311–320 of 621 posts
They're pointing to macOS and saying it uses 5 times less RAM there, but is 230MB for a weather app really something to be proud off?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is only relevant if we assume CPU rendering. The article described system RAM use, not video RAM use. Task Manager doesn't combine the two. They clearly spent it on maintaining their independent Chromium instance instead.
One thing shared between old software rendered desktops and modern videogames is that they shunned these intermediate 'composited' screens. On the desktop, there used to be the screen, and basically windows used to draw on top of each other, there was no intermediate buffer for the whole window to draw itself to, which would then be smushed together with all others. Video games are the same (mostly) - everything is r…
Vast majority of titles use deferred rendering, and lighting is done off screen too. Usually the only thing done to the "screen buffer" is a final post-process pass or a copy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is only relevant if we assume CPU rendering. The article described system RAM use, not video RAM use. Task Manager doesn't combine the two. They clearly spent it on maintaining their independent Chromium instance instead.
True, but many modern computers are using unified memory. On such systems all memory is almost equal, despite often reported differently. For example, on my 5 years old laptop with integrated AMD GPU, windows 10 calculator in default state uses 33 MB system RAM, 9.6 MB dedicated VRAM. Maximized to FullHD screen, same app uses 36 MB system RAM, 13 MB dedicated VRAM. Maybe the OS counts VRAM as active private working s…
Not really true. Even machines with integrated graphics in Windows aren't truly using a fully shared memory pool. Usually the hardware reserves a chunk of the system memory for the iGPU.
My gaming PC that I built in January 2006 that IIRC I used to simultaneously run Battlefield 2, Trillian, Xfire, Thunderbird, and Winamp with a 1680x1050 monitor had 1 GB of total system RAM.
Some of us still know how to write software like that. And enjoy doing it. I made a little conference schedule app a few weeks ago for a conference I was at. I used my own rust UI toolkit, which calls in to cocoa to make use of native UI components. The resulting binary is about 500kb and it uses a couple megs of ram while running. It looks and feels like a totally native iOS app. As far as the OS is concerned, it is…
I'm curious if you use winit for windowing, or something lower level that's just mac specific.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly if the image is of the current weather it kinda does. I don't mind e.g Apple's weather app design at all
You probably have a SVG renderer in memory already, and you already have a frame buffer and/or compositor buffer(s). Why should adding a graphical representation of the weather require more than a few KiB?
Easy workaround for this: 1. Install uBlock Origin in Edge. 2. Start Edge, browse to MSN Weather. 3. Click the "Add an Application" button in the address bar to get a Start Menu icon for the page. 4. Delete the in-box Weather app icon. Now you get the same Weather app in about 130MB of RAM, with no ads. It's not as nice as a native app, of course, but it's 1000% better than the useless ads and MSN feed that you can't…
Use Firefox with uBlock Origin, do not use Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple's Software Quality Crisis (eliseomartelli.it) 1196 points by ajdude on March 3, 2025 | 1213 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075
It’s still much, much better than windows. And Linux is better still.
Linux as an operating system is easily better than macOS. Third party software is lacking though. There’s really nothing that compares to Bear, Things, DEVONthink, Transmit, etc. What I also missed in Linux was the prevalence of what Apple calls “x-callback URLs” [0]. They are incredibly useful and great for glueing different pieces of software together.
With some of Apple’s recent decisions, I do wonder if we’ll see this change in the future. Little Snitch put out a proof of concept for Linux. While it exposes itself as a fairly rough webpage, someone is thinking about it. Linux culture would need to accept paid software, though.
-
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by "windows doesn't share both"? Windows doesn't get a say, Intel iGPU systems literally don't have video memory
IGPU systems on Windows usually set aside a fixed pool of memory for the graphics usually set by the platform. As in, if you need more video memory you need to go to the BIOS and reconfigure it. When you look at total system memory available in Windows it's the total installed minus however much you defined for the video memory. If you need to have the GPU mess with something you still have to a copy it from the syst…
...you know, I keep reading all this stuff about memory prices, and it does suck, but memory is still much cheaper per gigabyte than it was ~15 years ago. Which matters because the things most consumers are doing on their computers haven't changed in the past 15 years. We browse the web, edit photos, message friends, and so on. AI generally runs on remote servers anyway. For years, everyone kept saying it was fine th…
But we went from 1080p monitors to 5k monitors and so we are pushing 7x the number of pixels and at roughly twice the bits per pixel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of us still know how to write software like that. And enjoy doing it. I made a little conference schedule app a few weeks ago for a conference I was at. I used my own rust UI toolkit, which calls in to cocoa to make use of native UI components. The resulting binary is about 500kb and it uses a couple megs of ram while running. It looks and feels like a totally native iOS app. As far as the OS is concerned, it is…
Is your UI kit open source? I do think calling into the native OS toolkits is the way to go, when they exist. I'm curious if you use winit for windowing, or something lower level that's just mac specific.
UI library is here: https://github.com/josephg/leptos-native
And here's the schedule viewer app I made with it. It runs silky smooth on device: https://github.com/josephg/dweb-sched
The whole project is currently experimental & vibe coded. It's missing a lot of components, and it has bugs. I'm currently rewriting it by hand to do it properly.