processor, 4Gig).  And now that I have a quadcore laptop with 8Gig, I find myself getting caught up with power and memory usage, not to mention temperature.

I have gone thru the old macs like the Mac Plus, The 5300Ce, the Duo 230's and the 540c's but I have never been confronted with a computer that is so demanding of my time.

I AM EXTREMELY FRUSTRATED THAT A 2.2GHZ QUADCORE IS LEFT PAGING OUT BY A WEB BROWSER OPERATING HOT WITH A FAN UNDERNEATH FOR ONLY 3 HOURS.

My wife, with a Toshiba Netbook is becoming more productive than me with her computer.

LET ME BE MORE SPECIFIC WITH MY FRUSTRATION!

******APPLE SHOULD HAVE DISCLOSED THESE PROBLEMS BEFORE RELEASING OS LION!!!!****

jesslorenzo.  I understand your frustrations. 

May I suggest you document your situation and opinions and give them to Apple at http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

I think there are quite a few limitations in Lion which should have been clearly communicated in the app store and in the OS X web pages, and I, for one, have taken the time to point this out at the above link

Thanks John... have sent my feedback.

I am hoping they fix this soon.

Why do you all care if Safari or other apps use memory?  That's a good thing.

"Free" memory is wasted memory; a good operating system should cache as much as it can in RAM to avoid possible future I/O. The same is true for applications such as web browsers, which like to cache content it would otherwise have to re-download from the Internet. Most browsers use cache files, so you can see the obvious performance improvement if that cacheing can be done in RAM instead. If all you're running is Safari your performance is needlessly suffering if Safari isn't using as much RAM as it can to avoid having to read and write cache files on disk, and the OS should use as much of RAM as it can without interfering with other apps for the same reason - to avoid disk I/O.

This should only be a problem if the OS doesn't effectively release the inactive memory for use by other applications on an as needed basis; having to watch a UI pinwheel for several seconds isn't "effectively."

So are all of you seeing pinwheels or just objecting to the numbers in Activity Monitor?

Note that hangs/spins are not normal operation, but it's no big deal if Safari is using all of RAM as long as the inactive memory is effectively reclaimed when needed.

So, long story short - using all available RAM is not a bug.

Not effectively freeing up the RAM when it's needed elsewhere is.

The key is which behavior you're actually experiencing; hangs are not necessarily a symptom of this, though they can be (the test would be to see if those hangs never occur on systems with most RAM free.)

Among other things, that's what the pageout stats should be showing.

@William.... It doesn't release the memory even after you quit.

Just before I answered this, Safari, including Safari Web Content reached 1.5Gig.  Even after I quit safari, my MBP 2.2ghz 8Gig ram was paging memory and was having hickups running microsoft word.

For the record, I am only running Microsoft Word, Mail, Hit List, Evernote.  have not even started vid editing yet and my mac is already running as if I was rendering something with premier of final cut.

So... to answer your question.  My complaint is not what I see in the activity monitor.  It is the fact that I have to look at the activity monitor because I see colorful beach balls often.... even while just using microsoft word.  I think an Intel Atom can handle this work better.

Whether or not LOST or UNCLAIMED Ram is used somewhere by my mac is not efficient for me because it is using it for work I did not ask my laptop to do.

Right now, I have to restart my mac to free up memory.

Computers are funny things, I have two Mac minis, both are exactly the same model, both bought at the same time, both upgraded to lion.  One works fine with only the odd finder glitch - the other runs like a pig slowing down to a crawl to the extent the track pad becomes usless.

Just saying...

I actually strongly recommend that you ALL fil a bug report for the memory problems wih Safari 5.1 and Lion 10.7 with this link: https://bugreport.apple.com

More people report a bug, more Apple will see it's a general problem and will get it fixed to get their long time customers happy

I just read that "OS X Lion does not provide a Java runtime by default" over here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1421 and through this link can do download and install Java SE 6 version 1.6.0_26.

Do you think this has anything to do with the problem ?

i'm going to download and install..

Quitting an application will do nothing to affect inactive memory blocks used for disk cache, nor should it.

As a simplistic example, if you were say running Photoshop, then quit, then relaunched it because you forgot to do something, it is much faster to reload the application from cache blocks in memory than to go all the way out to the disk, traverse file system structures and reload it from there. Actually, it's even faster to reload it from a pageout swap file than to reload it from the file system, but I digress.

Even if you had to look at a pinwheel, odds are it would be faster to launch from cache or the swap file than to reload it from disk.

The problem comes if you are prevented from doing other work by this.

In all honesty, Apple's VM system is getting better but is still rather immature as compared to an OS that's been around for decades like Solaris or even Linux.

@stamatgeorge:  thanks. I just installed the Java runtime and I'm trying to see if it solves anything.  I've also sent my feedback to apple.

@William: I appreciate your effort in explaining virtual memory.  I can see you are way ahead in making sense of this mess.  However, your explanation does not provide any comfort or solution to the me.  I find it frustratingly strange that I see pinwheels when I'm just typing in MS Word.  This is something I never saw while I was using windows 7 just a month ago.

I suppose the frustration here is how many of us are trying to get a handle on how we can address these several issues that crop up out of this new OS.  And this frustration is unabaited due to Apple's silence or lack of acknowledgement of these bugs.  This frustration is rooted with the fact that they released this OS without disclosure of these problems.  I hope Apple realize that many people can become patient if they are transparent.

In all this, I still believe that the mac is an excellent laptop.  The first time I used my macbook pro, after a few hours with Snow Leopard, I said to myself.... "Oh, indeed, I've been missing a lot."  I saw how people love the mac.  It is much simpler and elegant.

...but OS Lion is another story for me.

I am still waiting a while. I am still hoping they fix this mess. I'll give it 10 more days before I bite the bullet and reformat my hard drive to switch back to snow leopard.

What's ridiculous is that Lion and the machines here in this thread are 64bit architecture. No one should have to switch Safari to 32bit mode. Especially with all the 64bit advertising Apple does for Lion, Safari, and its machines. This is not a valid solution.

A friend of mine from the university nearby suggested that I install freemem to help.  I'll let you know how this goes as well.

I have a 2009 17" MBP with 8gbs of memory. 80% of the time I have Safari, Mail and iTunes open. Why should I ever have page-outs? Why, out of 8gbs, do I end up with over 5gbs of "Inactive Memory", 1.5gbs of used memory with nothing but Mail open? Do you know what happens next if I decide to go to Netflix and watch a flic? Page-outs. That's not good memory management, IMO.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe page-outs creatate extra processor and disk activity - beach balls and slow downs.

Besides, after a fresh, clean install of Lion, before installing any other programs, I use the three said programs, watch "Inactive" memory shoot to a whopping 700mb, then begin to drop down on its own 28mb. It cycles up and down between those ranges.

It is iFreeMem 3.5

Works good!