[HN Gopher] Memory leaks are crippling my M1 MacBook Pro
___________________________________________________________________
Memory leaks are crippling my M1 MacBook Pro
Author : miles
Score : 375 points
Date : 2021-11-07 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.macworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.macworld.com)
| frazbin wrote:
| Don't worry everyone, I'm not experiencing this issue. -- Apple
| flans
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
| mousepilot wrote:
| can some mod do something about this user "dang"? he seems to
| crapflood every discussion I try to read with these stupid
| judgemental comments and never contributes to the
| discussions, doesn't hacker news employ moderators of any
| sort? I know I'm a new user and don't have enough "karma" or
| whatever to downvote but this guy is one of the most
| irritating and useless commenters I've ever seen, and that
| comes from someone who has used reddit and slashdot for quite
| a bit.
| throwntoday wrote:
| I've had my 14" M1 Pro for just over a week now. It has performed
| amazingly. But I also don't install tons of random apps and let
| them run in the background. I never restore from backups, I
| manually transfer files from my user folder over to my new setup.
| I always check whether an app has native M1 support before
| downloading, though I understand this isn't an option for
| everyones workflow yet. In cases where the app is literally a
| wrapper for a website like discord, I just use the website. Or in
| the case of zoom where I just don't trust the app to be on my
| computer and the website is sufficient. If something I used
| previous doesn't have native support I look for an alternative
| and a couple times I have found something better and/or open-
| source. I understand rosetta 2 has some issues with overusing
| swap, so I would rather avoid degrading my ssd and experience.
|
| So far this has worked for me, and I'm able to get two full day's
| of battery life. I'm away from my desk far more frequently now.
|
| Edit: My control center is using around 1GB of memory. Low enough
| that it wasn't causing issues but still concerning. It appears
| there is a memory leak somewhere, hoping a bug-fix is pushed out
| soon.
| rsp1984 wrote:
| I have no proof but a strong gut feeling the root cause of this
| is broken OpenGL drivers. Here's why:
|
| Over the past several months we've been very busy porting our
| Android- and Windows-based 3D Capturing app to iOS. We have quite
| a bit of OpenGL (ES) code that needed to be migrated. After a
| couple of initial hiccups things appeared to work well, however
| something was off. OpenGL code that's fast and completely
| unproblematic on Win/Android caused weird CPU stalls and after
| some minutes of app usage typically everything just crashed.
| After some digging and debugging it became clear that certain
| OpenGL function calls were leaking memory like crazy, as in
| several MB per call. Concretely I'm talking about
| glBlitFramebuffer() and glCopyTex(Sub)Image2D() . Both of these
| operate on frame buffers (memory that's often as large as your
| app window size) and they were internally allocating new buffers
| on every call and apparently never freed them.
|
| Now of course this is iOS and the article is talking about MacOS
| but it's quite likely that Apple derived their M1-targeted OpenGL
| implementation for MacOS from the iOS version which has always
| targeted Apple SoCs.
|
| Given the amount of OpenGL-based software still out there and
| Apple's deprecation of OpenGL in favour of Metal (they just don't
| seem to care any more) those kinds of large scale memory leaks
| don't really surprise me. OpenGL is still pretty much everywhere
| and if you have bad memory leaks in core framebuffer operations
| things start to accumulate very quickly.
| dlivingston wrote:
| Great perspective, thanks.
|
| FWIW, I notice the memory leaks particularly with "Control
| Center", which is an Apple extension to the task bar. I
| wouldn't expect any Apple-written code to be using any OpenGL;
| it should all be in Metal.
| servercobra wrote:
| Heh just killed Control Center with 41GB of memory...
| blakesterz wrote:
| I wish it was just memory leaks on my M1 Mini!
|
| Sometimes it just crashes. This has rarely happened on Linux.
| This sometimes happen on MacOS to the point where I don't trust
| it. At all. Ever. I have to save everything I'm working on
| constantly, just in case. Sometimes apps just stop working. Right
| now telegram just won't start. No matter what. Never happens on
| Linux. Sometimes it won't wake up from sleep. Never on Linux.
| Sometimes it loses the keyboard and/or mouse. This never happens
| on Linux. Sometimes the screensaver works, sometimes it doesn't.
| Grep is slow, waaay slower than on Linux. So are other random CLI
| things. How? Why? Docker... don't get me started, and don't make
| excuses. (~700 people at Mirantis and ~150k at Apple can't figure
| this out?) Everything runs slower on MacOS. Every. Thing. grep,
| sed, awk. Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things
| work quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get
| them to work like they did on Linux. It's always "almost" but
| never do they work like I'd expect. I need to remember to turn
| off my monitor at night, because some nights it just randomly
| turns on. Never on Linux. Maybe it'll wake up, maybe not. I
| figured out if I unplug my headphones and/or webcam I can force
| it. All of these super basic things just DON'T work. It sucks. I
| could forgive Linux, but not an OS and Hardware made by the
| biggest company on the damn planet. I get it, this is faster than
| a 4 year old laptop. But that's not what I'm comparing it to. I'm
| comparing it to a 5 year old system I built myself from random
| parts that runs an open system operating system. That's a pretty
| low bar, and it doesn't win.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| A lot of those weird random things would happen to me on Linux.
| But I agree with you, I wouldn't expect a $2K+ vertically
| integrated, 10th iteration flagship laptop to have these kind
| of issues. It definitely does suck. I have the 16" base model
| M1 Pro and I'm also considering a return
| SXX wrote:
| I'm strongly prefer Linux (been using it last 10 years), but I
| spent last year on macOS in waiting for Asahi to become usable.
| I still curious about your experience.
|
| Did you actually tried to replace Apple garbage version of
| command line utils with latest one from GNU? It's kind a
| obvioius that OOTB version of utils will be much slower since
| Apple stopped updating GNU versions once license been changed
| to GPLv3. And BSD version of utils they ship with newer macOS
| is also usually inferior.
| alexruf wrote:
| As much as I would like to get one of those M1 Macs, this is
| exactly the reason why I will wait for the 2nd generation of
| their processors. My Intel MacBook runs rock solid and stable.
| Until the ARM Macs haven't reached that level of stability, I
| am not willing to make the switch.
| mlindner wrote:
| M1 Air here that runs rock solid and stable. OP is talking
| nonsense. They should get it replaced under warranty.
| alexruf wrote:
| This might be the case for some users and basic use cases
| like surfing the web and text writing. But there are still
| a lot of issues for pro users and developers. If you rely
| on such a machine for your daily work, its not mature
| enough.
| egwor wrote:
| Rule #1 on new mac hardware: wait til the 2nd generation!
| elromulous wrote:
| Rule #1 on any new hardware, wait for 2nd gen. E.g.
| computers, cars, aircraft.
|
| And by 2nd gen, I mean first update after a major redesign.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work
| quite right?
|
| Why should all Unix implementations work just like Linux?
| What's so special about Linux? Why doesn't Linux work like BSD?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Also with various package installer you can sub in all your
| favorite linux versions of things. I have l.env file that
| aliases them all to linux equivalent commands.
| ben0x539 wrote:
| Because the "linux" versions tend to have more features and
| better help output? I've never seen anyone install Linux and
| be like "damn, I wish my coreutils were more obtuse" and
| install a bunch of non-GNU stuff. Like, I get that Linux is
| just another unix and the GNU userland isn't somehow more
| legit than others, but it's not like people are intentionally
| getting inconvenienced just to be annoying.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > tend to have more features and better help output
|
| Just a random opinion. Others disagree and prefer the BSD
| way. Concrete reasons include code-base simplicity.
|
| https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/yes.
| c
|
| https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/usr.bin/yes/yes.
| c
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| That's a developer-perspective issue. You're talking to a
| user here, and from a user perspective, the GNU utilities
| are generally strictly superior.
|
| Take the example you provided, of yes(1). Most of the
| extra code relates to optimizations, and ensuring that
| the entire argv is echoed back rather than just the first
| argument. Because of this, even a very simple example
| like:
|
| "yes hello world"
|
| will behave differently on BSD vs GNU, with the GNU
| version likely being what users expect.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > with the GNU version likely being what users expect
|
| Lol why? Not everyone grew up on GNU.
|
| > strictly superior
|
| This isn't something you can quantify and say 'strictly
| superior' it's all just taste and opinions.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Because the functionality in this case is a strict
| superset, regardless of what you're accustomed to.
|
| I didn't grow up on GNU either, but the GNU yes does
| everything I expect having used other unix systems.
|
| > This isn't something you can quantify and say 'strictly
| superior' it's all just taste and opinions.
|
| For a complicated tool, sure. But this tool is very
| simple. The GNU yes(1) accepts 100% of inputs that work
| on the BSD tool. It does a few additional things too.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Because the functionality in this case is a strict
| superset
|
| Extra functionality is always better?
|
| Then I can fork GNU, add extra junk options, and give you
| a strictly superior tool? Nonsense.
|
| The GNU tools are the Homer Cars of UNIX. Not everyone
| wants that.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Hey, look. As a systems guy myself I understand the
| aesthetic around clean and simple software. That's a
| totally reasonable preference.
|
| Here's the thing: GNU userland isn't some poorly designed
| aberration. It's by far the most popular unix userland in
| the world and is very commonly ported to systems which
| may do things differently. Almost every other unix has a
| distro to supply GNU userland tools on it -- no other
| unix userland can make the same claim.
|
| Not everyone wants it, sure. Especially people with
| perspectives broader than the typical user. Of course.
| But it's the most popular system in the world -- not some
| weird never-used prototype.
|
| And in the case of yes(1), I think you would have to try
| very hard to find a reason for a user of the tool to have
| a negative preference.
| sbuk wrote:
| Or Linux users are self-righteously declaring their way is
| the only way...
| user-the-name wrote:
| This is usually called "embrace, extend, extinguish".
| rahoulb wrote:
| Technically Linux is "just another unix" but macOS is an
| actual certified UNIX
| tim-- wrote:
| There are certified builds of CentOS/RHEL
| hugi wrote:
| You might want to have your computer looked at. This is very
| much the opposite of my experience with the M1s at our offices.
| staticassertion wrote:
| So why use OSX? I've been running Linux for over a decade full
| time. I remember using osx at work and feeling like it was just
| clunkier, slower, and buggier.
|
| What's the appeal?
| eknkc wrote:
| Because last time I tried, I spent days to have fractional
| scaling on 4k monitors work without screen tearing, blurring
| etc. And have consistent momentum scrolling on touchbar.
|
| I do not even think about these things on macOS or Windows.
|
| At this point my time is too valuable for that shit. I used
| to fiddle a lot with my computers when I was 16. Now I want
| them to work.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| i love linux but there's no way macos is more buggy, I think
| my video drivers alone have more issues than apple's entire
| os
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| OSX is great, I love my M1 laptop. I think Linux is better
| but if you're on the go and not -too- into Linux that it is a
| fine substitute. All the Linux only coding that I need to do
| I can do in a terminal with remote login. At home I use Linux
| but on the go I have a work laptop with OSX and it's a good
| substitute, especially if you don't have to buy the laptop
| yourself.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| macOS. It's not been called OS X for many years.
