OS X 10.8.3 beta allows developers to download new builds through Software Update

Now if only they could fix the rendering issues and memory leaks that have been plaguing Safari on MacBook Pros when using integrated graphics since the release of Mountain Lion, that would be truly awesome.

1) I keep hearing of memory leaks but I have yet to see any actual memory leaks with RMBPs with Safari. There is a difference with an app using available memory and an app leaking memory.

2) There is a recent update to the nightly WebKit engine that will make it perform better with 4x the resolution. You should give it a try.

• http://www.anandtech.com/show/6495/latest-webkit-build-doubles-scrolling-performance-on-macbook-pro-with-retina-display

An app with 8GB of privately allocated RAM with no windows open that keeps growing is hardly "using" it. This morning I couldn't even enter my password to resume OS X before it went back to sleep due to all the swapping.


Other people have, the glitches remain for them. I don't have scrolling issues.

EDIT: As I was typing this, Safari was already eating 3GB of RAM and keeps growing:

Edited by Vaelian - 12/5/12 at 10:50pm

I shouldn't really, but I can't help it. I don't have the problem, so obviously you're lying.

 

Reminds me of all these people with iPhone 4 who did not have any antennagate issue.

Can someone help me? I have an i7 2011 air, 4gb ram (max).

 

When i open the activity monitor, even after startups, OSX never uses less than 1.7gb ram. Why? Isn't that a bit too much? I don't think I have ram related problems, because even when i use my mac for days i have 0 bites or only a few megas of pag outs.

 

What happens when someone has a 2gb machine bought this year?

Doesn't windows use much less than that?

Any chance future OS iterations/updates will "eat" less?

I read somewhere that snow leopard was faster and used half the ram.

 

Thank you, just curiosity. My machine is faster than a rocket.

The terminology isn't complex stuff. The word leak should be understood by all English speakers.

Is the memory never released back to the system? Does it require a restart or to manually killing the process for the memory to be released? Does the system run out of RAM and never reduce the amount used by Safari in order to give more RAM to new apps? If you leave your Mac running with Safari on will it consume all available RAM and then crash when there is no more RAM to use? Have you tried to open up another memory heavy app like Aperture when you have less than 2GB free to see if Safari gives RAM back to the system?

What I've seen with people with RMBPs is that Safari is using a lot of RAM but they have moved from machines with an average of 4GB RAM to machines with 8 or even 16GB RAM. Mac OS X will allow a lot of apps, especially native OS apps, to hold a lot of RAM to make it perform better but if another app needs it more then that RAM from that process.

You have shown how much RAM WebProcess and Safari were currently using but you've shown no evidence of it leaking, a action that shows a change and has some detail as to what was going on between the two data points. I see WebProcess is using 8.4% of CPU. That's quite a bit which means it's actively running not sitting idle and holding onto RAM that the OS can't delegate to other apps.

That is not to say you and others do not have a memory leak but you nor anyone else have shown any tests that would prove your hypothesis. Until you can do so you shouldn't be spouting your assumptions as fact.

SolipsismX, I'm a software engineer, most likely with more experience in operating system development than you, so drop the condescending tool least you find yourself humiliated. I know what a memory leak is.


Good, because you make it sound like otherwise.


Ambiguous yes / no question; both answers would be "no", with the correct long version being "no, the memory is never released to the system". Notice that I did mention that Safari does that even with all of its windows closed. And before you even consider it, no, it's not an add-on; disabling add-ons actually makes it worse.


It needs a restart, yes, but doesn't crash (just causes a lot of swapping when its memory usage grows to 12-16GB).


What part of swapping did you not understand?


Again, what part of swapping did you not understand? Safari eats RAM that does and does not exist; it will happily eat my entire hard-drive's worth of swap if I let it.


You are confusing a lot of concepts. For starters, what you are most likely talking about is the paradigm in which applications are never closed but rather moved to the swap when they are unused and if their RAM is necessary (all operating systems do this if you don't close applications). This, however, does not give applications a free pass to privately allocate as much RAM as they wish, because those allocations are still wasting resources, and the amount of swapping that they cause slows everything else down as it causes the system to move other stuff to the swap sooner. There are also other cases in which all operating systems manage RAM intelligently as long as it's available, such as disk caches and shared memory maps, but we aren't talking about either of these here.


