Memory Pig Mac OS
This article was nominated for deletion on 2010-05-03. The result of the discussion was keep. |
When your Mac is low on memory, blame it on a resource-intensive app such as a graphics editing tool you might be using, or on excessive consumption by a multitude of apps. In this context, it’s important to avoid a common misconception: memory (RAM) and disk space are different things. OSXpmem is a part of the pmem suite created by the developers of Rekall. Rekall itself is actually a very useful utility built for both memory acquisition and live memory analysis on Windows, Linux, and OSX systems.
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Memory Pig Mac Os X
Untitled[edit]
I apologize if my English isn't perfect, anyway, I think is at least understandable.Motorola MC68000 isn't a 'full 32-bit' processor; it has only 24-bit wide address bus.It is incorrect to say '24 lines allow addressing up to 8MB' because 24 lines allow to address up to 16 MBytes of memory (any kind of course). The reason of the 8MBytes limit is due the way the memory map was structured on '24-bit' Macs (http://www.osdata.com/system/physical/memmap.htm#MacPlus).Because of this MacOS 7 is able to address more than 8 MBytes of memory (4MBytes RAM + 4MBytes ROM) only on the models equipped with 'full 32-bit' processors.I know my english is simple. Please feel free to improve it in any way.Please let me know (here) if anybody of you think I'm wrong somehow.- 213.203.155.204 18:04, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
The tone of the article worries me slightly...the author(s) seem to assume that Apple refused to change the memory manager out of pure stubbornness or pig-headedness. I think it more likely that Apple assumed all along that some radically new OS would supercede the existing Mac OS (as OS X eventually did) and that it would not be worth the trouble to rewrite the entrenched memory manager. -Astrovan
- Some developers were already indicating their displeasure at the way memory management worked as far back as 1989 or so (possibly earlier, but that's when I became aware of it). At that time System 7 hadn't even been released, and it certainly didn't address the issue. In fact by making MultiFinder a non-optional part of the system, it made the situation worse. There were some third-party extensions that replaced the memory manager (Optimem), which showed that it could be changed - though it's true that Optimem caused some compatibility issues with some apps - but then they didn't have the inside story that Apple themselves would have had. In 1992 some colleagues and I had a lengthy discussion with some Apple engineers at a developer seminar about the situation, and we outlined a scheme to them that we thought could have worked. They agreed it was a workable idea, but told us that backward compatibility would be too difficut to ensure, though we didn't really buy that, since our plan provided an identical view of the system from the app's perspective. Perhaps they knew that it really wasn't apps they were worried about, it was system code that was taking liberties - it's come to light much more recently that a lot of it was undocumented, uncommented and certainly unmanaged. However, despite this their tone was very much along the lines of 'you boys shouldn't meddle in grown-up's business, now go away and leave it to us, we know what we're doing'. We found it patronising to say the least, especially as clearly the implementation that the 'grown ups' had come up with sucked so badly. OS X totally replaces the memory manager though implements the same APIs in Carbon, so it shows that a different plan could have been dropped in underneath without compromising API compatibility - and provided apps stuck to the rules that Apple had promoted since the first public issue of Inside Macintosh, they would not have had a problem. Apple's other sticking plaster 'solutions' to the problem - temporary memory and so forth, as well as the seriously crappy virtual memory scheme in System 7.whatever, simply added to the problem in spades. It's a moot point, but they really should have bitten the bullet and fixed it with System 7, even if there would have been some bumps in the road as a result - they did it with the 24 -> 32 bit thing, 68k -> PowerPC thing, and others, so why they were so stubborn about this is hard to fathom.Graham 08:00, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I agree with the points made by Graham, however, I do believe that the article does not contain a level of objectivity that is desirable. While Graham makes perfectly valid points, they are still points of personal opinion, which could be done without. If this article was more objective, then perhaps it would not seem to people that Apple was 'stubborn or pig-headed'. For instance, instead of saying 'Apple did a bad thing' we could say 'It was some people's opinion that Apple did a bad thing', the latter keeping a neutral point of view. This would be quite an interesting (and by that I mean 'boring') task to do, but it would give this article quite a nice polish. --huwr 08:51, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I am deleting this:
In fact this demonstrates conclusively that it was possible to change the model all along without a major compatibility issue, which was always Apple's defence for keeping the original scheme.
because it is, pardon me, bullsh*t. The 'compatibility issue' was that applications were reaching into private memory manager data structures, patching traps (in many cases, Apple could not change the order in which purely internal routines were called by portions of the toolbox without breaking important third-party applications), directly reading low-memory globals, in other words, generally violating encapsulation. This was a problem for the entire Mac toolbox, not just the memory manager.
All of that compatibility nightmare still exists -- in the Mac OS 9 emulation layer (Classic.app).
In Carbon on Mac OS X, Apple could do away with all the cruft because there is no binary compatibility with old applications. Carbon apps may run on Mac OS 9 -- but the version of Carbon on Mac OS 9 is a compatibility shim that still uses the old implementation underneath the modernized API calls. Only in Mac OS X could Apple fully do away with the old implementation.