| User23 wrote:
| I get paid to use it.
| dimgl wrote:
| It's not Linux. It's not clunkier, slower or buggier. Not
| sure why you had those issues.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I've gone back and forth between linux and macOS the past 7
| years at work. Both get the job done, but there is
| absolutely no denying (in my experience) that macOS is
| slower.
|
| Clunkier and buggies depend entirely on which distro you
| are comparing it with, though I find clunkier at least to
| be true.
|
| Buggier than linux WMs and desktops is a pretty high bar to
| beat, as long as you're not including homebrew in the
| equation (worst, most necessary bit of software for Mac
| ever).
| dylan604 wrote:
| > What's the appeal?
|
| It runs the software I need. full stop
| sanderjd wrote:
| Weird, I got an M1 Air recently and it's super fast (the most
| notably faster seeming new computer I've gotten in a decade)
| and all these issues are incredibly foreign to me. I just can't
| relate to this comment at all...
| grp000 wrote:
| What use case do you have for your Mac? The benchmarks and
| battery life have been tempting me, but I use Docker a lot
| which I'm hearing mixed messages for, and to be honest, my
| Intel-based work Mac is less palatable to use than my
| personal Ubuntu setup, especially in regards to workspaces,
| and some weird Bluetooth issues.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Def got slightly burned by docker on M1 Pro. Inherited a
| python project with 250 deps. Building docker image (part
| of is compiling spacy) used to be ~10 minutes, now it's a
| whopping 65 minutes.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| I run a Linux VM for development and it's glorious.
|
| https://kristiandupont.medium.com/m1-dev-setup-with-a-
| virtua...
| gbrindisi wrote:
| how is the performance of the emulated vm? I would like
| to do something similar but I am reading mixed opinions
| upbeat_general wrote:
| Yeah I'd carefully look at what your expectations are with
| regard to compatibility. Docker itself seems to run just
| fine but running X86 (AMD64) containers is pretty slow
| compared to normal macOS docker which is already slow.
|
| I've loved my M1 MBA but I purchased it specifically
| knowing I have a primary x86 workstation to fallback on for
| heavier tasks and I'll often give up trying to install some
| dep/run some program on the MBA and switch to that. It
| still works great as a general purpose device and I do some
| dev on it but if you're looking to do all your dev on it,
| I'd be cautious.
| saila wrote:
| I had some issues with Docker when I first got my M1, but
| then I realized I was using an amd64 image. Images built
| for arm work fine for me.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| If you can get it built for arm. I've got so much build
| errors I didn't bother to check.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Docker is hopelessly broken on the Intel Macs, and from
| what I've heard it's certainly not any worse on the M1
| Macs.
| masklinn wrote:
| > it's certainly not any worse on the M1 Macs.
|
| Probably not any better either. If you want to run docker
| on a mac you probably should not, but the second best
| strategy is probably to bite the bullet and run an actual
| VM in which you do your docker stuff.
|
| Odds are a proper and well maintained hypervisor _you
| keep running_ will be a lot better than whatever DfM
| does.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > not any worse
|
| About 6x worse perf in my specific case.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Eh, it is worse. Worse to the point that even though I
| just got a MaxBook, I won't even conceive of getting rid
| of my 2020 maxed out Intel iMac. And it's why I have
| other x86 machines too for Linux or whatever, because
| containers on macOS are rough but containers and Docker
| specifically on the M1 is really rough. It is clearly an
| ecosystem/use case that Apple doesn't prioritize.
|
| It makes the case for stuff like GiHub Codespaces or
| sshing into a remote machine via VS Code a lot more
| manageable. For everything else, the M1 is a beast, and
| even emulated, you can get a really good Linux experience
| (Windows too for that matter -- games, obviously not
| withstanding), but containers? Nah. It's worse than the
| already sad state on Intel Macs.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| I'm on the same boat. Using an intel Mac provided by work.
| Had an M1 MacBook Pro until a few months ago, and it was
| great at several things(fast, responsive, quiet, and great
| battery life) at the cost of crippled Docker use(I needed
| local docker at that time).
|
| I feel like many many engineers like me would easily get a
| reliable laptop with MacBook Pro like specs. The problem is
| that simply does not exist.
|
| Excellent hidpi display.
|
| Ryzen 5000 series CPU with its low power draw.
|
| Good build quality.
|
| Reliable support system.
|
| Non weird components such that a recent release of popular
| Linux distribution would "just work" without needing manual
| tweaks.
|
| In my experience, you get 3/5 in the above list at best.
| Framework laptop hits several of those points but misses
| out on Ryzen. Another contender on my list is ASUS 14 OLED
| with Ryzen - I'm worried about their support system though.
| Roritharr wrote:
| If you can compromise on the HiDPI Screen, checkout the
| HP EliteBook 8X5 Series, they are amazing machines. You
| can plug up to 64gb of RAM into them if you need it, they
| run pretty smooth and my colleagues can run Linux on them
| without any issues.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| Wow! Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for. Looks
| very appealing. I might get one! They're expensive,
| though. But it might honestly be worth it to me.
| yulaow wrote:
| I want just to add that I am using a 8x0 g5 elitebook
| currently (because at the time there was not the 8x5
| series which uses amd ryzens) and it's by far the best
| linux laptop I ever used in my whole life. Also very
| sturdy and looks great.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| I'm even more tempted. My XPS 13 Developer Edition was
| also a very nice experience on Linux.
|
| How is the trackpad?
| reacharavindh wrote:
| Looks nice indeed. I have been spoiled by the excellent
| Retina display on Macs. For something literally in front
| of my eyes for a big part of the day, it must be good. I
| cannot see myself compromising to a lower res display :-(
| May be for others that are not as nitpicky as me....
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Maybe way to got is simple linux laptop for work and an
| iPad for everything else. Would probably still end up
| being cheaper than a MBP.
| Uberphallus wrote:
| Asus Zenbooks have always been solid on Linux for me,
| using them since they came out. Typing this on a UM425.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| If you like to add random crap from home brew all of the
| time, you'll notice different issues than you did on x86
| emn13 wrote:
| Apple refuses to ship gpl3 software for seemingly no sane
| reason (judging by the fact other commercial software vendors
| including e.g. windows don't have this issue) probably
| explains the command line issues; apples' tools are an
| entirely different codebase from the tools in linux distros.
| And unless you actively compare systems, you might never
| notice the apple versions are different.
|
| It's been this way since OSX day 1 IIRC, so it's a little
| surprising the apple versions are still apparently inferior
| (if the grandparent poster is anything to go by, haven't used
| em in years), but it's conceivable the CLI just isn't an
| apple priority.
|
| I wish they'd just give up already and copy as much (of the
| CLI-relevant stuff) as possible from linux, and accept that
| they'll need to give up a tiny amount of control over a small
| sliver of their OS - a sliver that they never wrote in the
| first place and also can't really change the api of, because
| that would break all kinds of things, which renders their
| ability to close source somewhat moot anyhow. And most users
| never use this stuff! The linux-conventional gnu variants are
| well maintained and usable in both MS world and linux world -
| having CLI scripts that are more easily portable across three
| OS's would be great. Apple's toxic control-freak nature
| really hurts here, and mostly just their users. I really
| don't get it.
|
| Anyhow, there are workarounds (but e.g. homebrew is hit and
| miss), it's mostly just an annoyance they're even necessary.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| It's a perfectly reasonable reason: they were forced to
| open source their objective-C compiler that was built on
| gcc and decided they didn't ever want to be in that
| position again. The BSD tools are annoying, if you're used
| to the Linux versions, but they're perfectly reasonable
| implementations of the relevant POSIX utilities (better
| than busybox, for example).
| not2b wrote:
| No, GPL2 made them do that, and even so they were ok with
| it and used to pay people to work on GCC for the Mac in
| the old days. They rejected GPL3 specifically.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| What? NeXT open-sourced their Objective-C gcc extensions
| in _1992_ , a half-decade before Apple bought them.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Yeah, it's a Steve Jobs thing. As far as I can tell, this
| is a significant factor in the rise of LLVM.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9158017
| rodgerd wrote:
| It didn't help that rms was using it as a "hah hah that
| time I put one over on Steve Jobs" a decade later when I
| saw him speak. No idea if he still does.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| And here we should note that LLVM (by its creator who
| already worked on it at Apple at this point) was offered
| to GNU and the FSF in 2005 but were ignored/chided [1]
| until a decade later when GCC/GNU/FSF realized what they
| had been offered ten years earlier and then had to
| grapple with what they had rejected, once LLVM had taken
| hold [2, 3], including proposals to try to refuse LLVM
| patches to emacs, out of some sense of petty NIH thing
| [the whole thread 2 and 3 are part of].
|
| [1]: https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-
| ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html
|
| [2]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
| devel/2015-02/msg00...
|
| [3]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
| devel/2015-02/msg00...
| jaytaylor wrote:
| > jordigh on March 6, 2015
|
| > They're basically achieving their dream now with Swift,
| though. I don't expect them to ever release that source.
| I don't think there is any precedent for Apple releasing
| source code after the fact.
|
| I wonder, to what degree is this still the case today?
| Has Apple's position on Open Source changed in the past
| half+ decade?
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I don't think it's changed about GPL: GPL3 made things
| even less friendly to what they want, so they've started
| doing things like switching to zsh instead of bash.
| LLVM/Swift are open-sourced, but not GPL
| jhgb wrote:
| > they were forced to open source their objective-C
| compiler that was built on gcc
|
| A better phrasing: They were unable to close-source an
| existing GPL'd compiler.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| My M1 Air crashes everytime I wake it from sleep and then
| immediately watch a Youtube video in Firefox. I can reliably
| reproduce this. If I open the laptop so it wakes up, login,
| and open a Youtube video it will hard crash close to 100% of
| the time.
| mlindner wrote:
| Firefox just changed how their full screen video playing
| works in the most recent released (version 94). Could be
| that. Try an earlier version of Firefox.
|
| M1 Air here that I've had for almost a year with zero
| issues, and I also use Firefox and watch a lot of youtube.
| dimgl wrote:
| This is literally the opposite of what most people claim. Does
| anyone else have these issues? I actually just ordered an M1
| MacBook myself.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| M1 is great, but you can certainly hit some issues where only
| an x86 version is available and the M1 version is either not
| there or buggy as hell.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I can't speak to m1 in particular, but BSD grep is known to
| be very slow regardless of platform. You can just brew
| install grep to get a fast one, but you'll still always have
| to always deal with avoiding the slow system grep.
|
| ag and rg are other fast options.
|
| The speed of GNU grep vs BSD grep is discussed on the BSD
| mailing lists here:
| https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
| current/2010-Aug...
| wincy wrote:
| Ripgrep changed how I search my codebases, it's so damned
| fast I love it. I almost always use it when I'm trying to
| find a pattern or a bit of code I vaguely remember but have
| forgotten where it might be in a large codebase. Still
| returns almost instantly.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I've had a couple crashes with by 2020 MBP, but my experience
| is that it's the best Mac I've owned since about 2010.
