My inactive memory is abnormally high?

About OS X Memory Management and Usage

Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor

Memory Management in Mac OS X

Performance Guidelines- Memory Management in Mac OS X

A detailed look at memory usage in OS X

Understanding top output in the Terminal

The amount of available RAM for applications is the sum of Free RAM and Inactive RAM. This will change as applications are opened and closed or change from active to inactive status. The Swap figure represents an estimate of the total amount of swap space required for VM if used, but does not necessarily indicate the actual size of the existing swap file. If you are really in need of more RAM that would be indicated by how frequently the system uses VM. If you open the Terminal and run the top command at the prompt you will find information reported on Pageins () and Pageouts (). Pageouts () is the important figure. If the value in the parentheses is 0 (zero) then OS X is not making instantaneous use of VM which means you have adequate physical RAM for the system with the applications you have loaded. If the figure in parentheses is running positive and your hard drive is constantly being used (thrashing) then you need more physical RAM.

Adding RAM only makes it possible to run more programs concurrently. It doesn't speed up the computer nor make games run faster. What it can do is prevent the system from having to use disk-based VM when it runs out of RAM because you are trying to run too many applications concurrently or using applications that are extremely RAM dependent. It will improve the performance of applications that run mostly in RAM or when loading programs.

Not so. Please read all the information I provided especially the article on how to what Activity Monitor reports. Having a lot of inactive RAM is of no real consequence as long as you don't attempt to run more applications concurrently than can be supported by the amount of RAM you have installed.

Are there any work arounds to 'helping' OS X 10.7 manage memory efficiently (properly)?

How many times have we experienced OS X gobbling memory - sequestering it, not returning it - therefore forcing us to reboot; so much like Windoze?

Since Apple's OS is a fork of BSD - I wish to remain polite - it ought to manage memory like a Unix variant, but it surely does not. The consensus reply from Apple and their fanbois to simply BUY MORE RAM is grinding on my last nerve.

Thank you for any help. Cheers.

Workarounds? None required. The OS X memory manager does what it's supposed to do.

With respect, I can demonstrate that memory management in OS X is broken. For instance, try as an experiment, quitting a native OS X process and wtach if the memory is returned. Neither is the memory of applications in many instances. Memory management in OS X is broken.

I have pc with Windows 7 64 bit and Mac with Lion 10.7.5. WIndows definitely is better OS. Performace under Windows is much better, and only a blind man or fanboy can't see that. But this is typical for smart americans,which whole life is ''eat mcdonalds, drink cola''.

OS X is based on Unix, which has 44 years of development under its belt. Don't be so quick to blame the memory management.

Often when memory isn't released when an app quits, that means the memory belongs to a shared library that's still in use. Or if you see more and more memory being used when you launch and quit an app repeatedly, then that's a sign of a memory leak that would be a bug in the application; it's up to apps to manage their own memory.(It's not hard to write an app that allocates objects and fails to release them, but it's not hard to avoid that problem, either.)