Your System has Run out of Application memory

the "out of Application memory" message appeared for the first time this morning - on my brand new Mac Pro with 32G 1867 MHz DDR3 memory, running 10.9.2. the only programs running were Mail, Chrome and Preview.

i hadn't used Migration Assistant to transfer data from Mac Mini because the Pro could never locate the Mini, and the Mini seemed to think Mig.Assistant was only for x-fering data TO it, not FROM it. i began to suspect some data on Mini, so created User on Pro, downloaded most from iCloud, and then installed 3rd party s/w manually. all was fine (well, except Intuit, but that's another story) until this morning when, all loaded, i got the above message.

i read this thread. Force Quit the Mail program and all seems to be OK. didn't reboot - and really would find that a difficult fix to swallow. reminds me all too much of the old DOS and Windows PC days when crashing/freezing/rebooting was the norm. i'm not going back there.

just thought i'd add that it happens on a Pro too. i'm crossing my fingers and hoping i get none/few of these errors in future. if my luck doesn't hold, i know where to come back.

This is without a doubt a Mavericks bug.

I see some people trying to point out that maybe it's 3rd party software, maybe you have old software, etc.

It is none of those.

I left my machine ( 2014 27 inch iMac ) running and left it for about 2 hours, come back and I get the same exact message for the first time since getting this machine.

I went into Activity Monitor and the 1 thing maxing out my ram was Kernal_task, nothing else.

I know that the Kernal_task is the thing that runs when the computer sometimes is idle ( it's some kind of maintenance for OS X or something ) but this was the first time It locked things up so bad ( Had a 2007 iMac before this and it would run, but not to lock it up like this )

So know that this is a Mavericks issue, not your issue or any 3rd party issue.

( All I personally did is select to close all the applications it showed, restarted from the finder Menu and I'm a-ok now )

The reason we point to 3rd party software is because a lot of other issues on 10.9 have been resolved by removing old software, specifically system level extensions & launchd jobs (background & auto-starting tasks).

It does look like this could be just a Mavericks bug, but I'm unwilling to categorically claim it is the fault of 10.9 alone when users have additional software that may be contributing to the issue.

This thread has reports of Aperture, Calendar, Calendar Agent, Finder, Mail, Safari, iTunes, Numbers, Pages, Spotify… causing the dialog to appear, weirdly there are also 2 users who report seeing it on 10.8.5 too.

2 Pages back Somawise said a safe boot resolved it.

Mr A.M. wrote:

I went into Activity Monitor and the 1 thing maxing out my ram was Kernal_task, nothing else.

I know that the Kernal_task is the thing that runs when the computer sometimes is idle ( it's some kind of maintenance for OS X or something ) but this was the first time It locked things up so bad ( Had a 2007 iMac before this and it would run, but not to lock it up like this )

So know that this is a Mavericks issue, not your issue or any 3rd party issue.

( All I personally did is select to close all the applications it showed, restarted from the finder Menu and I'm a-ok now )

FYI kernel task is the first process that is started on boot (it has a process id of 0). It oversees everything. launchd is the second process that is started, hence the theory (and evidence in these forums) that old code running at these low levels can do bad things to the entire OS (but it probably is not be the case here).

My understanding is that kernel task can 'inherit' leaked memory from processes it was responsible for, so massive RAM usage in kernel task may not be a fault in the kernel task, it could be one of it's many 'child processes'.

The intricacies of this are where my knowledge ceases, however I would still look for logs in Console (in Utilities folder) that were created around the time of the alert (perhaps in system.log and kernel.log).

I'd also see if there is any visible sign that an application is using lots of RAM, or writing lots of data to/from disk, or getting a lot of messages in Activity Monitor. You will need to enable extra columns to see certain statistics & show all processes to see a full picture.

Finding a way to provoke the issue into appearing is half the battle, then we can properly look at it.

I bet time machine is adding to the load?

Time Machine hadn't yet been initiated on my new install of Mavericks on my Mac Pro when I got the "out of Application memory" error.

Have you considered a reinstall? The default 10.9 installer will overwrite the system in place, leaving all the user data & apps intact. Backup first if there is anything you can't afford to lose. Recovery mode will download the installer (do it on Ethernet).

It may help if the installation is corrupt, obviously it's better to try troubleshooting & do all the usual repair disk, run hardware test, reset PRAM, reset power manager, safe boot, try another user account…

These are all things I would try after a reinstall, then if move on to a clean install followed by a trip to the Applestore.