(If you must have credentials, I was a software engineer on the Carbon team at Apple.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.203.155.204 (talk • contribs) 19:04, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
- I think that's fair comment. But since Apple were already aware that there was a problem as far back as the late 80s, there is no real reason that Carbon or so0mething very like it could not have been instigated then, rather than waiting for OS X (and which, I seem to recall, was forced on them by some high-profile rebellious developers who refused point-blank, and quite reasonably, to port their code to Cocoa). Adoption might have been slower since there was no clear benefit in the short term, but Apple could have done it. I think that's the point. Graham 03:44, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
- That's not really the topic of the article, though. Your meeting with Apple engineers of course isn't usable in the article because of WP:Verifiability. It's clear that everyone was annoyed by MultiFinder and the lame memory scheme we all found ourselves in; if you feel the need to add citations saying so then feel free. More citation would help this article, though it's hard to find them on programming topics from the 80s and early 90s. Tempshill 23:07, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
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BetacommandBot (talk) 07:01, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Historic or current article[edit]
Does this article reflect the current state or is it a historic article about pre OS X era? If so it should be renamed IMHO. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.110.199.118 (talk) 10:18, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
- This article is definitely not up to date. There is no description of the 64 bit system used today Agnerf (talk) 05:22, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
- Renamed it because it is fundamentally historic. Contemporary macOS memory management methods are not particularly distinctive. On the whole, not hugely different from any other Unix-like operating system. Only Classic Mac OS has such a unique way of managing memory that it deserves its own article in my opinion. (But, if someone disagrees, and thinks such an article should be written about contemporary macOS, by all means go ahead in another article.) SJK (talk) 08:38, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
'32-bit clean' redirect[edit]
32-bit clean redirects here, but there's a similar phenomenon in the ARM architecture and System/360 which also had programs use unused address bits to store data which caused problems when addresses were expanded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.21.52.10 (talk) 07:15, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
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Is this article overly-technical?[edit]
I was reading this article and it seems excessively technical. If I did not have a computer science background myself, I would struggle to make sense of this article. I think that mentions to specific API names and features is a little too specific. Perhaps this could be rewritten to be more high-level or understandable to less-technical users? I marked the page itself as technical after reading the guidelines. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rjkucia (talk • contribs) 17:11, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
- @Rjkucia: This is an article about an inherently technical topic, and a rather obscure technical topic at that – the memory management of a discontinued operating system. The fact is, memory management is something which only concerns programmers, and you need to know a bit of background about computer science and/or programming to make sense of it. As such, I feel that asking for this article to be made less technical is a bit of a dubious request. When we dealing with more advanced topics, which are not of general interest, I think it is reasonable to assume readers already understand the basics. If they don't, they can always read other articles, or other sources, to get those basics before attempting to tackle something like this SJK (talk) 11:00, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
Is your Mac slowing down? Do you spend more and more time waiting for applications to do what you want? If so, there is a very good chance that you have high memory usage and need a Mac RAM upgrade.
What is RAM?
RAM stands for Random Access Memory. This memory is temporary and used by the CPU to hold information that processes are actively using on your system. Your Mac slows down when it experiences high memory usage, in other words, when the running applications demand more RAM than your Mac is able to provide. The more RAM available, the better your Mac is able to execute on the tasks that are being thrown at it.
The obvious solution would be to increase Mac RAM, but before we show you how to do that, let’s make sure that your lack of RAM is actually the cause of your Mac slowdown.
Note: Not all devices are able to upgrade RAM, like the MacBook Air and the 2014 edition of the Mac Mini.
How to manually check Mac RAM
Checking your RAM is dependent on the version of macOS that you have installed. You should check your Mac RAM after you have been using your Mac for a bit of time. When you are in the middle of normal daily tasks, follow these steps.
- Open Spotlight Search.
- Type in ”Activity Monitor”.
- Click on the “Memory” tab on the top of the window.
Memory Pressure is the graph you need to study.
If there is mostly green, your system RAM is currently fine. If there is a lot of yellow, the jury is still out. If there is a lot of red, your memory is under strain and your Mac has a high memory usage.
Older OS X versions like Leopard and Lion
For older versions of Mac OS X the steps are the same but the System Memory tab looks a bit different. You’ll want to look for Free and Page Outs.
Free – This is how much free RAM your Mac currently has. If you’ve got a bunch of applications open and there is still a good number of free RAM, then your Mac may have enough memory.
Page Outs – This number tells you how often your Mac has run out of RAM and needed to use the slower hard disk instead. A high number here is very bad and a sure sign that your Mac doesn’t have enough RAM.
Use a Mac memory analysis tool
Another alternative, which will work easily on all versions of Mac OS X, is to use a 3rd party tool to check your RAM usage. I highly recommend CleanMyMac X, which will not only clean and speed up your Mac, it also has a RAM monitoring tool called Menu App.
