iOS simple iOS programming goes sluggish

[grandM]

Hi

I've bought myself a mac mini 2,3 i7 (4GB ram, 1TB HDD, no ssd) to program for ipad/iphone. I am following the Stanford itunes course. I had to type 8 lines into a simple Attributor app (as in week 5 of the itunes Stanford course) and everything went sluggish. On compiling and launching the simulator I lost about 5 minutes.

Which upgrade is recommended? Will plugging in 16GB ram do the trick?

Tx for your answer !

 

[xStep]

Check activity monitor when this happens to see how much free memory you have. It's a good chance that is the problem. 16GB is cheap enough if bought from a third party.

 

[grandM]

Check activity monitor when this happens to see how much free memory you have. It's a good chance that is the problem. 16GB is cheap enough if bought from a third party.

it's indeed continuously at 3,99 of 4 GB (even when Xcode is not running)
That's why I thought of more ram

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

it's indeed continuously at 3,99 of 4 GB (even when Xcode is not running)
That's why I thought of more ram

Why not close some apps then? OS X itself shouldn't be consuming 3.99 GB on its own.

 

[grandM]

Why not close some apps then? OS X itself shouldn't be consuming 3.99 GB on its own.

Not that many things running to be honest
Firefox takes 400 MB, safari 300 MB and the rest seems os X
Could be os X reserves ram for HD4000
Don't mind plugging in extra ram, just wondered if it's the bottleneck

 

[xStep]

it's indeed continuously at 3,99 of 4 GB (even when Xcode is not running)
That's why I thought of more ram

40MB remaining will indeed make the system crawl.

Sort the Activity Monitor column by real memory taken to see what else is using up the RAM. Closing at least one browser will help for now.

 

[grandM]

40MB remaining will indeed make the system crawl.

Sort the Activity Monitor column by real memory taken to see what else is using up the RAM. Closing at least one browser will help for now.

yes indeed: firefox really is a memory hog
All screens closed and still 157 MB
I've killed the process now
Ordered ram too, just hope that's the cause

 

[Altemose]

yes indeed: firefox really is a memory hog
All screens closed and still 157 MB
I've killed the process now
Ordered ram too, just hope that's the cause

With Xcode 5, Safari, Spotify, Skype, and Mail open under Mavericks I usually am around 6-8 GB depending on the code project I am working on. I have 16 GB in my MBP and the Memory Pressure is very low then.

 

[dantastic]

For development you can keep a pretty old machine useful as long as you feed it enough memory.

I used to have 4GB and a good old standard laptop hdd. It was a bit of a pain alright. I upgraded to a SSD and it was the biggest improvement in speed I have ever witnessed. I have since added another 4GB of RAM but seriously, for the money, an SSD disk is hands down the best investment you can make to speed things up a bit.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I'd like to mention that my laptop has 2 GB of RAM and my desktop has 4 GB. I develop just fine on the desktop - the laptop can be a pain with how sluggish it is, but it works.

Not that I wouldn't mind having more RAM, of course, it's just that both of my computers are maxed out already, so I'll need to replace them. I'll probably do that after Apple refreshes their computer lines this year.

 

[grandM]

Thanks, I'll first put in the 16 GB ram
If it still is slow, I'll put in a SSD