Hopefully your new Mac will be happier at some point in the process, good luck.

I time machined back to the last backup i knew that aperture and mavericks worked. My computer was fine for a few days until I decided to update just the Aperture to the 3.5.1 and left the Mavericks 10.9.2 update undone. Guess what? The "Application out of memory" message is back with a vengeance. I am now restoring that same backup for just my aperture library. I no longer believe its the OS Mav. I think it's Aperture. do not upgrade to the latest version until they(Apple) get it figured out

But wouldn't everyone using it be experiencing it? I'm not on any of our Macs.

Pete

Well Pete- consider yourself lucky then.....

Some recent time in the past, someone mentioned that if you have any antivirus software OR MacKeeper or any type of third party hard drive/memory "cleaning" style apps, that once these were completely uninstalled, the Application Memory error went away.

So, if any of you here in this post, have any thing like this on your systems, you need to search the web or the virus or cleaning app developers' websites for the proper way to uninstall these types of apps off of your systems and see if this error goes away.

If anyone here has MacKeeper installled,here is the link to properly and completely uninstall this "garbageware".

http://www.macexpertguide.com/2012/11/16/uninstall-mackeeper-2012-2011-mac/

Yes- i did have that, but have uninstalled it, but this keeps happening....

907nomad wrote:

Well Pete- consider yourself lucky then.....

No, I just consider the handful of Aperture users experiencing it as unlucky. As I say, if it were a bug then everyone would be seeing it. If it is a conflict within some system setups, then it it a matter of finding the culprit in each of those systems.

But if you have yourself convinced that it is a bug then report it here Report Bug

Or file feedbackwith Apple.

Cheers

Pete

Just adding my $.02 to the mix. Three days ago I did a fresh install of 10.9.2 onto my Samsung EVO 500GB SSD in my 17" MBP (late 2011) with 16GB RAM and a 1.5TB HDD in the optical bay. I have installed Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, some browsers and stuff from getmacapps. I had this happen when the following were open: Excel, Word, Firefox, Chrome, Mail, Postbox, Calendar and Address Book running. This is nothing compared to what I usually have running. I've maybe seen this error once or three times EVER. But now with a completely new install, I get it within a couple of days under comparatively light load. Hope I don't see this anytime soon. Incidentally, I just had the logic board replaced due to a failed graphics chip.

I have gotten this message occasionally, not linked with any particular application, but usually while Mail is running. For an unrelated reason, the Apple Store found a defective memory socket and replaced my logic board, and now the problem is very rare.

I've read that a lot of people associate this error with Mail. I think there is reason to suspect that Mail is causing the problem:

1. Sometimes I create a file, say, on the desktop, to send as an attachment. After sending the message, I delete the file from the desktop. No matter how long I wait, I can't empty it from the trash because it is allegedly still in use. I have to quit and restart Mail to empty the file from the trash. That scenario might not apply to you, but whatever underlying problem is causing that behavior might pop up in other places that cause the out-of-application-memory message.

2. Preview, and occasionly Mail, do not always quit when they quit. They appear to quit after CMD+Q, but before I can log out or do anything else that requires applications to shut down, I have to force quit them or quit them from the Activity Monitor. Mavericks can't quit them as part of logging out. This might cause out-of-application-memory problems in Preview and Mail, and it might even cause problems in other applications, since the processes aren't freeing up memory.

Apple has ignored all the bug reports about Mail's read/unread flag since at least 2006, had trashed Pages and has stupidified other professional software over customer protests, which shows that Apple doesn't use its own products in its business and doesn't know who is using it for what. They use Microsoft Office, so they probably use Outlook instead of Mail. If they used Mail, these problems would have been obvious and disruptive, and they would have fixed the underlying problem by now.

I don't think we'll see any fixes in the next decade.

The spinning wheel is just happening so much! If Mac user's were aware that this is a Mavericks problem I think there would be much more concern. I have tried to work around this and have quit using Fox Fire because it does use a lot of memory but that did not solve it. The problem is the longer Mavericks runs the more memory it uses. So Mavericks bug is you now must restart on a regular basis. Mavericks owns it and the developer are doing a disservice to customers by not getting serious and fixing it. If I was not a Apple lover I would bail out now. At Least Come up with a way to go back to 10.8 or Lyon or Snow Lepord would be an improvement as slow, freezing, restarting!