I upgraded my iMac to 16G from 4G recently and it is like a totally different machine.
Both mavericks and Yosemite need more than 4G. The number of system processes is exploding.
???? I "upgraded" my Mac Mini server to 16 gb RAM - against the Apple Gods wishes but hey I had to do it ????! Some tech support peeps at Apple cut me slack and some don't
I think that's a great move to have them all at 16GB given that it's soldered. These are productive laptops so that amount is ideal. The only thing that seems odd is why they'd stick with the 750M when the 850M is available. It may not be all that odd if they are planning to phase out dedicated GPUs though. With 16GB of RAM, they can boost the IGP to have 2GB of VRAM like the dedicated model. Sticking with the 750M means that Iris Pro still looks strong next to it. Then when Broadwell hits, the performance boost to Iris Pro makes dGPUs irrelevant.
That should be the baseline, but a BTO with a 32GB soldiered option.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">Apple continues to sell 4GB Macs. There's really no explanation why your system is chewing up 3-4GB of memory. Hell, I have a 2006 vintage MacBook that uses less than a gigabyte of main memory running OS X Lion.</span>
Your system is heavily damaged.
I suggest a visit to the nearest Genius Bar or a complete disk drive wipe/reinstall.
Good luck.
Good for you. I have an old Powerbook with 1.5GB and it's eating up all the RAM, as expected, especially when you RUN 3rd Party APPS.
You don't grasp Memory Management and Shared Pooled Memory.
Even if I had a Mac Pro with 64GB I can assure you I will use every last spare GB.
Apple continues to sell 4GB Macs. There's really no explanation why your system is chewing up 3-4GB of memory. Hell, I have a 2006 vintage MacBook that uses less than a gigabyte of main memory running OS X Lion.
Yeah... Lion is NOT Mavericks... and certainly not Yosemite... There's a reason your machine can't run the latest OS's.
This is a good change. Hopefully they will bump the baseline on the lower-end models to 8 GB as well. 4 GB is not a usable amount of RAM on modern OS X versions, and since it's non-upgradable, 8 GB really needs to be the minimum.
Total bollox geek-speak! I've never found a problem with 4 GB. The MBA runs like a beach-ball-free dream on Mavericks and that includes having Chem Office and MS Office open on Win 7 in a virtual machine, while several applications are open in MacOS.
A little off topic, but since we're talking about memory usage, how do those of you running Yosemite find it compares? Does it seem faster than Mavericks? I have a 2009 13" MacBook Pro running Mavericks and it seriously lags on certain tasks (I still only have the standard 2GB RAM) and would love to be able to update without having to worry about crippling my system... although I might just finally upgrade since it's been 5 years.
Total bollox geek-speak! I've never found a problem with 4 GB. The MBA runs like a beach-ball-free dream on Mavericks and that includes having Chem Office and MS Office open on Win 7 in a virtual machine, while several applications are open in MacOS.
That's just because the SSD in the MBA is fast enough that you're not noticing the paging as badly. My SO had a MBP with 4 GB and a hard drive, and all she had open was Word, Chrome, Preview, and Mail, and it would page so badly that it would take approximately a minute each time she switched apps. Opening new applications was a nightmare, even if it was something small like System Preferences. Upgrading to 8 GB, of course, fixed it.
Technology marches on, and by now it's marched past 4 GB. Mavericks helps, but really you ought to have more RAM than that.
A little off topic, but since we're talking about memory usage, how do those of you running Yosemite find it compares? Does it seem faster than Mavericks? I have a 2009 13" MacBook Pro running Mavericks and it seriously lags on certain tasks (I still only have the standard 2GB RAM) and would love to be able to update without having to worry about crippling my system... although I might just finally upgrade since it's been 5 years.
Why don't you just upgrade it? You can bring your MBP up to 8 GB, and Yosemite should run fine on that.
I love to see Touch ID or some BT-based proximity sensor that can un/lock my Macs based on some wearable on my person.
Even if you simply drive by your house? I mean, personality goes a long way¡
Seriously, I hear ya. I also think they should have iOS devices auto-config the Notifications on the fly: when I'm behind my Mac I don't need to have all these Push Notifications on my iPad or iPhone, telling me there's new mail when I'm already reading it. Also, next to Push Notifications, they need to implement Pull Notifications; unread email counter (on icon) should update on all devices.
A 200 MHZ upgrade at 2.8 GHZ is about 7%. What would the reaction be if the iPhone 6 is only 7% faster than the iPhone 5s?
Your expectations of intel chips increasing in power at the same rate as ARM chips is utterly absurd. The curves are completely different. 7% is a reasonable increase when it comes to desktops, especially considering these wont even be broadwell yet which is the next big jump.
> That's just because the SSD in the MBA is fast enough that you're not noticing the paging as badly. My SO had a MBP with 4 GB and a hard drive, and all she had open was Word, Chrome, Preview, and Mail, and it would page so badly that it would take approximately a minute each time she switched apps. Opening new applications was a nightmare, even if it was something small like System Preferences. Upgrading to 8 GB, of course, fixed it. <
Totally disagree wrt the MBA: I currently have (as typical) 11 MacOS apps open (inc. Pixelmator, Aperture, Word, Excel, Safari, Preview, Mail, iTunes, and VMware (Win 7, online updating as per usual!)), the fan's not running, and Activity Monitor says I still have low 'memory pressure'. Brilliant!