| MonaroVXR wrote:
| What most people say is not always the truth. Eg; "Windows 10
| is the last Windows."
|
| Most people don't give any sources.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Some mac users seem to be cursed with bad hardware.
|
| It seems to be black and white: users either have no
| problems, or ALL the problems.
|
| I started to get "the curse" after 8 years with my 2012 MBP.
| It started randomly turning off. Not crashing, just turning
| off! I replaced the battery because that was the only warning
| I was getting. But it can no longer run _any_ macOS. Even
| mavericks. It crashes randomly. It went from rock solid to
| fragile as an elderly lady with osteoporosis rollerskating on
| a cobblestone path.
|
| Now it is my primary Ubuntu machine since the touchpad works
| so much batter than Ubuntu running on my Lenovo Yoga and it
| has better performance. Zero turning off problems. It's been
| on for months running a VNC server.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Don't know about others but my M1 Macs are the most stable
| and performant Apple machines I had in a long time. My
| previous 16" i9 MBP was a disappointment (laggy/sluggish,
| running hot) compared to my M1 Mini and MacBook Air.
|
| I also don't see any memory issues, etc.
| nvarsj wrote:
| I think you convinced me to not get a new MBP. These are the
| exact kind of issues I had with prior MBPs. Also Emacs was
| always inexplicably 5x slower than on Linux. It's a shame we
| can't use alternative OSs on the hardware.
| least wrote:
| > Docker... don't get me started, and don't make excuses. (~700
| people at Mirantis and ~150k at Apple can't figure this out?)
|
| The whole reason Docker exists makes complaining about its
| performance on non-linux operating systems asinine.
|
| > Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work
| quite right?
|
| Because MacOS is BSD-based and those tools aren't "Linux"
| things. You can install the GNU equivalents easily if you
| dislike them.
|
| > I could forgive Linux, but not an OS and Hardware made by the
| biggest company on the damn planet.
|
| Software development doesn't particularly care about the fact
| that Apple is the biggest company on the planet. The pooled
| resources going into development of linux is quite substantial
| and yet it too still has plenty of software issues. LTS kernels
| can have hundreds of patches because software development is
| _hard_ no matter how many eyes you have looking at it.
| [deleted]
| pengaru wrote:
| > The whole reason Docker exists makes complaining about its
| performance on non-linux operating systems asinine.
|
| TIL there's a single "whole" reason Docker exists.
|
| Please, enlighten me, what exactly is that reason?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Please, enlighten me, what exactly is that reason?_
|
| To serve as an easier to use facade on top of Linux kernel
| virtualization options. It only works on Linux - or with an
| emulated Linux.
| tarsinge wrote:
| Docker is built on specific features of the Linux kernel.
| From Wikipedia
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docker_(software):
|
| > When running on Linux, Docker uses the resource isolation
| features of the Linux kernel (such as cgroups and kernel
| namespaces) and a union-capable file system (such as
| OverlayFS)to allow containers to run within a single Linux
| instance, avoiding the overhead of starting and maintaining
| virtual machines.[12] Docker on macOS uses a Linux virtual
| machine to run the containers.
| [deleted]
| least wrote:
| A quick search would answer your question:
| https://www.docker.com/why-docker
| pengaru wrote:
| Can you distill that into the single whole reason you're
| referring to? It's unclear to me just reading that
| marketing page.
|
| If it's "to provide a standardized unit of software that
| allows developers to isolate their app from its
| environment, solving the 'it works on my machine'
| headache", I don't see how it makes expecting good
| performance asinine.
|
| Linux's ABI is stable, MacOS can definitely implement
| it... there's nothing in Docker/Linux containers in
| general, forcing MacOS to incur virtualization overhead.
| MonaroVXR wrote:
| It doesn't solve the "it works on my machine" that's the
| ironic thing, that I've discovered through someone else
| too
| rapht wrote:
| I'd swear I'm hearing myself talking about Windows 20 years
| back... "I keep saving everything incase it just crashes",
| "It's slow as hell even for simple tasks", etc. Has Apple 2021
| become Microsoft 2001 ?
| bluedino wrote:
| Not really, but you should see Microsoft these days...
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| My kids were giving me a hard time because they cant work out
| why I hit Control-S every 2 minutes.
| exogen wrote:
| > Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work
| quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get them
| to work like they did on Linux.
|
| If you mean how they work, like command line arguments and such
| (and not just speed), that's because macOS is based on BSD and
| thus using the BSD and not GNU versions. That's not really a
| "not right" thing, it's just different, and would be the same
| if you used any other BSD like OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.
| frazbin wrote:
| no, it's definitely "not right" -- mac os ships with ancient,
| crippled versions of the bsd utilities, afaict simply because
| it's bad for open source and because they can. E.g. `man sed`
| then check the date at the bottom
| exogen wrote:
| Mine says March 27, 2017 and it does everything I've ever
| asked it to? Maybe you have different standards for what
| qualifies as ancient and crippled.
| marktucker wrote:
| For me (on Catalina), it's May 10, 2005.
| mlindner wrote:
| Yes they rarely update the utilities for non-security
| reasons, but they do update them. I'm on Big Sur and it's
| March 27, 2017 for sed.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| macOS ships ancient versions of GNU programs which are now
| GPLv3. The BSD things are kept up to date.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| If only they had a few billion in spare change to write
| their own workalikes.
| bink wrote:
| How often do you think utilities like sed, awk, and grep
| are being updated? They're virtually unchanged for 20-30
| years.
| touisteur wrote:
| I'll bite and talk about centos, the 'stable' distro.
|
| Take the example of 'tar' that slowly evolved and some
| time even changed its default behaviour. e.g. what to do
| when untaring a folder but there's already a symlink with
| the same name as the folder, do you erase the symlink and
| create a folder or do you untar the folder in the
| symlink? Between centos 5 and 7 this changed... Causing
| me some amount of pain.
|
| hostname stopped supporting '_' in host names. Could have
| raised a warning, have added a '-pedantic' option but no.
|
| hostname stopped assigning the permanent host name with
| the 'hostname myhostname' command and now you need to use
| hostnamectl. Could have left the 'old' feature and make
| hostnamectl whine instead, but no.
|
| ifconfig _the deprecated tool_ subtly changed the order
| of fields too and now the MAC address is not in the same
| place as before, breaking scripts that trusted that not
| to change.
|
| df changed its syntax, adding or removing a new-line some
| time ago.
|
| Yeah thinking back we shouldn't have used the standard
| tools and expected them not to change.
|
| So, now, whenever I see in code review some bash person
| using 'standard' tools to get info that could be gathered
| through procfs or sysfs, I instead ask they use procfs,
| sysfs or ioctls and be done with it.
| fouric wrote:
| Hmmm, maybe "everything is text" wasn't such a good idea
| after all...
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Powershell might be what you're looking for. Text is
| thrown away in favor of .NET objects (and reflection)
| jabbany wrote:
| To be fair, the last two are more from a bad design
| choice by *nix in general to base everything on passing
| around unstructured text and hoping each tool's ad-hoc
| schema won't change.
| fnord123 wrote:
| Gnu grep uses Boyers-Moore for searching - it's wicked
| fast. BSD grep installed by default on Macos might not be
| using this algorithm.
|
| This 2 year old HN post shows the performance difference
| between Gnu grep and BSD grep on Macos:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19522456
| sva_ wrote:
| _> How often do you think utilities like sed, awk, and
| grep are being updated? _
|
| sed 4.8 - 15 Jan 2021
|
| awk 5.1.1 - 28 Oct 2021
|
| grep 3.7 - 14 Aug 2021
|
| What am I missing here?
| a_lost_needle wrote:
| June 10th, 2020. What did I do wrong?
| gfosco wrote:
| Yep... GNU versions are available for Mac, i.e. `brew install
| gnu-sed` and then `gsed` works like you'd expect.
| pxc wrote:
| If you install GNU coreutils from Nix (and maybe some other
| package managers, idk) you can get them with their normal
| PATHs, at the cost of some possible incompatibility with
| macOS-specific scripts that assume the bundled versions.
|
| I used GNU ones without the `g` prefix for a year or two
| and never ran into trouble because of it.
| sgt wrote:
| The Telegram issue is not specific to M1. I think it's a bug in
| Telegram, as it simply refuses to start on my Intel based MBP
| at the moment. Started this evening.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Funny, I've been feeling the same way about my M1 MBA. It's
| hard to deny that the newer silicon doesn't have my older Linux
| rig beat for latency, but when it comes to raw performance I
| was pretty damn disappointed. At risk of offending some people,
| it was exactly what I feared the M1 would be: a phone CPU
| shoehorned in to a clamshell body. There are advantages and
| disadvantages to running a machine like this, but overall I
| don't really find the development experience to be that much
| more compelling than a Raspberry Pi.
|
| That being said, Apple still knows their audience. I imagine
| there will be a lot of chronic Twitter browsers and Pages
| advocates who fall in love with this machine, and I think
| that's fine. I do have to wonder what constitutes a "premium"
| device if not for the hardware though. Everything I do on
| modern MacOS feels like it's prodding me to go spend $8 on a
| tool that I'd have for free on Linux or even Windows. Booting
| up Big Sur makes me long for my old a1502 running Mojave and
| handling some frankly ridiculous workloads while staying rock-
| solid in terms of stability. If anything, I applaud Apple for
| coming straight out and telling me that the future of their
| devices isn't for me.
| reissbaker wrote:
| _But when it comes to raw performance I was pretty damn
| disappointed._
|
| I'm curious what you mean by "raw performance"? I'm no Apple
| enthusiast, but AFAIK the M1 is the fastest laptop CPU on the
| market. There are faster desktop CPUs, but I don't think that
| makes it "a phone CPU shoehorned into a clamshell body" -- it
| beats pretty much any laptop CPU in existence in the
| benchmarks I've seen.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| It's hard to find software native for Windows and Linux
| simultaneously, yet unavailable for macOS.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| If your M1 experience isn't better than a Raspberry Pi (the
| only issue I have on RPI is speed and memory limits) then
| something was wrong with your laptop. There is really no
| comparison, the M1 will destroy it in any performance
| demonstration.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > That being said, Apple still knows their audience. I
| imagine there will be a lot of chronic Twitter browsers and
| Pages advocates who fall in love with this machine, and I
| think that's fine.
|
| That is delightfully insulting. _Real developers_ would never
| use Macs, of course.
| [deleted]
| djbusby wrote:
| Real Developers use whatever and still get shit done.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| > Everything I do on modern MacOS feels like it's prodding me
| to go spend $8 on a tool that I'd have for free on Linux or
| even Windows.
|
| Yeah, that's so annoying. Wanna browse a .zip file (not
| extract it)? Either `brew install file-roller` with its non-
| macOS UI, or use shady paid shovelware. Wanna record your
| desktop audio as part of a screencast? It's so complicated
| [0] and often involves shady stuff [1] or software that costs
| $99 [2]. What about Windows? There's (mediocre) ZIP browsing
| support in Explorer since Me, 7-Zip is free and trustworthy,
| and OBS just has a desktop audio input built-in (and I also
| could do that easily in 2005). Linux? You'll probably get a
| working archive tool built-in (file-roller, ark, whatever)
| and OBS desktop audio just works.
