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not impressed by 16" (2.3, 64GB, 1TB)...

Okay since I'm home I got on reddit and browsed a bit in Safari and Firefox just to see what the OP might be talking about. On Safari it seemed like scrolling wasn't so smooth so maybe that's what the OP meant by lag. Pictures and videos sometimes took a second or so to load but I suspect that's due to my cable internet connection speed. Scrolling on Firefox was much smoother but as with Safari pictures took a second or two to load. Perhaps if I had fiber internet things would load instantly but I don't know for sure because it also depends on how fast the server sends the data.
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MrGimper said:
I'll try a full uninstall and reinstall
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If you like Chrome I'm not one to talk you out of it. It's a great browser especially if battery life isn't a big issue. Part of my reason to go with Firefox is I want to be different and support other choices in browsers. Sadly there are only three browsers out there. Safari, Chromium, and Firefox. Windows users don't have Safari anymore so they're stuck with two.
 
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I'm using a 2008 Dell Studio XPS right now and performance is fine. Sometimes Thunderbird slows down but I think that's network more than the computer. I have a 2015 15 and it's great for performance. Given what you do, either you're doing something wrong or your expectations are too high. The vast majority use computers with a fraction of the performance of the configuration that you described.
 
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mca19 said:
General browsing, schoolwork and Prime Video.
When browsing Reddit, I get a message that says "this website is using a significant amount of memory" or something or that sort.
Depending on how well my academics progress, I might need to run 3D design software, so that was my main reason for laptop upgrade.
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A few months ago I started getting that message on my 2012 MBP. Before that I never got it. Not sure what is different.
 
macintoshmac said:
There is no way Safari is using that humongous amount of memory. We do not have a complete dataset to even begin to help him. It is highly possible he has some shady websites and portals open that might be using his CPU and memory for bitcoin mining using javascript. We have zero information provided by him to help him at all.
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I have Firefox with 10 tabs and it's using 2.7 GB of RAM but it's on Performance settings. I can dial it back by reducing processes, probably down to about 700 MB. Chrome is using 1 GB of RAM running iCloud Notes, Calendar and Reminders. Browsers can use a ton of RAM but some allow you to dial back the RAM usage by sacrificing some performance. Still, I can't imagine chewing up 64 GB of RAM with browser, Netflix and a few other office things.
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calliex said:
A few months ago I started getting that message on my 2012 MBP. Before that I never got it. Not sure what is different.
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It could very well be a browser bug that the website triggers.
 
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D.T. said:
OK, sounds like I've stumbled into a CUA meeting ...

"Hi everyone, I'm DT, I'm a Chrome user."

"We love you DT!"

:p

FWIW, I use Chrome since it's the browser spec I generally push on the client side, then I wanted kind of a consistent experience across Mac and Winders™, and used it to keeps things in Sync between Win/Bootcamp and MacOS (though I've pretty much moved back to only using a VM), it just was very present in my business and whatnot, became my "go to", though if I were just doing MacOS, didn't have to do testing for web development, etc., I'd very likely just stick with Safari.
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Lol - kind of. We also use Chrome as one of the standards for various apps and sites we develop, so yeah - tough to avoid Chrome for many. It's 'fine enough' but still kind of a pig. Thankfully, Safari is reasonably compliant enough that it generally doesn't have too many issues (same for FF, etc..), certainly not compared to IE of old, etc., but yeah - Chrome is always one of the 'must develop and test against' browsers.

For personal only use - pick one. I saw someone comment Firefox has become a stutter-fest. They all seem to go through cycles. I've got Safari, Firefox, Opera, Brave, Chrome on hand, but for 90%+ use it's Safari and Chrome, although for a while it was Firefox and Chrome and no Safari b/c it was being a pig some time back for my use.
 
wegster said:
I uhh, 'fixed' the last sentence for you. :D

@OP - there is nothing wrong with your MBP16 for your use; the error is in the keyboard operator.
Safari is simply calling out the website is not entirely well-behaved.
Understanding how computers, website programming and Activity Monitor work - would be a good place to start.
If you go to Activity Monitor / CPU - what are the system, User and Idel values?
Activity Monitor / Memory - what color is 'Memory Pressure'? What are the other values?

Misunderstanding computers is a good way to think your needs a 'special,' but they are not, and indeed, a base chromebook, iPad, Macbook Air or any basic system can do what you've asked, as long as you don't make incorrect assumptions. Switch to Firefox, Brave or Opera if you'd prefer to not see the message...while it has zero actual impact in reality.
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System is at 81.9, user just has my name (unless you mean PID which is 6700?) and idle is at 241. Currently memory pressure is green.

From what it sounds, I might have over-geared for what I'm intending to use it for.. but as I stated, this is my first MBP, so there was no guide nor a live person at the store to answer these things.
Thanks to those that replied without the snideness. I will try both Chrome and Firefox.
 
mca19 said:
System is at 81.9, user just has my name (unless you mean PID which is 6700?) and idle is at 241. Currently memory pressure is green.