And as to the MBP: I used a 2012 MBP (the last one with a CD slot) a few days ago on Mavs that seemed plenty snappy enough for a non-SD drive on 4 GB RAM. There must be something amiss with the SO's MBP or some software on it (Chrome!
I think that's a great move to have them all at 16GB given that it's soldered. These are productive laptops so that amount is ideal. The only thing that seems odd is why they'd stick with the 750M when the 850M is available. It may not be all that odd if they are planning to phase out dedicated GPUs though. With 16GB of RAM, they can boost the IGP to have 2GB of VRAM like the dedicated model. Sticking with the 750M means that Iris Pro still looks strong next to it. Then when Broadwell hits, the performance boost to Iris Pro makes dGPUs irrelevant.
Hopefully the 850M will be available as BTO. It's only 3% slower than two 750Ms in SLI, a major upgrade.
The fan is irrelevant as that's affected by CPU not disk usage. That combination is using more than 4G. A lot would be virtual memory. In your case the SSD hides a lot of beach balling.
The beach ball is nearly always disk access and swap. Seeing it at all indicates memory pressure.
Comments
Maybe Mac book air will only have 8 and 16 gb ram options as well.
???? I "upgraded" my Mac Mini server to 16 gb RAM - against the Apple Gods wishes but hey I had to do it ????! Some tech support peeps at Apple cut me slack and some don't
That should be the baseline, but a BTO with a 32GB soldiered option.
Good for you. I have an old Powerbook with 1.5GB and it's eating up all the RAM, as expected, especially when you RUN 3rd Party APPS.
You don't grasp Memory Management and Shared Pooled Memory.
Even if I had a Mac Pro with 64GB I can assure you I will use every last spare GB.
Apple continues to sell 4GB Macs. There's really no explanation why your system is chewing up 3-4GB of memory. Hell, I have a 2006 vintage MacBook that uses less than a gigabyte of main memory running OS X Lion.
Yeah... Lion is NOT Mavericks... and certainly not Yosemite... There's a reason your machine can't run the latest OS's.
This is a good change. Hopefully they will bump the baseline on the lower-end models to 8 GB as well. 4 GB is not a usable amount of RAM on modern OS X versions, and since it's non-upgradable, 8 GB really needs to be the minimum.
Total bollox geek-speak! I've never found a problem with 4 GB. The MBA runs like a beach-ball-free dream on Mavericks and that includes having Chem Office and MS Office open on Win 7 in a virtual machine, while several applications are open in MacOS.
A little off topic, but since we're talking about memory usage, how do those of you running Yosemite find it compares? Does it seem faster than Mavericks? I have a 2009 13" MacBook Pro running Mavericks and it seriously lags on certain tasks (I still only have the standard 2GB RAM) and would love to be able to update without having to worry about crippling my system... although I might just finally upgrade since it's been 5 years.
Technology marches on, and by now it's marched past 4 GB. Mavericks helps, but really you ought to have more RAM than that. Why don't you just upgrade it? You can bring your MBP up to 8 GB, and Yosemite should run fine on that.
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible-memory-for/Apple/macbook-pro-(13-inch,-mid-2009)
Even if you simply drive by your house? I mean, personality goes a long way¡
Seriously, I hear ya. I also think they should have iOS devices auto-config the Notifications on the fly: when I'm behind my Mac I don't need to have all these Push Notifications on my iPad or iPhone, telling me there's new mail when I'm already reading it. Also, next to Push Notifications, they need to implement Pull Notifications; unread email counter (on icon) should update on all devices.
And apparently 2 gigs of vRAM on the ones with dedicated chips.
Existing model has exactly the same video card with 2 Gb VRAM.
All in all a pretty snore-worthy update. Not that it isn't a great laptop already. 32 Gb BTO RAM option would be welcome.
Just what is it with Apple lately? I mean where the hell is the new Mac Mini?
A 200 MHZ upgrade at 2.8 GHZ is about 7%. What would the reaction be if the iPhone 6 is only 7% faster than the iPhone 5s?
Your expectations of intel chips increasing in power at the same rate as ARM chips is utterly absurd. The curves are completely different. 7% is a reasonable increase when it comes to desktops, especially considering these wont even be broadwell yet which is the next big jump.
The Install In Progress icon also could use an update; Yosemite is still showing a HDD with a paltry 2GB
I love to see Touch ID or some BT-based proximity sensor that can un/lock my Macs based on some wearable on my person.
There's already third-party apps that will do it.
I think that's a great move to have them all at 16GB given that it's soldered. These are productive laptops so that amount is ideal. The only thing that seems odd is why they'd stick with the 750M when the 850M is available. It may not be all that odd if they are planning to phase out dedicated GPUs though. With 16GB of RAM, they can boost the IGP to have 2GB of VRAM like the dedicated model. Sticking with the 750M means that Iris Pro still looks strong next to it. Then when Broadwell hits, the performance boost to Iris Pro makes dGPUs irrelevant.
Hopefully the 850M will be available as BTO. It's only 3% slower than two 750Ms in SLI, a major upgrade.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-850M.107795.0.html
The fan is irrelevant as that's affected by CPU not disk usage. That combination is using more than 4G. A lot would be virtual memory. In your case the SSD hides a lot of beach balling.
The beach ball is nearly always disk access and swap. Seeing it at all indicates memory pressure.