16GB is just barely ok for serious software development

[Danfango]

I've started to wonder why many VPNs have started to jump into the half-gig memory usages.

Probably another crappy Electron app full of upsells.

I don't know why people even use these consumer VPNs. You're just concentrating your traffic on someone else's egress. The only utility value is circumventing region restrictions on streaming services and if you're doing that you might as well just torrent the damn stuff.

 

[kc9hzn]

Probably another crappy Electron app full of upsells.

I don't know why people even use these consumer VPNs. You're just concentrating your traffic on someone else's egress. The only utility value is circumventing region restrictions on streaming services and if you're doing that you might as well just torrent the damn stuff.

Well, considering how every VPN sponsored ad on YouTube mentions bypassing region restrictions, I’d assume that’s what most people use them for.

 

[jav6454]

Probably another crappy Electron app full of upsells.

I don't know why people even use these consumer VPNs. You're just concentrating your traffic on someone else's egress. The only utility value is circumventing region restrictions on streaming services and if you're doing that you might as well just torrent the damn stuff.

There are some uses for me. For instance, some non-media sites in the states have region limitations for no reason or they force you to use non-US sites.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Then, how come my Mac mini doesn't use more than half of its RAM? (The language is Swedish, but it should be intelligible nonetheless). Still LYAO?

View attachment 2022199

Well it is using nearly all of the 16GB RAM: almost 8GB for apps and OS and over 6GB for file caches - that's 14GB of your 16GB.

Try running "top" from the Terminal and look the summary of "unused". Here's mine:

So 23.33GB "Memory Used" but only 141MB unused.

 

[jav6454]

Well it is using nearly all of the 16GB RAM: almost 8GB for apps and OS and over 6GB for file caches - that's 14GB of your 16GB.

Try running "top" from the Terminal and look the summary of "unused". Here's mine:

View attachment 2022407

View attachment 2022408

So 23.33GB "Memory Used" but only 141MB unused.

I believe some memory is reserved by the GPU. Unsure how OSX handles it now.

 

[Zorori]

I used to use Nord to bypass some annoying restrictions, but stopped using it when I found it useless for the BBC from Japan (VPN checks). I don't even use the iPlayer, but the website sucks from Japan as it's all american crud; the same goes for Google it just assumes anyone from Japan wants American related news & results. I ended up just using Amazon Lightsail to setup a personal VPN and never had a problem.

I also have ExpressVPN (200mb between client and daemon on a 16GB M1 Air), so that's at least better than Nord. But for all of them you can just manually set them up and avoid using the resource hog of a client.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I believe some memory is reserved by the GPU. Unsure how OSX handles it now.

Yes, I'm sure that must be the case, in the same way the Intel Macs used to tell you how much memory was reserved for the iGPU. I imagine the amount that is allocated depends on the usage at any given time. Just running the displays probably only a small amount for screen buffers, but anything requiring GPU processing will use more.

For reference here is how much Davinci Resolve carves out RAM for potential GPU usage:

Up to 21.3GB or the 32GB RAM!

 

[Fomalhaut]

I used to use Nord to bypass some annoying restrictions, but stopped using it when I found it useless for the BBC from Japan (VPN checks). I don't even use the iPlayer, but the website sucks from Japan as it's all american crud; the same goes for Google it just assumes anyone from Japan wants American related news & results. I ended up just using Amazon Lightsail to setup a personal VPN and never had a problem.

I also have ExpressVPN (200mb between client and daemon on a 16GB M1 Air), so that's at least better than Nord. But for all of them you can just manually set them up and avoid using the resource hog of a client.

Nice Solution. I was looking at Lightsail to run a Wordpress site.

How does the cost of Lightsail compare to the main consumer-level VPNs?

 

[AlixSPQR]

Well it is using nearly all of the 16GB RAM: almost 8GB for apps and OS and over 6GB for file caches - that's 14GB of your 16GB.

Try running "top" from the Terminal and look the summary of "unused". Here's mine:

View attachment 2022407

View attachment 2022408

So 23.33GB "Memory Used" but only 141MB unused.

You are quite right, if you count in cached files, but that is rather beside the point, if you want to examine the memory pressure (the graph), as per the OP.

 

[Fomalhaut]

You are quite right, if you count in cached files, but that is rather beside the point, if you want to examine the memory pressure (the graph), as per the OP.