From what it sounds, I might have over-geared for what I'm intending to use it for.. but as I stated, this is my first MBP, so there was no guide nor a live person at the store to answer these things.
Thanks to those that replied without the snideness. I will try both Chrome and Firefox.
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I would think this could be indicative of a problem if it happened on ALL websites, AND you see your machine performance drop.

I get the message occasionally on some sites, but it doesn't really impact anything.

As far as your machine specs, I'll venture to say that MBP should be able to handle whatever you throw at it (given your provided requirements) for the next 10 years*.

*I'm on 2011 hardware. :)

Must be nice to have rich parents, because $3700 is a LOT of money for a student to spend on a laptop. :p

Seriously though, it is not a bad purchase, although I agree with others here that a specced-up MBA and/or an iPad Pro would have served you fine, possibly, and still left you some money for all those college parties.

All that said, welcome to the Mac fold! Not all of us are cynical tools (all the time). ;)
 
mca19 said:
Safari. Website lags a little.
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Surprised no one mentioned it but Safari doesn't play well with Reddit's redesign. I had the same issues on my MacBook Air 2015 as well, as well as some stutter on my MacBook Pro 16". Web designers just don't make things as optimized anymore. Safari also tends to have weird issues with websites so I just switched completely to FireFox and it runs perfect.

If you really got 64gbs of RAM for browsing websites, I'd return it and get yourself 16/32 instead. I doubt you're gonna max it out from what I've read. I use Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X, and more. I never get any slowdowns and I'm using 32gbs of ram.
 
mca19 said:
System is at 81.9, user just has my name (unless you mean PID which is 6700?) and idle is at 241. Currently memory pressure is green.

From what it sounds, I might have over-geared for what I'm intending to use it for.. but as I stated, this is my first MBP, so there was no guide nor a live person at the store to answer these things.
Thanks to those that replied without the snideness. I will try both Chrome and Firefox.
Click to expand...
The short version is it’s not an issue with memory, green alone tells enough of the story.
user and system etc are in the CPU tab summary at the bottom.
Here’s a reasonable-ish summary of activity monitor:

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac

Learn how to use Activity Monitor on your Mac to view information about how apps are using the processor, disks, memory, network, and more.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

Re-reading the thread I can both see how you were asking for help, as well as people assuming you were trolling or ‘humble-bragging’ about ‘MBP 16 is slow/not modern‘ somehow (it is not slow, is short of bleeding edge but modern and performs well overall) as well as ‘needing to prepare for future maybes’ while not understanding what you REALLY don/don’t need for some of the mentioned tasks...which is why people who e.g run VMs, do CAD work, development, video editing with less with good degrees of success at professional levels...assumed you were trolling or humble-bragging.

In the end, its just a safari warning, not consuming all of your RAM, but worth checking other browsers as it’s possible Safari has non-memory-related issues with reddit, as someone noted.

16GB of RAM wasn’t enough for my usage personally but was for some time previously running VMs, IDEs, Dev and DB work + productivity apps...but yes, 64GB or even the MBP lineup is overkill for your current usage. Even with the ‘maybe in the future’ list, highly likely a 16GB 13” MBP would do well enough, or 32GB if you really felt like it. The MBP 16 for your use cases is just a luxury and not ‘needed’ by your uses today or in a reasonable number of years or ‘maybe in future’ either. Combine all of the above and it’s your $ to spend, but an MBA or MBP 13“ could certainly suffice.

Heck, if Apple had released the ‘hoped for’ 14” MBP 13 ‘replacement’ with 32GB RAM at a slightly more compelling price point, I might have considered trading in my MBP 16...for some pretty heavy use..
 
This thread is borderline psychotic.

There is nothing wrong with your machine. Your specs are fine, your machine is fine. Reddit is a very resource heavy site, especially the redesign. There are lots of images and imbedded videos being loaded, lots of users on it at a given time, and probably a thousand different variables that go above my head.

In my opinion, Safari has really dipped over the past few years in performance. It just comes down to simple formatting, and there's nothing raw specs can do against that. I would switch to Chrome and don't look back, it typically performs better in most cases, even on Mac OS.

Buying 64GB just to browse sites and prime video is an absolute waste of money, in my opinion. I highly doubt you could even come close to scratching the surface of using the potential of 64GB. Even 8GB these days is fine for most people, 16GB is future proofing for most basic needs and even beyond that.

This is a bleeding edge machine used by professionals for media and content creation. I mean, it's your money and your business, but from an outside standpoint it's beyond overkill and this is really out of proportion. You could get a literal bucket of money back by just getting the base model with 512GB SSD. I absolutely guarantee you will not notice any difference whatsoever in performance.

Your computer is fine.
 
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