Comment by nikhizzle

13 hours ago

Ex-Apple kernel engineer here, Apple will deal with the memory shortage by making software more efficient in ram usage. Apple will just make every aspect of the system more and more memory efficient. They've done it before over and over and can do it again.

This is a great long term strategy despite what the share holders would want to believe. If you increase efficiency even on lower end devices, you will get people coming back for more. It isn't the sale today, it is the sale tomorrow that matters.

With no memory balooning device in sight for macOS virtual machines I don't really see Apple moving in that direction.

Apple also has all that fast flash to swap to. I never notice when I'm swapping. Even a Neo has fast enough flash to handle a little swap, as a treat.

Apple? Sure. What about other developers? Firefox, Chrome already use gigabytes of RAM.

  • It's the websites that use that RAM, not the browsers.

    (Often the ads on the websites.)

    • Browsers still have a lot of memory usage on their own.

      I am running Arch Linux here. When I boot my machine into a full desktop environment it uses 1.1 GB of memory total, for everything.

      If I open Firefox, it in itself uses about 1.3 GB to have Firefox open with just HackerNews in 1 tab. I have no extensions except uBlock Origin.

    • I disagree, there is low-hanging fruit Firefox is leaving on the table. The main thing that comes to mind is tab unloading. They don't unload tabs automatically like chrome can.

      I was pleasantly surprised at the tab unloading settings under "memory saver" in ungoogled-chromium.

      3 replies →

  • Fortunately, Apple devices only run approved software. Google will be forced to optimize memory or become unavailable on those devices.

    • Signed software. Not approved software. Mac apps can be installed after being downloaded from the web.

      And as if Apple would ever block/pull/disapprove the world’s most popular browser.

      2 replies →

They won’t be able to do that for AI models, because they suck at AI.