Memory pressure is an interesting metric in MacOS and I've found that it is not solely related to the amount of swap used. The OP's post doesn't show the amount of compressed memory, which I have found (on M1 Macs) to often increase and cause "yellow" memory pressure, even if only tiny amounts of swap memory are used.

I tend to have a lot of browser tabs open, and have noticed compressed memory often increase to >15GB, which will normally cause the memory pressure to turn yellow for the entire day, even if swap is <1GB on a 32GB machine.

The OP is probably correct that 16GB is marginal on their machine considering they are using over 14GB excluding the file caches, and already starting to use some swap.

A while ago there was a long thread on SSD write volumes on the first M1 Macs and I found that having >5GB swap on my 16GB M1 caused a lot SSD writes - sometimes hundreds of GB per day, which might exceed the TBW ratings of the drives within the expected lifetime of the machine. I like to keep swap at modest levels, even with the fast Apple SSDs. After a certain point, it is noticeable (e.g. swap >60% of physical RAM), and creates concerning levels of disk writes.

 

[alien3dx]

Yes, I'm sure that must be the case, in the same way the Intel Macs used to tell you how much memory was reserved for the iGPU. I imagine the amount that is allocated depends on the usage at any given time. Just running the displays probably only a small amount for screen buffers, but anything requiring GPU processing will use more.

For reference here is how much Davinci Resolve carves out RAM for potential GPU usage:
View attachment 2022449

Up to 21.3GB or the 32GB RAM!

you need urgent 48 GB or 64 GB if event existed or better fall back to old mac pro cheese

** i still using intel desktop for work instead m1

 

[AlixSPQR]

Memory pressure is an interesting metric in MacOS and I've found that it is not solely related to the amount of swap used. The OP's post doesn't show the amount of compressed memory, which I have found (on M1 Macs) to often increase and cause "yellow" memory pressure, even if only tiny amounts of swap memory are used.

I tend to have a lot of browser tabs open, and have noticed compressed memory often increase to >15GB, which will normally cause the memory pressure to turn yellow for the entire day, even if swap is <1GB on a 32GB machine.

The OP is probably correct that 16GB is marginal on their machine considering they are using over 14GB excluding the file caches, and already starting to use some swap.

A while ago there was a long thread on SSD write volumes on the first M1 Macs and I found that having >5GB swap on my 16GB M1 caused a lot SSD writes - sometimes hundreds of GB per day, which might exceed the TBW ratings of the drives within the expected lifetime of the machine. I like to keep swap at modest levels, even with the fast Apple SSDs. After a certain point, it is noticeable (e.g. swap >60% of physical RAM), and creates concerning levels of disk writes.

Very well put. I believe the new Si technology comes at a cost, regarding memory pressure as well as swapping/SSD writing, probably because the OS isn’t optimized yet. Especially third party software must struggle now. It will improve in time, I’m sure of it. But on the other hand, Apple will gladly provide beefed up, and more expensive, hardware in the meantime.

 

[Yebubbleman]

You won't need 16GB to keep up with macOS releases. Apple will drop support for the M1 Max, M1 Pro, and standard M2 systems well before 32GB of RAM becomes a requirement. Do you NEED 32GB if you are any kind of developer? That seems highly unlikely. But, for your setup and what you do, that seems like a rational thing.

Then again, it's Apple Silicon (or, if we're talking about MacBook Pros, it's post-2012), RAM cannot be upgraded after the fact. If you have the option of buying more, you should buy more, as you will not have the option to later when you decide you'd like to have more.

 

[saber106]

I'm using 16GB M1 Pro for my normal work:

- Edge (3 Jira Tabs + M$ Teams Tab)
- Chrome (3 web tabs + FB messenger Tab + Youtube Premium Tab)
- Slack
- Telegram
- Visual Studio Code to write script and run Cypress

-> Yes it can eat up to 71% -> 80% Ram (Please also notice that if you plug in external monitor it will also eat up memory as show in WindowServer, I run 2x 4K Monitor so it is usually around 800mb -> 1.4GB)

I also have a 32GB M1 Pro laptop provided by the company and dear god I think the next MBP I buy (M3 Pro or M4 Pro) I will just buy 32GB version.

 

[Toutou]

My 16 GB Air works beautifully for the kind of development that I do. Not sure whether it's serious enough for OP or not, but it puts food on the table.