|
| [0] https://billykorando.com/2020/04/14/capturing-desktop-
| and-zo... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4VPbMvBuLg [2]
| https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/
| derekjdanserl wrote:
| It truly is a shame we have to choose between quality hardware
| and a quality OS.
|
| My maxed out 2013 Macbook Pro (the last model that runs linux
| without issue) has finally worn itself out and I'm in the
| market for a new laptop, but I can't find a new laptop worth
| spending money on. I'm currently doing all my work on my
| desktop just hoping I don't have to travel any time soon.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Check out the Dell Mobile Workstations. I had to buy a laptop
| and went with a custom 7750
| [deleted]
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Look at Framework. Really fantastic out of the box Linux
| support (some WiFi issues depending on kernel version but
| legit it's better than what you'll find on identically
| specced Dell's right now and you have options about brining
| your own preferred WiFi card), excellent Windows support, a
| good community, repairable -- I've had mine since September
| and am a huge fan.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Putting aside your dislike for BSD versions of userspace tools,
| I am confused as to why it hasn't occurred to you that you may
| have defective hardware or a defective OS install? Have you
| undertaken even the most basic troubleshooting steps?
| cma wrote:
| Memory management on iPad seemed to be terrible when I used one
| for a while. An app would start acting up, so you would take a
| screenshot or video and send to Apple's bug reporting tool
| right? Every time you switched from the bug reporting tool to
| any other app (to crop the images of the bug, etc.) it would
| run out of memory and kill the bug reporting tool, which
| wouldn't save any of the text you had entered in the forms,
| deleting all of your work on the bug report.
|
| Also, every browser tab with text entered was a random crap
| shoot if you were going to lose it by going to another tab to
| copy something and return to paste. Nothing was predictable,
| youor work was just constantly lost of the device. Almost no
| apps seemed to persist things when the OS forced them to shut
| down, except maybe the highest rated dedicated artist and note
| taking stuff. But even Apple's own apps (like the bug reporting
| tool) often didn't bother.
| coldtea wrote:
| What you describe is not a Mac Mini with some OS or HW bug,
| it's a broken one. Don't know what your issue is, if it is
| hardware, or it was pwned, or has 2-3 incompatible Rosetta apps
| wrecking havoc. But I'd get it replaced.
|
| None of these things happen to people, much less altogether.
|
| > _Everything runs slower on MacOS. Every. Thing._
|
| The experience of everybody who bought an M1 is everything (or
| almost) running far snappier.
|
| > _Everything runs slower on MacOS. Every. Thing. grep, sed,
| awk._
|
| So, is it "everything" or is it "grep, sed, awk"? And what is
| your case exactly? Benchmarked them on the mac and on some
| Linux system with the same file? Maybe did it on a network
| attached drive?
|
| > _Why don 't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work
| quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get them
| to work like they did on Linux._
|
| You seem not to understand this POSIX system or versioning.
| Apple has older (or BSD) versions of those tools. Use Brew or
| similar and install the GNU versions, which would be like you
| know them from Linux. Not that the BSD versions are broken,
| they're just different.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Let this comment be a reminder to everyone that "you're
| holding it wrong" is not a response solely used by desktop
| Linux advocates.
| pxc wrote:
| > Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work
| quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get them
| to work like they did on Linux.
|
| This is the GNU in GNU/Linux :)
|
| I really like GNU coreutils, and other basic GNU utilities like
| GNU sed, find, and awk. I know some BSD folks see them as
| 'bloated' and 'non-standard', but to me they're plenty fast and
| they feel complete.
|
| When I used macOS for a while for a job, it surprised me how
| much I'd come to rely on the features and behavior of certain
| GNU utilities that are apparently peculiar to them. But I miss
| 'em when they're gone.
| aspaceman wrote:
| The speculating about the OS arch made me wonder:
|
| If such an issue were to occur on iOS without a crash, would
| anyone even notice? There's no real way to monitor RAM usage, and
| the failure mode is less clear (slowdown, issue with
| responsiveness, followed by likely reboot).
| sudhirj wrote:
| iOS would likely kill the app as soon as it got out of hand,
| and rely on the state restoration hook to bring back the state
| as the user left it. Normal macOS apps don't have that, though.
|
| If the leak was in some part of the system, maybe a problem,
| but I'm sure they test pretty rigorously, and get enough crash
| reports to figure things out fast with that many devices in the
| wild, all in pretty constant use.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Looks like all those Big-O-focused sdev interviews really paid
| off!
| RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote:
| O(64 x 2^30) = O(1), so it's still constant memory usage.
| [deleted]
| frazbin wrote:
| Jumping in to point out that while this stuff happens on linux,
| at least one doesn't feel so hand-wrigingly powerless when it
| does. I know it's a choice between starting a career in
| maintenance and complete learned helplessness.. and the former
| option well seem a lot more appealing when it's no longer
| available.
| throwaway-jim wrote:
| I'm facing the similar issues with my m1 air(8 GB). Recently
| firefox managed to get to 44GB. I'm closing and re-opening my
| applications; and checking the memory pressure when things start
| to feel sluggish. Also unrelated but my speakers have started to
| sound like garbage.
| threeseed wrote:
| a) You need to raise an issue then with Firefox team as that
| isn't something that Apple is at fault for.
|
| b) If your speakers sound bad then it could be dust or debris.
| Might want to unscrew your Mac and use a blower / vaccum
| cleaner on it.
| nightshift1 wrote:
| _For the past 10 months, I've used a 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro
| supplied by my employer._
|
| How is this possible ? The M1 MBP is only available since October
| 26.
| Southland wrote:
| Not true. There was a 13inch M1 MBP available. It just was not
| the redesign that has non usb-c ports, etc.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| M1 MacBook Pro (13 inch) and M1 MacBook Air were released near
| the end of last year. The newest machines (14 and 16 inch) and
| the M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro. The combination of "MacBook
| Pro" and "M1 Pro CPU" can be confusing. The original poster
| appears to have gotten an original M1 CPU in the 13 MacBook Pro
| about 10 months ago from their employer.
| kryz wrote:
| It's Dropbox...
| thesquib wrote:
| I already have these issues on my 2019 MacBook Pro. Presumably
| it's the OS rather than the hardware but who knows
| itsjustmath wrote:
| Might be totally off base and unrelated, but I'm curious how
| often people are power cycling and if that provides any benefit
| waynecochran wrote:
| Ironically this horrible website is itself a memory pig -- holy
| crap ... the ads ...
| mlindner wrote:
| What ads?
| herpderperator wrote:
| I did notice that CalendarAgent uses around 350MB which is
| ridiculous to just sync my Google Calendar. When you kill it, it
| restarts itself goes down to 15MB but gradually goes up. Doesn't
| seem to go above 400MBish, but still... Other than that, no
| complaints. Other apps seem to manage memory rather well.
|
| Rather than working with Activity Monitor open 24/7, just install
| iStat Menus. Makes it really easy to monitor your system.
| ummonk wrote:
| Is it specific to M1? On my Intel Macbook Pro I have to restart
| Safari daily to fix memory leaks that make the address bar
| incredibly unresponsive (even closing tabs doesn't work - I have
| to quit and reopen the app).
| noduerme wrote:
| Reading this with mild concern as I'm waiting for my first M1
| Max, a couple questions spring to mind...
|
| * I wonder if this is more prevalent when the hard drive is
| approaching full capacity? It would be interesting to see the
| breakdown between physical and swap when it happens.
|
| * Has anyone observed these seemingly random memory leaks while
| not running anything under Rosetta 2?
| threeseed wrote:
| It's probably worth reminding everyone who is new to the Mac or
| like most of us keep forgetting. Don't update your OS until at
| least half way through its update lifecycle e.g. for Monterey
| wait until 12.0.5.
|
| This happens every single year where there are annoying/serious
| bugs that takes a while to get fixed as the focus is on P1
| showstoppers.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I tend to stay 1-2 years behind. But that hasn't been an option
| on new hardware since at least the early OS X days, if not
| maybe Classic MacOS.
| yumraj wrote:
| My primary is still in Mojave and I've been perfectly happy
| with it.
|
| Now, if I were to update my hardware that won't be an option.
| droidist2 wrote:
| Yeah, I recently updated to Catalina. I had to Google to find
| the download link, but it was still available from apple.com
| wincy wrote:
| Hah well with the M1 air I got a few days ago, it helpfully
| won't let me upgrade to Monterey! I've downloaded the 12GB
| update three times now and it fails each time it tries. I guess
| I'll wait.
| glogla wrote:
| I do that as well - I have work Mac and personal one, and I
| don't want to run them with different OS versions since Apple
| loves to change things between versions for no reason (last
| time they renamed "grab" to "screenshot" and needlessly
| reordered System Preferences) so using two versions of Mac OS
| is super annoying. And corporate takes a while to get all their
| crap running on a new version.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Apple's great hardware is crippled by the piece of shit operating
| system called macOS.
|
| Man up Apple and release Apple Silicon drivers for Linux.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post generic-indignant comments, or take HN
| threads into flamewar, or call names in comments here. That all
| pushes discussion in the direction we're trying to avoid here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| I know you are venting, but seriously, I use macs _for_ macOS.
| Otherwise I'd be buying much cheaper hardware.
|
| Mac hardware is nice, but it's not _that_ nice. Except for
| maybe the trackpad.
| cma wrote:
| I don't think there is anything else where you can run that
| much GPU power on battery as well as wired in a form factor
| anywhere close and with integrated system/gpu memory. The AMD
| APUs haven't gotten close yet, but as things start moving to
| LPDDR5 maybe they will.
| alxlu wrote:
| I personally haven't been able to find another laptop with
| the same battery life, design, trackpad, and screen quality
| of mac hardware.
|
| I bought an M1 max laptop and I'm almost tempted to go back
| to my Linux machine because of several issues I have with
| macOS. There are things that are by design like mandatory
| animation delays for things like switching spaces and going
| in/out of fullscreen, which are borderline dealbreakers for
| me given how often I do those things. And there are also
| things I suspect are either bugs or straight up performance
| lapses, such as scrolling through text in a terminal at 4k
| being slow if you have ligatures enabled.
|
| I could go on, but I think it's a perfectly valid sentiment
| (regardless of whether or not they were venting) to wish for
| mac hardware with a Linux OS.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Apple Silicon has a lower power draw than any comparable AMD
| or Intel chip.
|
| I'd like to use one of those Mac Minis as a
| homeserver/homelab and macOS is the only thing standing in
| the way. Similarly, I doubt there is a non Apple laptop that
| matches the M1 Macbook Air's battery life to performance
| ratio, specially in that form factor.
|
| I know Asahi linux exists but reverse engineered drivers will
| never be as effective/performant as official drivers. Porting
| drivers to Linux won't even be expensive for Apple. They
| refuse to do it just cause theyre Apple.
| bchris4 wrote:
| There wasn't any mention of how much free hard drive space this
| machine has, which I believe is more relevant than ever now,
| isn't it?