Of course it's running; sleeping processes can't allocate RAM...


I don't think you understand the subject you are debating.

That makes it even worse! If you really are a programmer then you should be ashamed of yourself for not making a viable case for your hypothesis.

I made a viable case, it's not my fault that you ignored half of what I said, like when I mentioned all the swapping as well as the increasingly growing size of the process. I'm sorry but there's no way you can spin this in your favor.

Essentially, free ram in your system is just a wasted resource that can be used to speed up access to the filesystem, so modern operating systems use almost all your free RAM for that purpose, leaving only a small portion of RAM actually free for allocations. When an application needs RAM, the operating system gives it parts of the truly free space and then shrinks the filesystem cache in the background in order to keep a reasonably sized free block to prevent slowing down small memory allocations. The advantage of using almost all the free memory to cache the filesystem is that accessing RAM is much faster than accessing the disk, especially for non-sequential access, so if all the data that your applications need to access is already cached in the RAM (because it was recently used), accessing it is much faster. Another advantage of caching the filesystem is that the operating system can effectively reduce and optimize disk IO by making it as sequential as possible and by merging multiple writes into a single commit. This is why upgrading your RAM is always a good idea.

No, you didn't. I even spelled it for you so you might correct your unscientific and illogical comments and actually come back with some evidence that shows Safari actually has a memory leak. All you've done is get defensive for being called on your lazy reporting. As I said, I don't deny that memory leaks are possible but you have not shown any proof to back up your claims.

Presenting the thread with evidence was not the point, it only became the point once you started to question my claim with a condescending tone.

Safari has a page cache that will use a lot of RAM if it is available.  The page cache also does more that just keep around some images.  It keeps the DOM structure of the page, and also keeps the javascript in a paused state. Just closing all the windows won't clear the page cache. SolipsismX is right that unless you can show Safari not giving memory back to the system you can't really say there is a leak.  All you are really showing is Safari caching a lot of pages.

It does seem to be caching. Reopening a site is a lot quicker than opening the site on a fresh restart of Safari.

And how does Safari determine whether RAM is available considering that the operating system does not inform you about that at the lowest level? Also, why would Safari resort to a private cache 9n the RAM rather than a shared cache in the filesystem that the kernel can then manage in accordance to the availability of memory on the system? Do you have any sources for your speculation about Safari's cache? Because what you are suggesting does not sound anything like intelligent software design, nor does it sound like you understand how things actually work.

 

You know what, you are right.  We are all idiots, including the entire Webkit team.  Obviously you know so much better than all the rest of us how to right software.  

Bugs are acceptable; posting bullshit to excuse them, however, is not, especially when the people coming up with the bullshit don;t even know what they're talking about. If you're going to make stuff up to a guy who has actually experience with operating system implementations, at least make sure what you're making up makes some sense, otherwise you're very easy to refute. I asked you to quote a source of your speculation, you failed to do that.

Speaking of, you stating that Safari is using more RAM than you think it should is evidence that it must be a memory leak is unacceptable bullshit.

You are the only one who has made accusations that you deem to be factual without backing them up. You are the only one who has not been scientific, accurate, honest or open minded.


Correction: I have no evidence to support you not being honest in this thread. You could very well believe what you've written. You may think that memory leak does not refer to a computer program that acquires memory but fails to release it back to the operating system. You may still think as you do from your initial comment that if a program uses more memory than you think it should that it's labeled as a memory leak.
Edited by SolipsismX - 12/7/12 at 8:14am

That would have been a good point had it actually been true, which it wasn't, because I mentioned, for example, the fact that WebProcess never stops growing, even long after the system is swapping everything, including WebProcess itself.


What did I not back up?


Or perhaps you fail to understand the provided evidence due to ignorance. How about this? I can be condescending too!