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For those complaining about the frequent updates to MacOS. To be fair Windows goes through just as many big updates and runs into its own fair share of bugs related to those updates.

Not saying that makes the bugs excusable but an OS is a rather complex thing and it needs to run other applications that may not yet be updated as well.

Sometimes memory leaks are due to individual applications and not the OS itself. Perhaps the finger could also be pointed at Firefox and others to get out updates that do not have memory leaks on OSs that have been in beta for months.

Part of this may be on Apple but part could also be on individual apps.
 
So here's a question, how do you get the label that shows how much memory an app is using in the force quit window? Does that only happen when you're out of memory? As for me, my 2018 MB Pro has no leaking issues that I can see.
 
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HEY! THE IDIOTS ACTUALLY DOWNLOADED IT!!! :)
 
Has Apple software QA truly become abysmal over the last few years or have social media, blogs, and videos just made it easier to surface problems?
I like how you try to balance out the one unknown with the other. From the moment Apple dropped it's "Computers" from its company name, it must have gotten harder to deliver on promises in all areas. So I wouldn't be surprised if they actually dropped the ball here and there. There are just too many eh balls to juggle eh care for. Well I hope you get my point.
 
On my side, I seem to experience the opposite: Monterey seems to be performing much smoother and the fans of my MacBook PRo 2019 13" run off much less often. (It was really annoying on Big Sur.)
I also have Firefox as my main browser, and no issue on my side: it uses about 1.3 Gb of memory (not including the numerous "Firefox CP Web Content", but still okay).

The only downside I've experienced so far is the arrow on the second monitor appears to be a bit sluggish.
 
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Just a technical comment. I have been unfortunate enough to have tracked a couple of non-trivial memory leakages. My takeaway is that they tend to have sharp edges and be something else than what they look like.

It is very difficult to see how much RAM a process really uses in a virtual memory OS. When the process allocates some memory, it is given an address range in the vast 64-bit address space. This does not necessarily mean it uses any memory at all. Only when the process tries to access addresses within the allocated memory space, it is given a physical memory pages from the RAM.

I do not claim to know the MacOS memory system too well, but in many other systems multiple processes may report the same memory if shared resources are used. RAM across the system is not the same as adding up the RAM use of all processes.

So, whether or not this is a real problem or just a bug in the memory bookkeeping depends on whether this behaviour results in excessive swapping to SSD or severe starvation of file system cache.

One possibility, of course, is that the OS has become more intolerant towards software bugs. It may be that some changes just expose bugs which have been in many pieces of software for a long time, e.g., misuse of some system facilities, etc.
 
For those complaining about the frequent updates to MacOS. To be fair Windows goes through just as many big updates and runs into its own fair share of bugs related to those updates.

Not saying that makes the bugs excusable but an OS is a rather complex thing and it needs to run other applications that may not yet be updated as well.

Sometimes memory leaks are due to individual applications and not the OS itself. Perhaps the finger could also be pointed at Firefox and others to get out updates that do not have memory leaks on OSs that have been in beta for months.

Part of this may be on Apple but part could also be on individual apps.
Here we are talking about stock apps which are part of the OS, nobody sees them as separate apps, especially in the way Apple has decided to ship them (tightly bounded to the OS without option to update independently and etc). Memory leaks also happen with things such as control centre and spotlight which are also part of the OS. It’s insane to expect 3rd parties to have fixed the issue, if Apple cannot fix it with their apps. As stated earlier, this looks more like an OS issue rather than something that can be solved on per-app basis.

Similarly to the ProMotion support on the new Macs - the stock apps don’t support it yet, there’s no documentation on how to enable it for third parties, how can you expect a third party to have support for it then…

This year is horrendous when it comes to the software quality.
 
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Well, according to this forum, Apple figured out how to put 32GB of data into 16GB of memory... this was bound to happen. ?

Back in the late 80s, I was working in repair at a local Apple dealer and a SCSI hard drive had come set to ID 7 which was not allowed (as I recall). The Mac saw the 20mb hard drive as 7 different 20mb hard drives. Somehow I don't think that increased the available storage to 140mb. :D
 
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Just a technical comment. I have been unfortunate enough to have tracked a couple of non-trivial memory leakages. My takeaway is that they tend to have sharp edges and be something else than what they look like.