| 0x0 wrote:
| Sounds very similar to the macOS 10.15.6 release, which had a
| horrible kernel memory leak. It was especially visible when
| running virtual machines. After a few hours the kernel memory
| pressure was so high that it would oom kill every usermode
| process one by one, including critical system processes.
|
| That one had me yearning for a linux grub menu entry for
| "previous kernel".
| herpderperator wrote:
| Is kernel memory pressure different to the normal memory
| pressure? Or is it the same thing?
| 0x0 wrote:
| The kernel memory usage would only show up with ever-
| increasing numbers in "sudo zprint", it wasn't visible in
| activity monitor
| tticvs wrote:
| It's fundamentally the same thing, but when the kernel is
| refuses to deallocate memory you can't just terminate the
| process, you have to reboot the system.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Been using M1 Pro for a week now. Docker (amd64) runs waaay
| slower. App crash (mostly Safari) at least once a day. Haven't
| noticed memory leaks.
| johndill wrote:
| One wonders if there is some weird software his employer
| installed? Probably not. Apple just dropped a new chip into a
| laptop designed for another chip and its not a good match. Mac
| controls the entire production process including software. That
| laptop was designed for a different chip. Everything else with
| the M1 is fine because the hardware was designed for the chip
| jstsch wrote:
| Hm. I got my M1 Max on the morning of 30 October...
| % uptime 23:27 up 9 days, 11:24, 4 users, load averages:
| 2.19 2.77 2.91
|
| :) so no issues here.
| fortran77 wrote:
| What a trainwreck! I'm so glad I switched to Windows 10, and now
| Windows 11. It's hard to "invent your own" CPU, and think that
| you know better than experts who have been doing it for decades.
| mthoms wrote:
| M1 is a "trainwreck"? Really?
|
| Your anti-Apple comments are always hilariously off base, but
| this takes the cake :)
| adolph wrote:
| The wreck comes to all trains eventually. It's only a question
| of how well any vendor's interest being aligned with customer's
| that they are avoided and remedied.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Non-sequitur. This doesn't affect older Apple hardware running
| the new OS, but you're comparing hardware with software.
|
| Also, the majority of your comment history is bashing Apple and
| promoting Windows. Do you work there? Are you paid to do this?
| fortran77 wrote:
| > the majority of your comment history
|
| That's an absolute, and easily refuted, lie. @dang -- ban
| this user.
| rootlocus wrote:
| The CPU is a groundbreaking piece of technology. The OS /
| runtime can be patched. It's not like Intel or Microsoft
| release flawless hardware and software. And obviously,
| competition is at the heart of capitalism.
| dschuler wrote:
| I've been having some sort of severe performance issue in one
| form or another since Mojave/Catalina or so with a 2017 MBP and a
| 2020 M1 Mac Mini.
|
| The symptoms is always generally poor performance after the
| system has been running a while (4h to a week, varies), usually
| with WindowServer using CPU cycles non-stop and UI that felt
| choppy across all programs.
|
| This seemed to happen frequently after "opening many files", like
| doing some recompiling with Xcode for a few hours, or indexing a
| large volume with Spotlight. Rebooting helps temporarily.
|
| Today I realized that data read/written since boot was about 1TB
| in a few hours on a brand new OS install, and I traced this back
| to the com.apple.Safari.History process. Somehow having bookmarks
| and previously using Safari 15.x caused a huge amount of I/O that
| wouldn't stop - the solution was to remove all bookmarks and
| reading list items. Performance was immediately back to normal,
| no reboot needed.
|
| So just logging in with your iCloud id, you could be "importing"
| whatever performance problem you're having on a new install.
|
| I recommend you reboot and take a look at your disk I/O stats -
| maybe this will help someone!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It may have to do with many of the new Mac (Apple-authored) apps
| being Catalyst apps. Not sure. I feel that Catalyst is a bit of a
| "stopgap" solution, so it may not be as thoroughly optimized as a
| more permanent solution. I'll bet something new comes out, once
| the entire line is switched to M _X_ chips.
|
| For myself, I just got the new M1Max 14-inch MBP, and it's quite
| nice.
|
| I had to remove my Thunderbolt docks (I have a range of docks,
| including ones purported to be "Thunderbolt 4") from the video
| chain. I have found that the computer seems to lose track of what
| is where, if I have a dock in the loop.
| bitigchi wrote:
| Catalyst is the stopgap before SwiftUI. Eventually we'll see
| all Apple apps migrated to SwiftUI from AppKit, UIKit, and
| Catalyst.
| novok wrote:
| SwiftUI is still better called beta software at this point,
| to the point where 1password abandoned it mid rewrite to go
| to electron. It's gonna be a few more years at least.
| fmajid wrote:
| There is apparently a bug in the buffer cache, that can be
| alleviated by regular purges:
|
| https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2021/20211029_0832-digl...
| mstange wrote:
| For people who are experiencing a leak on macOS 12: Check if you
| have set a custom cursor color in the system accessibility
| preferences. Resetting the cursor color to the default may fix
| it.
|
| See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1735345#c18
|
| (edit: rephrased to mention macOS 12)
| M4v3R wrote:
| You're right, I've just checked and when I set my cursor to be
| a custom color in accessibility settings suddenly my Firefox
| started to eat up memory as crazy :D. This went away as soon as
| I reset the cursor to default colors.
| masklinn wrote:
| The author is specifically noting they're on Big Sur so they
| should not be affected by this.
| mstange wrote:
| Oh, you're right. I missed that.
| thih9 wrote:
| That's a nice catch, must have been satisfying to find this.
|
| Also, it seems like a relatively easy memory leak to fix,
| hopefully in an upcoming OS update.
|
| Looking forward to the fix.
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| Good lord would I love to see the postmortem breakdown on that
| one
| valleyer wrote:
| Having worked at Apple adjacent to the likely responsible
| teams, the relevant details are: overworked engineering
| teams, insufficient QA investment, and most of all a yearly
| macOS major release schedule that persists primarily to
| benefit the egos of Apple's upper management.
|
| Until you see a WWDC that doesn't announce a major release of
| macOS, expect more of the same.
|
| To any involved Apple folks here, I feel your pain, and I'm
| sorry.
| novok wrote:
| What I don't get about apple, with a compensation policy
| that is less than the other big techs, because they can't
| get over the late 90s, team sizes that are usually smaller
| and being one of the largest market cap companies in the
| world, why don't they hire more?
| city41 wrote:
| And this is why I have completely stopped using all Apple
| products. I used to be a massive Mac fanboy. But the
| software quality is absolute shit now and has been for at
| least the past 5 years. I don't understand why anyone puts
| up with it.
| artificial wrote:
| What do you use now?
| city41 wrote:
| Android phone and Ubuntu on my desktop PC and ThinkPads.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I speak only for myself, but after Catalina I started
| transitioning to Linux and couldn't be happier. Being
| able to set up my entire computer with a single Github
| repo is a godsend for productivity, all it takes are a
| few keystrokes and I've got a fully configured desktop
| with all my dotfiles, keybinds and applications.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Care to explain what you are talking about?
| yumraj wrote:
| > Being able to set up my entire computer with a single
| Github repo is a godsend for productivity,
|
| Not sure I understand, could you elaborate what you mean.
| gizdan wrote:
| I've been a Linux user for some 10 years, but have also
| had to use a Macbook Pro for a while due to work. There's
| nothing stopping you from fully configuring macOS through
| a single repository similar to how you do Linux. For a
| while my dot files were aimed at Linux (primarily),
| macOS, and Windows as I anticipated to have to use both
| macOS and Windows down the line, though I've since
| removed much of the multiplatform code.
| freedomben wrote:
| Things may be different now as I haven't used a mac since
| about 2015, but depending on what tools you needed you
| couldn't escape the GUI completely (for a fully automated
| setup). At this point I don't remember all that was
| wrong, but one of the biggest required installing xcode
| or something like that before I could get git to work.
| threeseed wrote:
| Things have been different for many years.
|
| a) You can install XCode CLI with xcode-select --install.
|
| b) Many applications can be installed with homebrew
| casks.
|
| e.g. brew install --cask docker google-drive intellij-
| idea microsoft-office
| novok wrote:
| You don't even need --cask anymore. You can also use
| `brew bundle dump` to synchronize what you've installed
| via brew, and it also can sync mac app store installs
| too.
|
| It's a bit annoying getting macOS system preferences
| synced still although.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| How are you managing the desktop (gnome) files? I swear
| every time I try to move them to a new system or account
| all I get is grief; weird bugs, application crashes, dbus
| weirdness. I would love to see your recipe :) . All I can
| usually do is bring over app config files like
| emacs/vim/etc/personal scripts.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I don't use GNOME on any of my systems anymore (the 40
| update destroyed all hope I had for the desktop going
| forwards), but I'm convinced you can get _some_ settings
| transferred by poking around in your ~ /.local directory.
| Having written a few GTK applications in the past, it
| seems like the rationale for this is because of GNOME's
| settings API, and how they define compliance with the
| GNOME spec. I find it to be a total clusterfuck, and if I
| had any confidence in the desktop's current management
| team I'd probably open a few pull requests/RFCs to try
| and fix it. I might sound a little heavy-handed here, but
| the "my way or the highway" rhetoric that GNOME's
| developers are pushing right now makes it really hard for
| me to take their desktop seriously, or blame anything but
| the developers themselves for their lack of features.
|
| In any case, I can assure you that behavior is perfectly
| "normal" to them, unfortunately.
| gizdan wrote:
| Recently I discovered Extension Sync[0] for GNOME, I
| never really used it, but it may be useful to you.
|
| [0]
| https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1486/extensions-
| sync/
| threeseed wrote:
| This isn't exclusive to Linux.
|
| With homebrew you can install most applications through
| the command line as well.
| innomatics wrote:
| That sounds really neat is it some thing you can share? I
| recently setup a new machine which didn't take very long,
| but I have run into a few things I forget so would like
| to set up something similar.
| threeseed wrote:
| I've been seeing this exact same comment for over a
| decade now.
|
| The first couple of releases of OSX are _always_ a little
| rough around the edges. And then by the end of the cycle
| everyone proclaims how wonderful this release is.
|
| See everyone next year !
| city41 wrote:
| Except the bugs have continued to get worse and worse.
| For me the deal breaker was the blank page in iOS
| Safari[1]. After fighting that one constantly, I threw in
| the towel. I've been so much happier. Btw I was an Apple
| user from System 7 through to 2019.
|
| [1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/safari-blank-
| page-bug.2...
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > worse and worse
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/users-complain-of-mac-os-x-
| lio...
|
| Back in the days OS X was a dumpster fire in terms of
| overall reliability until the very late releases of every
| major version. Some versions like Lion had pure crashes
| until the end.
|
| Even looking a few years before, we had the root user
| password bug and other pretty severe issues way worse
| than what we're seeing now.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Craig Ferengi has to go. Too much of a pretty boy who
| doesn't get the need to invest in QA.
| test001only wrote:
| I have always felt Macs are awesome hardware bundled with
| poor OS. Apple needs to up their software quality.
