Dashboard the RAM Hog

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sdw2001sdw2001
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Perhaps I just haven't kept up with the discussion, but I just noticed something disturbing. I opened the Activity Monitor to see what how much RAM Tiger was sucking up. I saw several widgets taking as much as 40MB, which I dismissed since I recently upgraded my PB to 1GB and felt I had enough. Then I saw I only had 90MB free RAM. WTF?



Well, I'll tell you WTF. It was the ToDo Tracker....taking...wait for it.......



240 effin' Megabytes of RAM



Let's just say that Mr. To Do tracker was "accidentally deleted", never to return.



Other experiences with Tiger and Dashboard's RAM hogging?
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  • Reply 1 of 37
    pbpb Posts: 4,255member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SDW2001



    Well, I'll tell you WTF. It was the ToDo Tracker....taking...wait for it.......



    240 effin' Megabytes of RAM



    Let's just say that Mr. To Do tracker was "accidentally deleted", never to return.





    Sounds like a BIG memory leak (if this is real memory used). Not clear on which side though, Dashboard or the particular widget. From your description it looks like it is the widget. If so, why this title in the thread?
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  • Reply 2 of 37
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    yup, dashboard widgets can be very naughty
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  • Reply 3 of 37
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    hey has anyone tried to see if Flash-based widgets will take up less memory? they may be cleaner to code as well, and maybe run faster (as long as you're not doing much vector/bitmap animations) because it's precompiled. Javascript can be messy, it doesn't handle event interactions that well, and has to be compiled on the fly for functionality.



    just wondering if Flash is a worthwhile widget development alternative. like i said, for more static stuff, not heavily animated stuff.



    maybe one day

    ADOBE/MACROMEDIA WILL ACTUALLY MAKE FLASH RUN FASTER ON THE MAC THAN ON PC... i mean core image, altivec/ accelerate.framework... HELLO???
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  • Reply 4 of 37
    elronelron Posts: 126member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SDW2001

    Perhaps I just haven't kept up with the discussion, but I just noticed something disturbing. I opened the Activity Monitor to see what how much RAM Tiger was sucking up. I saw several widgets taking as much as 40MB, which I dismissed since I recently upgraded my PB to 1GB and felt I had enough. Then I saw I only had 90MB free RAM. WTF?



    Well, I'll tell you WTF. It was the ToDo Tracker....taking...wait for it.......



    240 effin' Megabytes of RAM



    Let's just say that Mr. To Do tracker was "accidentally deleted", never to return.



    Other experiences with Tiger and Dashboard's RAM hogging?



    I'm not sure if it applies in this case, but doesn't the Activity Monitor double count frameworks sometimes? For example, if you have 5 widgets open, will it include the memory used by WebKit for all of them? I know some people have been thrown by the amount of memory Activity Monitor reports before, only to find out that the reason it's so high is because some shared framework is reported by each application that's using it when in reality it's only in memory once.



    That certainly wouldn't explain the 240MB widget, but it may explain the 40MB ones.
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  • Reply 5 of 37
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,067member
    Either I was reading things wrong, or it was a fluke. ToDo now says about 8MB of real memory. Radar in Motion is taking 38-40, while others are taking between 4-30MB.



    If this is memory leak related...is there a fix?
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  • Reply 6 of 37
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    The fix will probably be in later updates if anything.
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  • Reply 7 of 37
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    okey dokey. i think we've established that 8-10mb is about standard for each widget. or at least something to aim for. am i too far off base here?



    i'm trying using Flash as the predominant platform for widgets. will post something if anything useful/useless but fun turns up.



    i'm not sitting comfortably with javascript and dhtml and the like. bad javascript! *spank*
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  • Reply 8 of 37
    stupider...likeafoxstupider...likeafox Posts: 1,618member
    2 points re: javascript and Flash.



    1. The scripting control for Flash, called ActionScript, basically *is* javascript: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript



    2. The beta for Flash 8 is out and is *alledgedly* much faster:

    http://www.macromedia.com/software/f...r/public_beta/



    edit: the BB software seems to be adding a space in only one of the instances of 'javascript' above. How strange.
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  • Reply 9 of 37
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by stupider...likeafox

    2 points re: javascript and Flash.



