Snow Leopard VS. Lion

[pigoo3]

Since you guys brought up "ram & slow-downs"...maybe you've read the "Beachballs" link in my signature.

A while back I was paying particular attention to the inner-workings of my Mac's via Activity Monitor...and the relationship of the occurrence of the dreaded "Beachballs". I learned that...by keeping an eye on the size of the "page-outs" & "swap file" (using Activity Monitor)...the larger these parameters got...the more "Beachballs".

When a Mac running OS X is first booted (or rebooted) the page-outs and swap file size are zero (or as small as they will get). The more ram you have installed...the longer these files stay at zero...and the longer these files stay at zero...the fewer Beachballs or slowdowns will be experienced...or the longer the Mac will operate at peak performance (no slowdowns or beachballs).

I've had Mac's with 2gig, 4gig, 8gig, and 12gig of ram installed. The 2gig computer was my 17" MacBook Pro...and the 12gig is my Mac Pro desktop. The 2gig MBP could probably go about a day before the page-outs and swap started growing (from zero)...the Mac Pro with 12gig of ram could probably go for days & days (maybe even a week) before these files would grow larger than zero.

Slowdowns & beachballs can occur due to other things...but one thing I've found is, installing as much ram as possible (or someone can afford) delays how quickly the swap file and page-outs files grow...and get to a size that effects performance.

Of course the easiest way to get these files (swap file & page-outs) back to zero (or as small as possible) is to simply reboot the computer.

- Nick

p.s. Obviously all of this depends on the usage habits of the user. I typically have my computer running (and using it) 14-16 hours/day...have 3-4 apps. open at the same time, and put it to "sleep" at night.

 

[dtravis7]

In my case Nick, all I had to do in the SL days was Quit Safari and also run iMemoryCleaner to release the inactive ram and the machine would fly again!

The browser slow downs and zero ram free did not happen though when using Google Chrome and Chrome Canary.

 

[dtravis7]

A note to Doug. Just rebooted into SL on the same iMac where I run Lion. Right at bootup the Kernel was using 316.62 and with Safari now open is now using 328.9 MB RAM.

I will reboot into Lion and report back, but running probably a week now it was at 420MB or around. Not that different.

Lion started out with 277.4MB at the desktop and is about 362MB with 10 apps running.

iMac 2007 C2d 2.4 Ghz with 4GB Dual Channel ram. Same hard drive for both OS's.

 

[pigoo3]

In my case Nick, all I had to do in the SL days...

You make it sound so long ago...like back in the "horse & buggy" days!

- Nick

 

[dtravis7]

You make it sound so long ago...like back in the "horse & buggy" days!

- Nick

In the computer industry especially the last few years Tech is moving so fast it almost seems that way!

I was not around in the Horse and Buggy days BTW!!! I am older but not that old! hahahaha

 

[pigoo3]

In the computer industry especially the last few years Tech is moving so fast it almost seems that way!

I was not around in the Horse and Buggy days BTW!!! I am older but not that old! hahahaha

I guess I'm "old-fashioned"...I'm still running Snow Leopard!

- Nick

 

[dtravis7]

I guess I'm "old-fashioned"...I'm still running Snow Leopard!

- Nick

Remember I still use Atari 8Bits and Atari ST and Amigas! Does that make you feel better?

 

[pigoo3]

Remember I still use Atari 8Bits and Atari ST and Amigas! Does that make you feel better?

This is why I was surprised you made Snow Leopard sound so old above.

- Nick

 

[pigoo3]

In my case Nick, all I had to do in the SL days was Quit Safari and also run iMemoryCleaner to release the inactive ram and the machine would fly again!

Hey...do you know of a free alternative to "iMemoryCleaner"?

- Nick

 

[Doug b]

A note to Doug. Just rebooted into SL on the same iMac where I run Lion. Right at bootup the Kernel was using 316.62 and with Safari now open is now using 328.9 MB RAM.

