Lion and Macs with 4GBs of RAM (or even 8GBs)

Running Lion on a 2 GB was never an issue or recommended by anyone. Snow Leopard wasn't even that great with 2 GB RAM. You have to look very hard to find a 2 GB configuration on any Apple machine. In fact, only the 11" MacBook Air is stuck at 2 GB. Only the cheapest Mini comes with 2 GB. Everything else comes with 4 GB and is upgradeable to 8 or more.

Apple makes and sells millions of machines. They need to do that quickly. Customizations slow things down. That is why extra RAM from Apple costs so much. It is Apple's way of encouraging people to buy standard configurations and upgrade them later, saving at least $100 every time. I don't see what the big deal is.

The memory optimizations in Lion are at the application level. Lion will automatically quit applications and free all of their memory, if necessary. Yet, the application will appear to still be running and will be restarted instantly if needed.

Microsoft's recommendations are truly irrelevant. I run my Windows machines in Parallels with 256 or 512 MB and they run fine. Of course, I don't do much with them.

Straight on Apple's web-site under Lion:

General requirements

• Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
• 2GB of memory
• OS X v10.6.6 or later (v10.6.8 recommended)
• 7GB of available space
• Some features require an Apple ID; terms apply.

They specifically say at least 2 GB of memory, the point that I'm making is simple... A lot of applications require larger memory allocation to perform functions especially based on features. $200 dollars is what it cost to upgrade to 8 GB of ram. That's not a lot of money. Apple already made the 90% markup cost needed without an upgrade; so upgrades are cheap. It's also why there are so few customizational choices.

Yea, Lion may quit the Application but the fact it has to quit applications is a flaw in offering. My system shouldn't close any application unless I want it closed.

Microsofts rcommendations aren't irrelevant; they use the exact same Intel architecture in some cases as Apple hardware- thus the creation of Hackintosh because the hardware is similiar enough that the binary packages can run allowing it to work. Microsoft's OS can run on 512 of memory; but they know that a bulk of rich content developer applications will easily eat 2 to 4 GB of memory depending on the architecture and design. Apple has applications that can do the same thing.

Snow Lepoard was all backend upgrades and is also a foundation to the Lion platform; what I'm saying is... Based on the machines Apple provides it can't perform Float Integer Calculations nearly as quick as it should on base machines. You need to have an upgraded machine. If you don't, when using any non-prepacked Apple OS Software you can run into limitations and flaws that hinder the softwares performance.

Because developers focus on a hardware majority and target that platform; and with all the enriched content that Apple and Microsoft implement for developers the applications are only going to get more complex, more enriched, and more resource hungry.

That is a requirement, not a recommendation. I don't know where you buy your RAM, but my 8 GB only cost $64. You are playing fast and lose with facts here. Yes, I run "Windows" in 512 MB RAM. I run Windows XP and IE 7 or 8 to test my own web site. Don't try that with Vista or 7.

The ram is always cheaper to install yourself, but the average person can pay $200 on Apples configuration page. Yes, yours basic user, non power user. My facts aren't hit or miss.

Still there are not so old Macs that with a 64 bit architecture have a physical limit of 3GB RAM. Wuth a 32 bits EFII. The Intel Core 2 Duo is more than capable of running Lion and its applications. I find it outrageous that Apple made such a design. I had enough of the MS DOS 640KB limit, and now it is all over again.

Neuro-Kinetic wrote:

The ram is always cheaper to install yourself, but the average person can pay $200 on Apples configuration page. Yes, yours basic user, non power user. My facts aren't hit or miss.

And the average person will be just fine with the average of 4 GB RAM on the average Mac. I'm a power user and 4 GB was fine for me for 4 years - including with Lion.

Michelasso wrote:

Still there are not so old Macs that with a 64 bit architecture have a physical limit of 3GB RAM. Wuth a 32 bits EFII. The Intel Core 2 Duo is more than capable of running Lion and its applications. I find it outrageous that Apple made such a design. I had enough of the MS DOS 640KB limit, and now it is all over again.

