I beg to differ. In Snow Leopard, I usually use up 2-3 GB with just regular use (Safari, iChat, Mail, iTunes, Calendar, maybe some Skype). In the Lion GM, it's not rare for me to have 5-6 GB used up with those open for no more than 2 hours. Lion definitely gobbles up RAM. That's not to say that it wouldn't be ok with 2 GB of RAM, but just the fact that it so easily actively takes advantage of so much RAM shows that 4 GB standard would be highly beneficial.
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Refreshed Airs + Lion on 7/14
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I beg to differ. In Snow Leopard, I usually use up 2-3 GB with just regular use (Safari, iChat, Mail, iTunes, Calendar, maybe some Skype). In the Lion GM, it's not rare for me to have 5-6 GB used up with those open for no more than 2 hours. Lion definitely gobbles up RAM. That's not to say that it wouldn't be ok with 2 GB of RAM, but just the fact that it so easily actively takes advantage of so much RAM shows that 4 GB standard would be highly beneficial.
This is also not the first time I've seen Lion GM users reporting the same. Makes me think the 4gb standard (if not 11", the 13") rumor to be plausible. Lion might have been the very reason why all SB MBP have 4gb standard. If not, I'm hoping for Apple to at least put 4gb and 8gb as BTO options. Can't wait.
I stand partially corrected then. I tried on two separate occasions to buy non-stock options from Mac stores (but never ultimates), and was told to order online.
It is still a matter of them not trying to predict sales of certain combos, though (which was what I was really debating). As in, they still pump out way more base/stock than ultimates, I imagine. Then they will BTO as needed. Just makes sense.
Hopefully they will have a 8 Gb RAM ceiling.
And the mentioning in the article of backlit keys... why not?
And the mentioning in the article of backlit keys... why not?
i stuck on wether to keep saving for the new refresh or buying the current one off ebay.
i mean how much of an improvement will the sandy bridge be? that's the only thing i care about to be honest. I'm not bothered about graphics and such because i don't game, and 4 gb of ram is more than enough for me.
i mean how much of an improvement will the sandy bridge be? that's the only thing i care about to be honest. I'm not bothered about graphics and such because i don't game, and 4 gb of ram is more than enough for me.
An older model will always be cheaper than the current one. Even if you decide on the current model, wait until the new ones come out and then order the old version on eBay for less money than they are going for now.
It's also possible the new Airs won't come out until a week after Lion. Maybe July 19th. I don't think it'll be any later, but we'll see soon enough.
Not sure what you mean. All modern operating systems will use up all the RAM they have. If the OS and applications don't fill it, the OS will cache things to fill it... recently accessed or created files, frequently accessed things etc. I mean... if its there why not.
Interesting. I wish you can elaborate on this (with proper sources/references). Are you saying that if you have 8gb RAM, Lion will try to utilize as much of it as possible to improve performance? So it wouldn't really make much of a problem if you have 2gb (slower performance in comparison of course) because Lion will just adjust to what meager RAM you have? So basically, the experiences of the GM users "Lion gobbles up RAM" is pure hoghwash if you can be fine with just 2gb then.
If I buy a future Mac Pro with Lion, and have 32gb RAM, I won't be surprised if my OS is using 28 to 29gb of RAM then.
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Aren't apple's hardware releases usually on tuesdays? So the 14th for lion and the the 19th for the Air? I mean, i'll be really happy if it comes on the 14th. The sooner i can order one of these babies the better.
Lion could be released on the 15th, the last four have been released on fridays so it would make sense
Yes yes I know this, but as far as I can tell, most modern operating systems use up the RAM by keeping closed applications stored in the RAM as well, so when you later access them, the information will still be readily available. The RAM usage I described was for active applications. Therefore, since only active application RAM usage is being looked at, Snow Leopard seems to be less RAM hungry than Lion in general.
Also, I'd like to point out that while modern operating systems will attempt to use up as much RAM as possible in order to speed things up, I often find lag when all of the RAM is used up, so I have yet to really understand this reasoning.
It depends, if you have really high I/O (on the order of 30 gigs) then absolutely. By I/O i mean new files coming into the computer all the time or files being accessed. The OS will attempt to cache all of that info in RAM. When the needs of the applications demand more RAM, it will boot that cached data to make room.
I'd say most people rarely run enough applications to fill up the full 2gig of RAM with programs alone. If you are accessing your disk a lot, or doing something computational intensive that stores results to RAM though, 2 gigs total doesn't leave THAT much room for all your programs and all this caching.
If you are interested, another thing to remember is that adding more RAM when its not needed isn't always a good thing. Like 32 gigs of RAM in a MBA would probably be worse than 16, reason being; You aren't going to run instructions of that magnitude on a ULV processor, and when you increase your RAM size you inherently improve your instruction hit rate but add latency. Plus the processor has to cycle to keep all that data in RAM alive. The intel chips have maximum RAM capacities for a variety of reasons but this being one of them.
http://9to5mac.com/2011/07/11/new-mac-pros-and-macbook-airs-to-launch-this-week-with-os-x-lion/
9to5mac just released a new rumor about the release
9to5mac just released a new rumor about the release
Well that's what I'm talking about. I already knew I was going to do this, but I'm definitely looking forward to a new MBA, 11 inch, 4 gigs of RAM.