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| Whatever that is, it's definitely not a binary tree inversion
| bug.
| sushsjsuauahab wrote:
| Ah yes, our visit from Just the Magical Wizard, who in this
| case tells us "just set your cursor color back to default if
| you run out of memory", as if we should have already known :)
| dang wrote:
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| maxclark wrote:
| Not just a MacBook problem but Apple M1. So far nothing "bad" has
| happened when my Mac runs out of Ram.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| Managing shared memory is not a new thing for Apple, as it has
| been doing the same on iOS for a long time. Maybe a bug in
| Monterey? None of the M1 users I know had this issue.
| typon wrote:
| Happens to me all the time on my Macbook Pro too. I hate this
| operating system. What I would give for a Apple hardware + Linux
| machine.
| BrianHenryIE wrote:
| > I now keep Activity Monitor open while I work
|
| I also do this, but I wonder is it a bad idea? Is Activity
| Monitor enabling any extra logging that itself is slowing things
| down further, or is it just subscribing to already enabled
| events?
|
| I'm on M1 MBA 16GB and I get the out-of-memory errors too. It's
| still a world of difference from the 2016 MBP I upgraded from.
|
| As touched on in another comment, the problem might be the 8
| desktops and 20 Firefox windows I keep open.
| noduerme wrote:
| I've always tried to avoid keeping Activity Monitor open. On my
| current 2015 MBA, it doesn't eat up a lot of memory, but it
| usually _does_ list itself as a top consumer of CPU cycles,
| often 15-20%. Running `top` in the terminal only eats about 2%.
|
| It would be ironic if Activity Monitor itself were causing a
| memory leak.
| userbinator wrote:
| I'm a long-time Windows user and it's customary to keep Task
| Manager open (more for its tray icon) to keep an eye on what
| the system is doing. Is that not common in the Mac world?
| novok wrote:
| We have apps like istat menus that behave similarly.
| Activity Monitor doesn't create a menubar icon that lets
| you monitor system state like the windows equivalent, but
| it's dock/taskbar icon can be set to behave the same.
|
| I also think windows task manager is fairly efficient and
| TBH more useful with their full system state graph view.
| You have to click one resource at a time to see system
| state of your memory, cpu, etc and there is no GPU graph
| like windows.
| mlindner wrote:
| Opening it from time to time, sure, keeping it open, no.
| Power users may install a menu bar applet to track the
| stuff but you generally don't need to bother.
| wirrbel wrote:
| interesting, I just discovered a Touch Bar daemon process
| consuming > 4 GB of memory on my 8GB MacBook, a clear leak.
| itwy wrote:
| I have a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018, 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core
| i5, 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3) and now on macOS Monterey everything
| just feels sluggish (especially the animations) and crashes
| sometimes.
|
| It just feels the OS is designed for different, more recent
| hardware. I have been using Mac since 2010 and that wasn't the
| case in the past. I paid about $3,000 for this device. I am not
| happy and considering Linux/Windows.
| miohtama wrote:
| Memory leaks are a feature of a software, not hardware. I read
| the article and while the Apple and Adobe software can be blamed,
| there is nothing in this post that it would pin this on the new
| hardware and the author does not seem to be technical enough to
| understand this.
| webmobdev wrote:
| It's obvious you haven't read the article and are reacting to
| the headline. In fact, the author highlights that the issue is
| probably with the system software (macOS):
|
| _That's extremely similar to the MacBook Pro and Monterey
| issues I've read this week--except I'm still running Big Sur
| ... It's possible that macOS isn't managing this unified memory
| structure properly, and will continue to allocate RAM beyond
| what is available without freeing up RAM that is no longer
| needed. This is commonly referred to as a "memory leak."
| Performance gradually deteriorates until you need to either
| wait for the RAM to clear, force-quit the app, or restart the
| machine ... it's entirely possible that Apple fixes it in a
| future version of macOS without ever addressing the issue
| publicly. That's what happened with the excessive SSD usage
| earlier this year, though that Apple says that was a "data
| reporting error" and not an actual problem. The memory bug is
| an actual issue that needs to be fixed as soon as possible._
| otterley wrote:
| It's a fair criticism that the headline is misleading, even
| if the text is accurate.
| [deleted]
| mcphage wrote:
| It might be in Rosetta 2, or in the M1 builds of some apps.
| j4hdufd8 wrote:
| Still not hardware
| aquadrop wrote:
| Apple hardware and software are closely linked, it's not
| like you can use Rosetta2 on any other hardware of your
| choice.
| mcphage wrote:
| Rosetta 2 is an essential feature of M1 Macs due to their
| hardware, that is not is not a feature of Intel Macs.
| flatiron wrote:
| There's nothing saying that the ARM macOS port isn't to blame.
| Porting operating systems is hard.
| zsmi wrote:
| Totally agree. I read the article as, when I am on my M1 I
| often experience memory pressure related issues. Not, because
| of my M1 I often experience memory pressure related issues.
|
| It's very likely future software updates can help address
| these issues.
|
| Honestly, the machines haven't had wide deployment in the
| field for all that long for Applications as huge as
| Photoshop. It takes time to discover, fix, and redeploy
| things like Photoshop. And it's not like Photoshop never
| leaked memory on an x86.
| runeks wrote:
| > There's nothing saying that the ARM macOS port isn't to
| blame.
|
| There is. People have been running ARM macOS for about a year
| and I haven't seen this complaint before.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The big thing is that M1 chips have RAM in the same package,
| which allows for performance improvement if the software takes
| advantage of the new architecture. It turns out that the system
| they came up with offers good performance but doesn't tolerate
| memory leaks very well.
|
| It is made worse by the fact M1 MacBooks are limited to 16 GB
| of RAM, non upgradable of course.
|
| So yes, it is a software problem, and it will get better, but
| the M1 is particularly sensitive to it.
| amelius wrote:
| > It turns out that the system they came up with offers good
| performance but doesn't tolerate memory leaks very well.
|
| Can you be more specific here? It seems natural that a system
| with limited memory doesn't tolerate memory leaks very well.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is just a wild guess based on the article, but the
| unified architecture is mentioned. So maybe each subsystem
| (system RAM and GPU in particular) all have direct access
| and therefore more of a tendency to fight for resources and
| maybe also complex and therefore more error prone locking
| patterns over shared memory.
| least wrote:
| Why doesn't it tolerate memory leaks very well? The fact that
| the system remains responsive and able to close the
| application indicates that it does tolerate it well. I'd say
| macOS in general tolerates memory leaks much better than
| Linux does, which if you don't have a swap disk and you run
| out of memory the entire system just stops functioning.
| pdx6 wrote:
| My M1 Mini crashes about once a week. I look through the crash
| log before sending it off to Apple, but is always seems to be
| something different that takes down the system. In comparison, my
| 2018 Macbook Pro rarely crashes and is running the same version
| of the OS.
|
| I have the M1 Pro Max on my to-buy list, but I'm going to wait a
| bit to make the purchase since I really can't have my $4000
| workstation crashing on me.
| mthoms wrote:
| My M1 Mini crashes (while sleeping) about once a week here as
| well. Funny thing is that I never get the crash reporter
| showing up after a hard reset. Very strange.
| prawn wrote:
| Two or three times, my M1 MBP has crashed overnight, but with
| the same error - something involving external drives. I keep
| 6-7 external drives connected at all times via two chained
| hubs. Hard to know if it's the OS or a flakey drive.
|
| Beside that, it's been fine though.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'm kind of flipped around. My 16 inch 2019 MBP panics every
| two or three days. My 13 inch M1 MBP is rock solid and memory
| pressure is fine. Both running Big Sur. I won't call the M1
| machine my favorite Mac of all time (my old 2013 takes that
| prize) but it's solidly in 2nd place right now. It's given me
| so little trouble...
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I started with an 8GB M1 Air and it was unusable.
|
| But I also regularly leave dozens upon dozens of tabs open and
| use multiple heavy IDEs...
|
| Upgrading to 16GB was enough to fix it instantly and I no longer
| have the freezing/crashing issues, so I'm surprised 64GB machines
| are running into it
| erulabs wrote:
| Huh I have an 8GB air and I run Kubernetes locally and develop
| a fairly complex system with Skaffold on it (~10 services).
| Thing is a beast, had no problems at all, but one does need to
| be aware one is not on the 128GB-of-RAM workstation :P
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I mean how much demand will a locally hosted dev service
| generally have? Nothing about K8s inherently denotes high ram
| usage.
|
| Browsers are generally the biggest culprits for memory usage.
| Random tabs will leak memory and before you know it some news
| article page is using 1GB, your GMail is using 1GB, etc.
| erulabs wrote:
| Actually my co-founder who is a tab-hoarder has had a few
| issues. I am a tab minimalist so you're probably right!
| nyxaiur wrote:
| Could you check the amount written to your ssd and how long
| you have the machine?
| comradesmith wrote:
| It does sound like you expected more performance out of the 8gb
| model than was reasonable.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I didn't have much of a choice, at the time the 8GB model was
| the only one you could get without a lead time.
|
| So I got it knowing as soon as the 16GB dropped in stores I'd
| replace it
| The_Colonel wrote:
| There were plenty of people claiming things like "8 GB on M1
| is like 16 GB on x86/Windows" ...
| least wrote:
| I feel like this claim was made largely by nontechnical
| YouTube influencers and some Mac fanatics talking about how
| fast the swap on the SSDs is and equating that to not
| needing more RAM.
|
| I don't think it's a wholly unfair assessment. You can get
| away with more when the memory management stack is smart
| and fast, but in the end if you need 9gb of ram and only
| have 8gb you're going to know it. Most people just don't
| (at one time).
| [deleted]
| polotics wrote:
| I recently got an m1 mini, just on principles the 16GB version,
| and did already get the RAM usage warning once, with my browser
| going into large memory usage. So there may be something to
| this story, will watch for it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting hypothesis that it's because MacOS doesn't handle the
| memory structure well. I would have expected this to have
| manifested under either arch or neither.
|
| These situations are interesting. My M1 13" will occasionally get
| a stuttering cursor that only goes away with a restart. I haven't
| had this problem in over a decade on any computer.
|
| I know I'm not unique in this because of the number of threads on
| the Internet on the issue.
|
| Interesting to see the odd interactions between software and
| hardware. Though this sort of bug does put me in mind of how in
| Minecraft when Notch fixed light transmission through glass, it
| would start raining through it too.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| My Intel-based iMac (32GB) has been struggling in Safari lately
| (more than usual) with stutters and general poor performance;
| there was a Safari update not too long ago, right?
| a2tech wrote:
| THIS. Safari has been running like junk since the last
| update.
| peakaboo wrote:
| I had this in Gnome about a year ago, and it was a Gnome memory
| leak by an extension causing it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Funny. The last time I had this was in 2014 or something when
| I had too little RAM and the system started swapping. Linux
| GUIs perform poorly under memory pressure. Way worse than
| windows or MacOS for some reason.
|
| Been a constant experience for me from 2001 when I first
| started using.