My usual tooling is RubyMine, SublimeText, local MySQL, one or two Rails servers running on the machine, Safari (browsing), Firefox (dev tools). The only VM I ever run is a 2 GB RAM Linux to SSH into. Plus the usual personal stuff like Signal or Spotify (both Electron).

 

[jav6454]

Yes, I'm sure that must be the case, in the same way the Intel Macs used to tell you how much memory was reserved for the iGPU. I imagine the amount that is allocated depends on the usage at any given time. Just running the displays probably only a small amount for screen buffers, but anything requiring GPU processing will use more.

For reference here is how much Davinci Resolve carves out RAM for potential GPU usage:
View attachment 2022449

Up to 21.3GB or the 32GB RAM!

Carving out memory makes sense. Ensures the use of memory vs Swap.

 

[Danfango]

It’s more complicated than that. The MMU physically wires the RAM to the GPU. It can’t be pulled out of swap on a page miss.

 

[asdfjkl;]

Also run slack in a browser rather than the electron crap.

Seriously, electron is a hot mess.

 

[jav6454]

Seriously, electron is a hot mess.

Why? I don't use it, so I'm curious.

 

[Danfango]

Nelly

Why? I don't use it, so I'm curious.

Well basically Electron is a framework for building cross platform applications. It runs a whole another browser instance on your computer dressed up in an app shaped suit which contains a whole megastack of awfully inefficient excrement. Because unlike remotely delivered web apps, the bloat is usually 10x worse because they don't have to care for a minute about long it'll take to deliver it to the client.

This entire thing exists only because the value proposition of actually writing dedicated apps for each platform is fairly low because that would affect the shareholder valuation and bottom line. So better to ship garbage to the client instead.

The side effect is that there is probably a gigawatt being sucked up by this garbage at any time on the planet because it is so inefficient. My corp dell laptop has fans on 24/7 when running two Electron apps: Slack and Lens.

Another turd in this area is WebAssembly...

 

[jav6454]

Nelly


Well basically Electron is a framework for building cross platform applications. It runs a whole another browser instance on your computer dressed up in an app shaped suit which contains a whole megastack of awfully inefficient excrement. Because unlike remotely delivered web apps, the bloat is usually 10x worse because they don't have to care for a minute about long it'll take to deliver it to the client.

This entire thing exists only because the value proposition of actually writing dedicated apps for each platform is fairly low because that would affect the shareholder valuation and bottom line. So better to ship garbage to the client instead.

The side effect is that there is probably a gigawatt being sucked up by this garbage at any time on the planet because it is so inefficient. My corp dell laptop has fans on 24/7 when running two Electron apps: Slack and Lens.

Another turd in this area is WebAssembly...

Ok, seems I got the answer as to why Electron is garbage and inefficient.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Tauri looks like a good alternative to Electron, and it seems that Tauri-based applications consume less resources than Electron-based ones. So, let's hope that Tauri becomes popular and developers start choosing Tauri over Electron.

Tauri 2.0

The cross-platform app building toolkit

tauri.app

 

[mi7chy]

Wasm is the best thing ever. Play retro games in a browser at native speed without the hassle of installing programs.

Doom classic
https://silentspacemarine.com/

Lode Runner (Apple II)
https://archive.org/details/a2_Lode_Runner_1983_Broderbund_cr_Clean_Crack_Band

 

[Danfango]

Tauri looks like a good alternative to Electron, and it seems that Tauri-based applications consume less resources than Electron-based ones. So, let's hope that Tauri becomes popular and developers start choosing Tauri over Electron.

Tauri 2.0

The cross-platform app building toolkit

tauri.app

Nope. The problem is the whole web environment stack being used to deliver desktop applications. It's getting on for 25 years of bad hack slapped on top of each other with completely un-normalised user interfaces.

If it's worth doing then it should be worth doing properly which means native interface on the platform you are delivering on.

 

[Danfango]

Wasm is the best thing ever. Play retro games in a browser at native speed without the hassle of installing programs.

Doom classic
https://silentspacemarine.com/

Lode Runner (Apple II)
https://archive.org/details/LodeRunner4amCrack

The only benefit is without the hassle of installing programs.

That comes with a 40% or worse power efficiency hit and having to bring all the binaries and the data over the network every time you do something. Not only that, what the execution environment does is not transparent. This leads to horrible horrible things when it comes to debugging this stuff.