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grandM

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 14, 2013
1,508
298
Hi

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

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

Tx for your answer !
 

xStep

macrumors 68020
Jan 28, 2003
2,031
143
Less lost in L.A.
Check activity monitor when this happens to see how much free memory you have. It's a good chance that is the problem. 16GB is cheap enough if bought from a third party.
 

grandM

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 14, 2013
1,508
298
Check activity monitor when this happens to see how much free memory you have. It's a good chance that is the problem. 16GB is cheap enough if bought from a third party.

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

grandM

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 14, 2013
1,508
298
Why not close some apps then? OS X itself shouldn't be consuming 3.99 GB on its own.
Not that many things running to be honest
Firefox takes 400 MB, safari 300 MB and the rest seems os X
Could be os X reserves ram for HD4000
Don't mind plugging in extra ram, just wondered if it's the bottleneck
 

xStep

macrumors 68020
Jan 28, 2003
2,031
143
Less lost in L.A.
it's indeed continuously at 3,99 of 4 GB (even when Xcode is not running)
That's why I thought of more ram

40MB remaining will indeed make the system crawl.

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

grandM

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 14, 2013
1,508
298
40MB remaining will indeed make the system crawl.

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

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

Altemose

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2013
9,189
487
Elkton, Maryland
yes indeed: firefox really is a memory hog
All screens closed and still 157 MB
I've killed the process now
Ordered ram too, just hope that's the cause

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

dantastic

macrumors 6502a
Jan 21, 2011
572
678
For development you can keep a pretty old machine useful as long as you feed it enough memory.

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

ArtOfWarfare

macrumors G3
Nov 26, 2007
9,564
6,062
I'd like to mention that my laptop has 2 GB of RAM and my desktop has 4 GB. I develop just fine on the desktop - the laptop can be a pain with how sluggish it is, but it works.

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

grandM

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 14, 2013
1,508
298
Thanks, I'll first put in the 16 GB ram
If it still is slow, I'll put in a SSD
 
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