| alin23 wrote:
| I just ordered the M1 Max with 64GB RAM because I'm constantly
| getting the "Your system has run out of application memory."
| popup while working on Lunar[1] in Xcode.
|
| Every time this happens, Xcode uses about 4GB of RAM (probably
| because of the monolithic UI storyboard of Lunar) but it should
| still leave enough memory for my other non-memory hungry apps.
|
| But then I open Activity Monitor and I see WindowServer using
| ~80GB of memory [2]
|
| The only remedy is either `killall WindowServer` or a full
| reboot.
|
| I've been using an M1 MacBook Pro and Monterey since the first
| developer beta but this only became an issue in the last 2 months
| or so.
|
| [1] https://github.com/alin23/Lunar
|
| [2] https://cln.sh/CfEL6u
| sbr464 wrote:
| Maybe try disabling TrueTone? Also, in Accessibility > Display
| try enabling Reduce transparency.
| cbovis wrote:
| Great to see you pop up on HN. I discovered Lunar a couple of
| weeks ago after wondering whether something like it existed and
| it's been a great tool so far. Solves one thing and solves it
| well. Keep up the great work!
| alin23 wrote:
| Thank you for the kind words! I'm always happy to see that
| the hard work that goes into this app is appreciated and
| useful.
| mlindner wrote:
| Call Apple support as your experience is different than other
| people's. No memory problems here at all.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I'm probably dumb and wrong, but that 80GB is likely virtual
| memory and not a great indication of actual RAM used.
| alin23 wrote:
| It is virtual memory, the real memory size is usually sub
| 1GB. But I just can't find any other culprit, and killing
| WindowServer is the only thing that helps.
|
| I have no idea how to troubleshoot this and don't really have
| time for it when working on hotfixes, I just want to get back
| in a state where I'm not facing an imminent system lock up
| where I can't even save my recent work.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| This is a windows technique, but presumably something
| similar might be available on mac too:
|
| https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/zombie-
| processe...
| matthew-wegner wrote:
| Do you tint your mouse cursor (new Monterey accessibility
| setting)? I noticed this in the last handful of developer
| betas, and it definitely shipped out in 12.0.1:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1735345
|
| Although that particular issue will show in application
| footprint, not WindowServer. I see WindowServer buildup on
| one of my M1s still, even in 12.1 beta :(
| alin23 wrote:
| Nope, never used that setting. I just opened
| Accessibility and hit reset on the pointer colors again
| just to be sure.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| I've noticed the high memory usage of WindowServer on my Mac at
| work. To the point where I have to kill it, which is a pain.
|
| This is an intel Mac though. I haven't seen it on my M1 at
| home.
| dschuler wrote:
| I've had similar problems.. See my sibling comment, there's a
| chance it may be helpful!
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Where do you see the 64GB option?
| alin23 wrote:
| The choice becomes available if you select M1 Max as the CPU:
| https://cln.sh/A3TcaP
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Ah, interesting, the page I wound up on did not have
| selectable elements.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| That's what I find amazing with Apple users.
|
| They sell you a very expensive machine that doesn't work.
|
| Your reaction?
|
| Buy a more expensive one from the same provider!
| wffurr wrote:
| What other machine can you buy to run Xcode on?
|
| Also, I get along just fine with the last few Macs I have
| had...
| dmz73 wrote:
| That seems like another symptom of the same problem. Apple
| locked me into their ecosystem...but that is their right,
| after all it is their platform. Apple sold me faulty
| hardware/software but I have to buy more Apple products
| (new hardware, support) since I am locked in and cannot do
| my work on non-Apple hardware. Their behavior may not be
| illegal (IANAL) but I find it quite user hostile. The main
| problem I see with all this is that since Apple is getting
| away with it, more and more companies are trying the same
| tactics and normalizing user lock-in and charging extra to
| fix faulty hardware and software.
| xvilka wrote:
| You can use alternative toolchains like like cctools-
| port[1] and xcbuild[2]. See, for example, this article [3]
| on how to build Swift UI apps for iOS using Linux.
|
| [1] https://github.com/tpoechtrager/cctools-port
|
| [2] https://github.com/apple-cross-toolchain/xcbuild
|
| [3] https://thi.im/posts/cross-compiling-for-ios-
| part-1-build-sw...
| papito wrote:
| How about the Mac Mini?
| Fnoord wrote:
| Or Hackintosh. Hey, GP asked 'what machine'. Didn't
| require it to be an Apple.
| randomluck040 wrote:
| That would be the same for OPs use case. He's using a M1
| MacBook Pro so nothing would change. The M1 devices don't
| support more than 16 GB RAM, too.
| goatherders wrote:
| Amen. I can't think of another brand that fosters so much
| "I'll spend more money here" compared to "I'll use a
| different brand."
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| That's how much we hate Windows and desktop Linux.
| helmholtz wrote:
| Good thing you can afford the kind of expense that the
| luxury of that hate is costing you then, I guess.
| least wrote:
| Probably because other brands don't do anything novel to
| warrant such loyalty. Apples hardware and software stack is
| undeniably unique which in turn makes it a brand that
| people will put up with issues because well, it has things
| other systems don't.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| These issues notwithstanding, the total user experience of
| owning a Mac laptop is far superior to any Linux or Windows
| machine I've tried, at least in the past 3 years or so.
|
| Two concrete examples: trackpad feels like shit on both
| Windows and Linux, installing or updating drivers and some
| apps on Windows constantly switches back to legacy modes to
| display the installers (with different fonts, no subpixel
| smoothing etc.). If it's not a deal breaker, it is annoying
| as hell and something that almost never happens on my Mac.
| leephillips wrote:
| It's really something, isn't it? I've never regretted my
| decision to switch from macOS to Linux over a decade ago.
| Having to restart a 64GB machine constantly because it runs
| out of memory? Meanwhile my 4GB Linux computer shows a 38-day
| uptime (only because I accidentally unplugged it last month)
| and my two Linux servers have uptimes of over a year.
| crubier wrote:
| Just to be clear: This perfectly fine experience you
| describe is also exactly the experience of 99% of Apple
| users, including me. You only hear the ones that complain.
| mlindner wrote:
| Where did your comment come from, nothing in the parent
| comment is related to what you're saying.
| valparaiso wrote:
| MacBooks are default working stations for developers over the
| world for the past ten years and judging by one example is
| nothing more that Apple-hate.
| rvba wrote:
| Wasnt apple fined for slowing down iphones?
|
| Looks like the 16gb model is now artificially made obsolete
| as well - you are supposed to buy the 64gb one.
| D-Coder wrote:
| For slowing down iPhones _when the battery was low_ and not
| telling the user about it.
| craigc wrote:
| I too have the problem with WindowServer although for me it
| seems to happen with just regular usage. I have not rebooted in
| 48 days, and currently it is using 10GB RAM (I have a MacBook
| Air with 16GB). I have seen some people claim it has to do with
| using a display scaling setting other than the default (I use
| 1280x800).
| ioseph wrote:
| My main pain point aside from random OS crashes is Bluetooth /
| audio.
|
| The sound device will just drop working randomly whether 3.5mm
| Jack or Bluetooth. Restarting the service sometimes works
| sometimes not, at first I thought it was MS Teams but didn't seem
| app specific.
|
| Makes video calls painful knowing either sound or mic could just
| stop working at any time.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Why does this sound so similar to a Hackintosh? Honestly, I
| assumed people get a real Mac so they don't have to fiddle
| around with reboots etc
| novok wrote:
| Bluetooth issues are often associated with endpoint security
| software such as jamf, crowdstrike and carbon black. If these
| issues are happening on your work laptop especially, you
| might have those things installed on them without you
| realizing it.
|
| Apple's attitude towards endpoint security software is
| basically, "it's stupid and you shouldn't have them
| installed, our recommendation is to uninstall them" so that's
| that. "Third party "endpoint security"
| software may cause slow simulators, system freezes, or
| prevent debug processes from running in simulators reliably.
| This sometimes manifests as debugserver disconnections or
| simulator applications receiving a SIGKILL signal. (55853555)
| Workaround: Uninstall the third party software."
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-
| note...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Been using an M1 mac and Big Sur on the daily for a year and have
| never experienced this, and I have the 8GB model where I would
| notice it. My Control Center is using 29 _mega_ bytes.
| runeks wrote:
| Seconded. M1 Air, 8GB, Big Sur and no such issues for ~1 year.
|
| Maybe a leak in a Max/Pro-specific kernel component? I assume
| Control Center depends on some hardware-specific kernel
| modules.
| mackmgg wrote:
| I think this specific memory leak is only in Monterey. I
| definitely have to manually kill Control Center every few days
| otherwise it'll be using 20GB+ of RAM. Supposedly it's fixed in
| the 12.1 beta though, so hopefully Apple releases a fix for it
| soon.
| webmobdev wrote:
| The author specifically mentions that he is using macOS Big
| Sur: " _That 's extremely similar to the MacBook Pro and
| Monterey issues I've read this week -- except I'm still
| running Big Sur._"
| jeffbee wrote:
| It really highlights the value of the fleet-wide profiling
| that ChromeOS enjoys. There's a dashboard somewhere of what's
| using all the space (and time) for ChromeOS users in the
| wild. But HN just actually hates telemetry more than it hates
| memory leaks.
| shrimpx wrote:
| My M1 Air gets a ton of abuse and I don't see any abnormal perf
| issues. There was a super annoying bug where the laptop would
| crash when I closed the lid with a bluetooth mouse connected, but
| that's it. I'm still on Big Sur, maybe Monterey is buggy.
| coldtea wrote:
| I feel like I'm a bizarro world, because I don't get this stuff:
| crashes, memory leaks, and so on.
|
| I use: VScode, Idea, iTerm2 (with x86 brew), Logic (and lots of
| plugins), FCPX, Live (x86, and lots of plugins), Slack, Reeder,
| MS Office, Spotify, Chrome and other stuff. MBP M1 16GB.
|
| What I do get, is some bluetooth issues (e.g. affecting the mouse
| cursor. If you start the bluetooth deadmon it fixes itself for a
| day or so.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I have had really bad issues with bluetooth mice on my M1
| macbook, the lag is so bad. Bluetooth is basically unusable for
| me so I had to switch to the logitech unifying receiver which
| has been flawless. This seems to be related to using airpods at
| the same time.
|
| Otherwise I have been very happy with the laptop.
| rudian wrote:
| I love that Apple hasn't been able to fix their Bluetooth fixes
| in forever. I always hope they'll be fixed with the next OS
| version, maybe the next MacBook, maybe the next iPhone.
|
| Nope. My AirPods have regular issues and my Magic Mouse
| regularly disconnects.
|
| I hoped my next M1 would solve it. Guess not.
| abrookewood wrote:
| I don't know that it's a Mac thing - I get similar Bluetooth
| issues on Windows. Honestly, Bluetooth just isn't that good.
| jcelerier wrote:
| The best software stack for bluetooth audio is the one
| provided by Pipewire on Linux.
| thevagrant wrote:
| The cursor thing is frustrating. When it lags it makes me
| suspect someone has a hidden instance of VNC open watching my
| screen. Perhaps they do.