You find it outrageous that Apple can't go back in time 5 years and re-design a mass-produced logic board for a low-end machine?

Good cheap RAM, 8 gig at $39:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233215

Using it in my 2011 Mini Server and 2011 Macbook Pro and works

just fine.

etresoft wrote:

You find it outrageous that Apple can't go back in time 5 years and re-design a mass-produced logic board for a low-end machine?

Who spoke about redesigning? It had to be designed to support more RAM since the beginning. And that happens to MBP as well which I would hardly define as "low-end machines" since they costed twice or more than an equivalent OEM one. Which supported already 4GB of RAM or more.

In any case something is weird with Lion memory management. I just had to reinstall Lion and with no applications running apart for the 10.7.2 installer the free RAM went from 2GB out of 3GB to nothing.

I'm asking myself the same question... I have an installation of Snow Leopard in other disk an it uses just 500 and something MB, while Lion uses 1,3 GB of RAM (besides that any app launches slowers than in SL).

Any solution for this?

Thanks,

Ø3.

Nice thread, have been browsing the forums for things I can do to improve performance on my iMac. Since I upgraded from SL to Lion I noticed a big performance decrease. usually after a few hours of use (4+) it becomes unsuable and I need to restart.

I have a 24" iMac (Mid-2007) Core2Duo 2.4Ghz / 4Gb DDR RAM / 320Gb HDD.

I recently tried the recommendation of one of the posts to do a clean install of Lion, and set my most used apps to run in 32bit mode. But again after hours of use if i don´t restart it becomes unsueable. Never used to happen with SL.

I've read I can upgrade to 6Gb DDR now (even though the specs say 4Gb is the max), so I've ordered a 4Gb stick to replace one of the 2Gb sticks. Hopeffuly 6Gb will give it a nice boost.

Also I'm going to change the hard drive for a faster Segate Barracuda 1Tb SATA-3 7200rpm drive. This probably wont do much, as im guessing it will be capped to sata-II speeds by the machine?.... but i do hear a lot of disk activity lately, and last time I heard these noises my hard drive died (but got it replaced with apple care).

A part from the hardware upgrades, what software/system tweaks/configurations do you recommend that aren´t setting apps to run in 32bit mode? I usually have the following opened at once: mamp, eclipse, itunes, filezilla, chrome, firefox (with too many plugins), safari, parallels pc (for Windows & IE), and on ocassions xcode or photoshop.

I would like to keep this iMac at least a year more before I purchase a new one. And hoping to put Mountain Lion on it as well.

With all that stuff open at the same time you need to the max 6gig!

Also, make sure your Parallels VM is set to use only one core

(on your machine setting to two cores will degrade both OSX

and windows) and minimize the memory it uses.

John Kitchen wrote:

Thomas, my guess is that your MBA is paging a lot since it has only 2GBs. Take a look at Page Outs. However, the MBA is paging to and from an SSD, which is an order of magnitude faster than a HDD, so it can tolerate the paging, at least to a degree.

Back in the 80s, we used to instal SSDs on mainframes which had limited RAM. The SSDs were only used for paging. This extended the life of the mainframe CPUs significantly, and allowed more effective utilization.

Have one 2007 MBP with 3GB active RAM (out of the 4GB) flying along since Lion came out and under a heavy workload. Working without a hiccup. My 2011 has 8GB RAM and is slightly faster. Very happy with all my MBP's performances under Lion.

Go figure

Pete

Yeh i have VM set to the minimal settings, it runs windows slow as **** jajaja

Just found a fairly cheap C2D X7900 (2.8Ghz) on ebay as well.. may opt to upgrade the CPU when I open it to change the hard drive... that should make a huge difference and keep my iMac alive for a couple of years.. or it could all go horribly wrong and ill be force to buy a new one now... lets hope not!