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Air M1 w/8gb of ram is great again - downgraded from Monterey to Big Sur

ctjack

ctjack

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 8, 2020
1,641
1,671
Hello all,

So i prepped for this event almost a year. Was sitting on latest Monterey, but got tired of my yellow/red ram pressure and lags across the system.
There was no access to the second Mac or big flash drive, lack of knowledge - I postponed my downgrade(from latest Monterey to Big Sur 11.2.3) for a long time.
Lately, everything lined up - got a second Mac for gifting, found mr. macintosh tutorial and took my time.

Conclusion: downgraded from latest Monterey to Big Sur 11.2.3, ram pressure is green again and computer self cleans clogged swap amounts. I also didn't see any lags so far. But the best one - just double clicked on my ios apps and installed in 1 sec without extra movements.
 
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monterey has a memory leak issue that still haven't being addressed by apple. my ram pressure is usually yellow with 3gig on swap, if i don't restart for 3 weeks, the swap gets to 8-10gig.
 
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I bought my M1 mini with Monterey and thinking of going to Big Sur. Why not? It looks the same and will be supported for another year.
 
thingstoponder said:
I bought my M1 mini with Monterey and thinking of going to Big Sur. Why not? It looks the same and will be supported for another year.
Click to expand...

Lack of patches for actively exploited vulnerabilities. Support doesn't mean getting the latest security fixes.
 
ilikewhey said:
monterey has a memory leak issue that still haven't being addressed by apple. my ram pressure is usually yellow with 3gig on swap, if i don't restart for 3 weeks, the swap gets to 8-10gig.
Click to expand...
Wait, memory leak is still a thing? I thought they fixed that ages ago. I'm on 16gb M1 MBA so maybe the extra ram helps.
 
I'm on 12.4 on my M1 MBA and haven't seen any issues. My highest swap number so far is about 21MB.
 
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Funny Apple Man said:
Wait, memory leak is still a thing? I thought they fixed that ages ago. I'm on 16gb M1 MBA so maybe the extra ram helps.
Click to expand...
yeah have to do with launch control or finder, i recently experienced it when my mem swap went from 800ish mb to 8-10gb after not restarting my mbp for 3 weeks.

eclecticlight.co

How to work around Monterey’s Finder memory leak

If you’re not careful, you can end up watching the Finder steadily eating your Mac’s memory until it grinds to a halt. The bug explained with solutions.
eclecticlight.co eclecticlight.co
 
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JPack said:
No, Apple doesn't maintain the same security standard for previous versions of macOS.

www.computerweekly.com

Apple criticised over unpatched CVEs in Catalina, Big Sur | Computer Weekly

Apple patched two zero-days in macOS Monterey last week, but did not address the same issue in Catalina or Big Sur, raising questions
www.computerweekly.com www.computerweekly.com
Click to expand...
That was patched not long ago in Catalina and Big Sur. So, they do, just a little bit later this time.

www.macworld.com

Apple finally patches months-old security flaws in Big Sur, Catalina

Dozens of security updates arrive for Appleu2019s older versions of macOS.
www.macworld.com www.macworld.com
 
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If I was worried about the security patches, because I have thousands/millions of savings, at that point I would afford myself a dedicated base Air for only banking in the browser. I would turn off wifi manually after the banking session, untick "wake on network access" and put it aside turned off when done.

Most of the attacks are phishing or scam, meaning that the basic awareness helps you to stop the attack. Example, lookup scam videos on youtube, where 80 year old seniors install teamviewer et all and give the chance to see banking screen and allow html edits to the page to scam wire transfer. All in all, you have to dive deep into the scam or phishing, to be the victim.

I also see ton of people using cards in Mexico (Playa, Cancun) and never thinking twice where it is safe to insert one. Most atms are suspicious. Meanwhile I just reissued it for $7 for the sake of safety. I have my banking set to 2FA auth and I have limits on every purchase($0) - meaning no transactions can be made if someone doesn't go to my 2FA banking and increase my limits. My neighbors got scammed by cashing $800 out of savings, because they put their card in on-street chase ATM in US small city downtown.

I also unlinked all the accounts except spending, from my atm debit card. It comes from the bank as a standard with 3 accounts active, meaning that when you insert your debit card into ATM, you(fraudsters) can withdraw/deposit money within 3 accounts(spending, short term save, long term savings). My only linked spending account has cash for a day.