| kovek wrote:
| Airpods Max are difficult to connect to macbook pros
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| You're not in a bizarro world. Most users are pretty happy with
| their M1 Macs (myself included) and HN just tends to upvote
| anything anti-apple even if it's an isolated experience.
|
| I'd wager most people on this thread do not actually own an m1
| Mac.
|
| My experience (and that of others I know that have them) has
| been nothing but stellar.
| bserge wrote:
| HN has more Apple "fans" than "haters". And they will
| downvote anything bad about Apple lol
| jlpom wrote:
| I own a M1 8 gb and It has to go through multiple reboots/day
| with lot of open tabs/apps on Monterey
| x3sphere wrote:
| I haven't had any issues. I sometimes run two VMs at a time on my
| 13" MBP with 16GB RAM and although the memory usage is almost
| maxed most of the time it's been running fine.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Haven't been bitten by memory leak issues yet, but I feel for
| you. I had an M1 mini for nine months (lightly used) and had no
| problems. Switched from an i9 MBP 16" to an M1 Pro 14" a week or
| two ago. Have had zero problems and it's the best computer I've
| ever had and fastest new computer I have ever used. MATLAB is 2
| times fast than my Windows desktop at work, which was
| substantially faster than my i9 MBP. Oh and MATLAB isn't even
| native yet, but running under Rosetta 2. I also have never heard
| the fans, even with two 4K displays attached, which ran all the
| time on my i9 MBP. These chips and machines are incredible.
| ac42 wrote:
| > I also have never heard the fans
|
| We all do now
| thuccess129 wrote:
| Apple has bunny hopped hardware architectures, successfully. The
| time is right to switch from the 70s FreeBSD software environment
| to Bell Labs's 9P concept-oriented operating system jazzed up
| with Apple's delightfully intuitive UX Pixar styled art and
| animation. Linux is a step sideways from the BSDs.
| bink wrote:
| That sounds like a whole lotta work for very little gain.
| mlindner wrote:
| I use Firefox on M1 Air with only 16GB of memory and have had
| zero memory issues. I have like 100 tabs open and no problems.
| Machine and OS works perfectly and is rock solid. No issues at
| all.
| rukshn wrote:
| I have been using an M1 MBA for nearly a year, and I have never
| faced any issues or memory leaks. It has been solid as a rock.
|
| I recently had to use a Windows laptop for work, and god I hate
| when windows becomes "not responding"
| whalesalad wrote:
| I've had a similar experience with an M1 Mac Mini. I've thrown
| the kitchen sink at it and it doesn't break a sweat.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| If windows is not responding error it's an app bug and not a
| windows bug. I have to swap between windows and mac all the
| time and both are perfectly usable when you have enough memory
| for your given task, and that is 95% an app issue as too many
| modern apps drink memory like they just came out of the Sahara.
| easrng wrote:
| I've had explorer.exe crash many many times.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Explorer hosts a million plugins for everything that wants
| to do things like add a menu entry to the desktop right
| click menu, and each of them can crash or hang Explorer.
|
| It's just a terrible design.
| altcognito wrote:
| Since we all seem to be sharing that we don't have issues with
| our OSs, I've never had much issue with any NT based Windows
| systems. I've had bad hardware that once replaced improved
| reliability, but generally speaking I can go months without
| reboots. (except for those corporate forced updates for
| security reasons, but those exist on every platform, so I don't
| consider that an issue)
| eertami wrote:
| Anecdotally, it feels like I must restart WindowServer in OSX
| more often I've had to restart explorer/dwm in Windows. But
| neither are particularly reliable, in my experience.
| makecheck wrote:
| I saw this recently primarily with Firefox and (presumably?)
| Firefox may have been updated to fix the issue because it is
| thankfully not happening anymore.
|
| When it _did_ happen though, it seemed ludicrous: that a single
| app could in a matter of literally minutes start burning through
| gigabytes of memory, to the point where the entire system seems
| to freeze with no option except to kill Firefox (and everything
| it may be doing) to continue. And, like the author, I had started
| keeping Activity Monitor open so I could pre-kill Firefox at a
| point when I knew it would probably start to be pushing it.
|
| It never feels good to baby-sit a machine. It feels even worse
| when it's an expensive new machine. And it means that the
| operating system is failing at its most basic task (arguably the
| _entire point_ of _having_ an operating system) -- to manage
| resources well.
| david_allison wrote:
| Likely this OS bug regarding mouse cursors. Improved but not
| fixed in Firefox 94:
|
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1735345
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > And it means that the operating system is failing at its most
| basic task (arguably the entire point of having an operating
| system) -- to manage resources well.
|
| Before about 2001, that would be a bold claim indeed in the Mac
| world. Pre-emptive multitasking only became a thing with the
| transition to BSD-based OS X
| dawnerd wrote:
| I have the 32 M1 max and safari was using half the memory just
| opening YouTube. Must be something in the OS if it's across lots
| of different apps.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's an interesting point. I notice that the person who wrote
| the blog post is running Safari, too. Is this a Safari problem?
| The activity monitor screenshot makes it looks like Safari is
| eating up big chunks of memory for each tab. I don't often use
| Safari, and my M1 MBP has been problem-free.
| higeorge13 wrote:
| Google meet reloads every couple minutes on my safari..
| romero-jk wrote:
| A gmail tab consumes a lot of memory for me in safari but no
| int chrome. Maybe it has something to do with google products ?
| neurobot123 wrote:
| Why would someone use safari when chrome is available
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Battery life is much better with safari. Measurably.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| They want to prevent Google selling all their data?
| ccouzens wrote:
| Google is no saint, but they don't sell your data.
| novok wrote:
| Yeah, they retain it and give it to the government for
| secret mass surveillance subpoenas instead /s
|
| Apple is no saint in that regard, but at least the data
| footprint is less.
| notriddle wrote:
| This is technically true, but only in a pointlessly
| narrow sense. They do not sell your data; they hoard it,
| and sell ad targeting services that use it. They also
| provide it to the government, for free, as required by
| law.
|
| But does anybody actually care about this distinction?
| ccouzens wrote:
| It's tiresome seeing the same falsehood repeated in these
| forums.
|
| If people want a catchy snippet perhaps: Google collects
| too much of your data, or Google profits from your data.
| rStar wrote:
| it's tiresome to you because you are a liar fighting a
| tide of truth. if google pays your bills i can't say that
| you should definitely be ashamed of yourself, but
| otherwise you should definitely be ashamed of yourself
| for trying to mislead people and be as duplicitous as
| possible at the top of your lungs. i find cultists really
| tiring.
| depereo wrote:
| Why would someone use chrome when Firefox is available?
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Safari has been more efficient and is better integrated with
| the OS from my experience.
| yumraj wrote:
| Why would anyone use Chrome when alternates are available?
| novok wrote:
| Battery life, better responsiveness, less google spying. If
| you're not an extension power user and don't mind it's tab
| overflow behavior, it's pretty good.
| dpratt wrote:
| It's significantly better for battery life, it's a tiny bit
| more integrated into the OS, and as a bonus it doesn't send
| every aspect of my entire browsing history back to Google.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| And that tiny bit goes a long way if you use iCloud
| Keychain.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| In before dang telling you to not create flame wars ;)
| brtknr wrote:
| Lol the timing of this complaint couldn't be more timely with the
| arrival of new 14-inch MBP...
| soheil wrote:
| Definitely noticed sporadic freezes on my M1 Air.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| No signs of the issue on my 16GB RAM M1 Air. On Monterey,
| installed on day one, zero reboots since.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I once had Telegram using 120gb of ram (swap).
| jlokier wrote:
| Perhaps a coincidence, but Telegram in a Firefox tab also uses
| a phenomenal amount of ever increasing swapspace. I've seen
| Firefox reach 67GB with a Telegram tab open, it is distinctly
| noticable compared to just about everything else I open in the
| browser.
| rangoon626 wrote:
| Telegram has occasionally done this on my Intel Mac mini.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| This is caused by macOS 12 Monterey. Having the same problem, but
| seeing reports from Intel Mac's as well.
| Matthias1 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > That's extremely similar to the MacBook Pro and Monterey
| issues I've read this week--except I'm still running Big Sur.
| rStar wrote:
| 16/512gb on my m1 mini is a great computer, but it's not as
| 'snappy' as i thought it would be from all of the reviews. i run
| a lot of adobe.
| glennpratt wrote:
| Lightroom Classic (latest version) is unpleasant on my wife's
| M1 and even crashes. Last night I moved it over to my gaming PC
| which is pretty old, but performs much better.
|
| It ran on her 2012 Intel MBP and whatever dayjob MBP I had in
| the past.
| matwood wrote:
| LR CC runs much much better on my M1 MBA than my prior 2017
| MBP. I wonder if Adobe is just dragging their feet on
| updating classic since they want everyone moved to CC?
| rStar wrote:
| i'm hoping adobe has yet to fully optimize for the new
| architecture, and i'm also hoping they care to do so
| smoldesu wrote:
| It could also be that x86 has better SIMD support by a
| considerable margin, which can make repetitive memory
| access/serialized workloads a lot faster. I'm not super
| well intimated with those extensions, but I know that the
| NEON SIMD implementation in ARMv8 leaves quite a bit to be
| desired. It's a tricky situation, and one I don't see
| resolving in a nice clean way. It's stuff like this that
| makes me hopeful for RISC-V though, where we could
| theoretically have our cake and eat it too, with dynamic
| instruction pipelines _and_ incredibly low power usage.
| Only time will tell, I suppose.
| my123 wrote:
| Throughput is not an issue on the M1, with 4x 128-bit
| SIMD units.
|
| Neon is certainly not a bad SIMD ISA, it's a quite
| orthogonal one.
|
| You also have the AMX extension at hand, which is more
| special purpose but allow to deliver very high
| throughput. (on a regular M1: 350Gflops DGEMM, 1.2Tflops
| SGEMM, without leveraging anything other than the CPU)
| aledalgrande wrote:
| NEON can work pretty well and has been used in real time
| tasks on mobile for a long time. Example operations:
|
| https://github.com/thenifty/neon-guide/
| 0des wrote:
| May I ask why you purchased the M1 model?
| glennpratt wrote:
| To replace the 2012 which was mostly OK, but had blown
| speakers.
|
| I still have an Intel MBP provided by my employer. I don't
| keep a personal laptop, it would just gather dust 99% of
| the time.
| 0des wrote:
| First, thank you for your reply. I am curious, after this
| experience, would your next machine be also an Apple with
| M1 (or the next iteration of it), assuming nothing else
| goes wrong?
| kruxigt wrote:
| Hi Apple
| opportune wrote:
| MacOS has had intermittent memory leaks for quite some time. Even
| my 2013 MBP running an old OS version has all the Apple processes
| slowly leaking memory until I reboot.
|
| I doubt it's directly hardware related, though it's possible it
| is scoped to special MacOS logic that only is executed on M1. My
| assumption has been that it's actually coming from shared
| libraries that Apple-owned processes share, because I usually
| don't notice it happening for non-Apple processes.
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