When you install CleanMyMac X, click on the Maintenance tab in the sidebar.
Here you can free up RAM with just one button. When to use this tool? When your Mac or a particular app hangs up, this feature will temporarily flush memory, helping your Mac to unfreeze.
CleanMyMac X has a free version you can download. So try it out and get to the bottom of your high memory usage problem.
Note: With all above solutions we recommend checking the results on a regular basis until you are certain that your Mac needs a RAM upgrade.
How to upgrade your Mac RAM
If you have reached the conclusion that you need more memory, we are going to show you exactly how to increase your Mac RAM. Don’t worry if you’ve never done it before, as this guide will help you every step of the way.
The first steps are to gain knowledge about your system. This will help ensure that the RAM that you get will be compatible with your system.
Step 1 – What kind of Mac do you have?
Whether you have an iMac, a MacBook Pro, or any other kind of Mac, there is a lot more information to be found out in order to identify your exact system. To get these details, follow these easy steps:
- Click on the Apple icon.
- Select “About this Mac.”
- View your system information.
Step 2 – Do I have space for more RAM in my Mac?
This may not be what you want to hear but it’s possible that you can’t add more RAM to your Mac, even if you wanted to. Let’s look under the hood and see what your RAM situation is like.
- Following on from Step 1, click on “More Info” on the “About this Mac” window.
- The complicated looking System Profiler will launch. Click on “Memory” in the left column.
On the right you will see exact details of your RAM modules or sticks. The “banks” are the slots that the RAM is inserted into. If you have an empty bank or two, you’re in luck, upgrading your Mac RAM just got that much easier.
Step 3 – Check how much RAM your Mac can take
Memory Pig Mac Os Downloads
Now let’s really make sure you can upgrade your RAM. Head over to Technical Specifications on Apple Support, find your exact Mac model. Once you find your Mac, click it to reveal a ton of information. What you’re looking for is the information, which will tell you how much RAM your system can work with. Compare it to your Mac’s current RAM (from Step 2) and now you know if you can upgrade your RAM or if you are stuck with what you have.
If you can’t upgrade your Mac RAM, download CleanMyMac X and use all of the cleaning tools to boost your Mac performance. You should also take a look at the performance improving solutions found in How To Fix Mac Running Slow.
Step 4 – Purchasing RAM for your Mac
In Step 3 you navigated to your Mac model and discovered what memory your system could potentially add. Now it's only a matter of choosing your new RAM and we recommend to start with this source. If you're located outside of the US, Google will probably tell you which stores sell RAM nearby.
Step 5 – Installing RAM into your Mac
Adding your new RAM into your Mac is not as hard as it sounds. This is definitely an upgrade that you can perform yourself, as long as you have a screwdriver on hand. The only tricky thing is to know exactly where the RAM is, and that it varies between types of Macs.
Below are handy tutorials to install new memory on your specific type of Mac.
How to upgrade RAM on an iMac
- Shut down your iMac and unplug everything.
- Place iMac face down, ensuring the screen is protected from anything that could scratch it.
- Unscrew, counterclockwise, the RAM panel in the centre until it pops out.
- Expose ribbon tab over RAM and pull on it to release RAM module.
- Use your fingers to remove the RAM entirely.
- Line up the new RAM with the now empty slot and push it in until it clicks into place.
- Screw the RAM panel cover back on.
- Re-connect everything, turn your iMac back on and go to About This Mac to confirm new RAM installed.
How to upgrade RAM on a MacBook Pro
- Turn your MacBook off.
- Turn your MacBook upside down and pop the latch on the back to remove the plate.
- Use tiny Phillips head screwdriver to unscrew the larger back plate.
- Note - one screw will be a lot smaller than the others. Remember where it goes.
- Touch metal to ground yourself before touching the RAM.
- The RAM is to the left or right of centre. Pull apart the latches on each side of it and the RAM will pop up.
- Slide the RAM out.
- Slide the new RAM into the slot and push it down till it clicks into place.
- Put the large backplate back on and screw it into place.
- Screw the smaller backplate back into place.
- Turn your Macbook on and and go to About This Mac to confirm new RAM installed.
How to upgrade RAM on a Mac Mini
Due to the form factor of the Mac Mini, it is one of the more challenging devices to upgrade. We recommend getting help from professionals or someone that has experience upgrading Mac Mini RAM.
The final word on Mac RAM upgrades
Memory Pig Mac Os Download
In this guide we showed you how to identify high memory usage on your Mac using macOS and the ever-useful CleanMyMac X. We then outlined the steps to determine what RAM your Mac has installed, whether it can be upgraded, how to purchase new memory for your Mac and finally how to install your new RAM into your Mac.
Once your new RAM is installed, depending on how much you were able to add, you should see a considerable boost to your Mac performance.
Now you know how to upgrade my Mac memory. Hope this article was helpful.