I also don't browse any unknown website, don't click any links, and don't use banking website on public networks. Actually I don't use public networks at all, even if i would then i would shell out for VPN.
All in all I am coming from the era, when antivirus was a must installed on your computer. I lived with it for 2-4 years and grasped the basics, since then living 12 years without one. Of course in my office, everything is deployed with linux dedicated machine to interact with usb-drives and etc, so our main work computers are safe from this type of occasions.
 
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Been there, done that. Trade off with Big Sur is you lose some software compatibility like Blender while Monterey breaks some OpenCL software.
 
Small update after couple of days:
Monterey: Used Ram around 7.2 GB + 4GB of swap = total usage anywhere between 10-12GB max.
Big Sur: Used Ram 7.1 GB + 2.5GB swap = 9.6GB of ram tops doing the same tasks.
Screen Shot 2022-05-31 at 12.35.46 AM.png
 
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ctjack said:
Small update after couple of days:
Monterey: Used Ram around 7.2 GB + 4GB of swap = total usage anywhere between 10-12GB max.
Big Sur: Used Ram 7.1 GB + 2.5GB swap = 9.6GB of ram tops doing the same tasks.
View attachment 2011532
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I see. Even at a standstill the 8gb has almost gone, into swap by 1GB+. It was fine when new (original OS) with some light XCode tasks, now it's just grinding all the time heavily into swap.

So I thank you for the tip to downgrade.
 
ctjack said:
Small update after couple of days:
Monterey: Used Ram around 7.2 GB + 4GB of swap = total usage anywhere between 10-12GB max.
Big Sur: Used Ram 7.1 GB + 2.5GB swap = 9.6GB of ram tops doing the same tasks.
View attachment 2011532
Click to expand...
Aaaand this is why I get 16gb ram even though I’m nowhere near being a power user, as newer os gets released, the amount of ram OS use increases.
 
Last edited:
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I have 8GB, and with 20+ tabs and a few other apps running I've never seen 2GB of swap. Even when I'm in the yellow it's had less then 1GB of swap. I'd rather have 16GB, but I got this M1Air for $675 open box so I just live with it. It doesn't seem to slow things down much when it goes into the yellow.
 
AudiHeel said:
but I got this M1Air for $675 open box so I just live with it
Click to expand...
When I got this, open box for $935(8/512), I also knew that i am going to live with it or sell for windows, because 16gb would cost me extra $400.
AudiHeel said:
It doesn't seem to slow things down much when it goes into the yellow.
Click to expand...
It is unnoticeable up to some point into the yellow and red zone. But when the critical mass hits, it lags for almost anything you do. But that was true for Monterey.

Updates2:
The way ram+swap works is changed in BigSur.

Monterey: first fill RAM with everything, then release some to swap. Maneuverability is slow, because instead of trashing into swap, it keeps unused items in the main RAM which leaves small/no room for OS to be active.

BigSur: fill RAM only with essentials(macos, finder etc) + add everything else into swap. Maneuverability of the main OS stays good for a long time, because it reserves at least 1GB for extra movements.
 
ctjack said:
When I got this, open box for $935(8/512), I also knew that i am going to live with it or sell for windows, because 16gb would cost me extra $400.
Click to expand...
If I had savings "in the thousands/millions" I wouldn't even think and just buy a 16.

On a second thought, I would get a 14" Pro with 32, just because my 9 years old Pro has 16 and I want a better machine in every way.

Just kidding, I would get a maxed out one.
 
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biffuz said:
If I had savings "in the thousands/millions" I wouldn't even think and just buy a 16.

On a second thought, I would get a 14" Pro with 32, just because my 9 years old Pro has 16 and I want a better machine in every way.

Just kidding, I would get a maxed out one.
Click to expand...
Yeah, noticed once new 16 M1 Pro announced, old stocks of 16" got to $1100 for base and $1800-$2000 for maxed out base at BestBuy. Unluckily i am not interested in intel 16.
Might be a good way to acquire one(M1 pro or max) with the new release of 14/16(m2 pro/max?) - I would think about max version at $1800 doesn't sound bad.
 
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