    1. The scripting control for Flash, called ActionScript, basically *is* javascript: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript



    2. The beta for Flash 8 is out and is *alledgedly* much faster:

    http://www.macromedia.com/software/f...r/public_beta/



    edit: the BB software seems to be adding a space in only one of the instances of 'javascript' above. How strange.







    thanks buddy. my initial impressions of Flash8 is it is handling video very nicely but vector anti-aliased animation is still somewhat chuggy on my iBook g4 933mhz 640mb ram. flash in widgets is alright, i think a good alternative for designers that don't like javascript or people like me that kind of just like flash over javascript (i think)
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  • Reply 10 of 37
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    re: Flash 8: it looks like the 'choke point' threshold on Macs is set higher, that is, the vector/bitmap stuff is smoother on Macs for average-intensity animations, but beyond a certain point it still chokes somewhat.
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  • Reply 11 of 37
    baranovichbaranovich Posts: 184member
    Am I the only one that would like to see widgets written in Java? I mean why on earth would you use Javascript??? Come on now, thats just ridiculous!!!
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  • Reply 12 of 37
    stupider...likeafoxstupider...likeafox Posts: 1,618member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by baranovich

    Am I the only one that would like to see widgets written in Java?



    Quite possibly yes.



    I could be wrong but doesn't Konfabulator use the Java implementation of Javascript: Rhino? Actually I just checked and they use SpiderMonkey instead.



    edit: benchmark your Flash player here: http://bench.powerflasher.de/
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  • Reply 13 of 37
    mpmoriartympmoriarty Posts: 289member
    I thought 10.4.2 was supposed to fix a lot of Dashboard's memory leaks?



    Oh well.
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  • Reply 14 of 37
    macmaniacmacmaniac Posts: 189member
    I've got not only the same memory bloat(around 20 MB per active widget), leaving me only 10-20 MB free, but some processes which used to be instantaneous(such as moving down a page in response to hitting the 'page down' key), now take several seconds, and sometimes bring up the spinning beach ball. Total %CPU(1 GB) is 35% at most, so it's not a lack of speed.

    More RAM should take care of both problems(I have 512 MB now), right? If so, any suggestions as to what to do with the old module(256 MB PC2700) that I replace with the new one(iBook G4 has only one expansion slot)?

    Also, what is Inactive RAM, as shown in Activity Monitor?

    Thanks
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  • Reply 15 of 37
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by macmaniac

    .... If so, any suggestions as to what to do with the old module(256 MB PC2700) that I replace with the new one(iBook G4 has only one expansion slot)?....



    ebay
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  • Reply 16 of 37
    macmaniacmacmaniac Posts: 189member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sunilraman

    ebay



    I am aware of that venue, suni, but thanks anyway.

    S.
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  • Reply 17 of 37
    thinkingdifferentthinkingdifferent Posts: 1,604member
    I've said it before and I'll say it again, Dashboard should be an optional install. WTF was Apple thinking? For me it's completely useless.
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  • Reply 18 of 37
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ThinkingDifferent

    I've said it before and I'll say it again, Dashboard should be an optional install. WTF was Apple thinking? For me it's completely useless.



    well, this is the final part of any R&D, unleashing it into the wild and seeing what happens. they'll tweak accordingly, but they'll be standing by whatever core principles they have that led them to "force-enabling" dashboard.
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  • Reply 19 of 37
    thinkingdifferentthinkingdifferent Posts: 1,604member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sunilraman

    well, this is the final part of any R&D, unleashing it into the wild and seeing what happens. they'll tweak accordingly, but they'll be standing by whatever core principles they have that led them to "force-enabling" dashboard.



    IMO, it's marketing hype. Free widgets == free software. Not.
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  • Reply 20 of 37
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ThinkingDifferent

    I've said it before and I'll say it again, Dashboard should be an optional install. WTF was Apple thinking? For me it's completely useless.



    Ever looked in /System? You don't need about 50% of what's in there. And that's not even getting into the scads of printer drivers in /Library. Disk space is cheap. Turn off Dashboard, and ignore it.
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