I will reboot into Lion and report back, but running probably a week now it was at 420MB or around. Not that different.

Lion started out with 277.4MB at the desktop and is about 362MB with 10 apps running.

iMac 2007 C2d 2.4 Ghz with 4GB Dual Channel ram. Same hard drive for both OS's.

Hard boot or soft boot? FTR, mine is running at about 270 MB right now.

Doug

 

[dtravis7]

From Power OFF in both cases.

 

[Andres87]

wow so it wasn't just me! ever since I switched to Lion on my 2011 MBP I noticed bugs and slowdows (time machine is still eating my HD with local backups) it takes longer to get up and running and I really miss expose . Imagine if we could all be like "chas-m" and take whatever apple threw at us and say it was the best OS's ever

 

[cwa107]

(time machine is still eating my HD with local backups)

Andres, I noticed the same thing. When I installed my SSD and sacrificed the nice, roomy 500GB drive I had previously, I found this tip:

How to disable MobileBackups feature (TimeMachine local backups) on Mac OS X Lion

It works great for me - so if space is a concern and you'd rather not have the local backups running, give it a shot.

 

[dtravis7]

Where is that file/folder located? Never seen my main hard drive loose space when I run time machine. It's not taking longer to boot or shut down here on 3 different machines in the house. I just rebooted into SL today to get those Kernel RAM usage numbers and the boot time was about the same.

 

[cwa107]

Where is that file/folder located? Never seen my main hard drive loose space when I run time machine.

I believe it was a hidden file in the root. And it's not just when Time Machine is running, it runs all the time between external TM backups. It's basically just a local cache of file changes that it does until you connect your TM volume.

 

[dtravis7]

I believe it was a hidden file in the root. And it's not just when Time Machine is running, it runs all the time between external TM backups. It's basically just a local cache of file changes that it does until you connect your TM volume.

I will have to open the Terminal and see if I can find it as I only run time machine maybe every two weeks and keep it off otherwise. My drive size has stayed the same unless I add files to the drive for a while now.

 

[Andres87]

How to disable MobileBackups feature (TimeMachine local backups) on Mac OS X Lion

Thanks I've tried that before(another user suggested it) and it does work but I turned it back on after the 10.7.2 update to see if apple had fixed it with no luck, my point is that a lot of users are having these kinds of issues but apple doesn't seem to notice or care :s

 

[Andres87]

Where is that file/folder located? Never seen my main hard drive loose space when I run time machine. It's not taking longer to boot or shut down here on 3 different machines in the house. I just rebooted into SL today to get those Kernel RAM usage numbers and the boot time was about the same.

Im pretty sure its hidden but if you go to "about my mac" you'll see your local back ups here's the thread I created once I noticed the problem:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-notebooks/245537-local-backups-staying-hdd.html

 

[dtravis7]

Checked there and found local Backups. Zero on my Boot drive and my Snow Leopard partition. Only Local Backups showing there is on my 1TB drive where Time Machine backs up.

I keep Time Machine off and just right click on the icon in the bar when I want to do a back up. I prefer it not automatically running when it wants to like if I am in the middle of a large and critical project, and run it myself.

 

[cwa107]

Checked there and found local Backups. Zero on my Boot drive and my Snow Leopard partition. Only Local Backups showing there is on my 1TB drive where Time Machine backs up.

I keep Time Machine off and just right click on the icon in the bar when I want to do a back up. I prefer it not automatically running when it wants to like if I am in the middle of a large and critical project, and run it myself.

I'm pretty sure it's only used when your Time Machine drive is not available. So, if you're looking on your iMac where the drive is likely hooked up routinely, you may never actually dip into it.

As far as Apple fixing it, I'm not sure that it's really a bug. The idea is to backup revisions to your documents even when your Time Machine drive is unavailable - so it's pretty much working exactly as designed. Now, with that said, I'd rather that they just give me a toggle to turn the functionality off.