It is very difficult to see how much RAM a process really uses in a virtual memory OS. When the process allocates some memory, it is given an address range in the vast 64-bit address space. This does not necessarily mean it uses any memory at all. Only when the process tries to access addresses within the allocated memory space, it is given a physical memory pages from the RAM.

I do not claim to know the MacOS memory system too well, but in many other systems multiple processes may report the same memory if shared resources are used. RAM across the system is not the same as adding up the RAM use of all processes.

So, whether or not this is a real problem or just a bug in the memory bookkeeping depends on whether this behaviour results in excessive swapping to SSD or severe starvation of file system cache.

One possibility, of course, is that the OS has become more intolerant towards software bugs. It may be that some changes just expose bugs which have been in many pieces of software for a long time, e.g., misuse of some system facilities, etc.
I guess the OS displaying dialog saying the device has run out of memory is quite an issue on its own. A normal user should never see such a popup with normal usage, yet they do atm.
 
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[...] Thats all on you. I have just updated to Big Sur now at 11.6. and its rock solid. [...] why not just wait 6 month for a solid build. Why are you compelled to install a .0 build and then complain about bugs.
Let's cut people some slack. Apple's presentation of new features is so meticulously orchestrated that any person with a bit of interest in tech will get excited to experience that future now. It's not just on each person to be a disciplined human being and live by the concept of pleasure delayance.

There is a thing called mass psychology and - albeit in this case benign - Apple makes great use of it. I would argue Apple developed a habit to overpromise and underdeliver. Do I empathise with the complexity of it all, I do. But let's not pretend people are stupid for trusting a company known for quality / the so often quoted "attention to detail".

Yes, some of us, experienced in Mac OS Upgrade cycles know when to upgrade or not.

But is that the majority of people Apple is targeting with its Hollywood-like productions of product launches? How often have we heard Apple gloating over the speed and numbers of new OS adaption amongst its user base. They *want* you to have the latest OS everywhere when it comes out. It's easier for them to manage and gives them control over when people feel the "friction" to replace their device with a shiny new model.

So they do carry a responsibility. They made the stuff that breaks after a few clicks.

Again, it's not just the "naive" user who's invested into Apple's products and clicks on a button.
Let's talk about why Apple is not delivering better quality and let's focus on ideas of how we can get to a place where a gold master is not handled like a hot potato but a stable system people can and should rely on, from the moment Apple says its not in Beta anymore.
 
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Just a technical comment. I have been unfortunate enough to have tracked a couple of non-trivial memory leakages. My takeaway is that they tend to have sharp edges and be something else than what they look like.

It is very difficult to see how much RAM a process really uses in a virtual memory OS. When the process allocates some memory, it is given an address range in the vast 64-bit address space. This does not necessarily mean it uses any memory at all. Only when the process tries to access addresses within the allocated memory space, it is given a physical memory pages from the RAM.

I do not claim to know the MacOS memory system too well, but in many other systems multiple processes may report the same memory if shared resources are used. RAM across the system is not the same as adding up the RAM use of all processes.

So, whether or not this is a real problem or just a bug in the memory bookkeeping depends on whether this behaviour results in excessive swapping to SSD or severe starvation of file system cache.

One possibility, of course, is that the OS has become more intolerant towards software bugs. It may be that some changes just expose bugs which have been in many pieces of software for a long time, e.g., misuse of some system facilities, etc.
Is all allocated memory swapable? I would think that some system related stuff would always stay resident. If that memory was refusing to dealocate, it could get messy. Do threads have their own stacks? Can stacks be swapped out? If when a process terminates the stack space stays allocated, that could also cause issues.
 
we know this about apple and lack of QA for OS updates. After 20 years of this, I just run a full version behind. sometimes I lose out on enjoying new features, but avoid problems like this
i’m still using macos sierra (2016 release) part of that is because i was waiting to upgrade from my 2015 air but the main part is so many bugs on newer releases…
 
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