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Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

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Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#331

Post by WarmWash »

josephg wrote: post #289
ndriscoll wrote: post #37

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…

AI writes code like that, but people get pretty upset hearing it.

The program that I use to manage my small business, basically a GUI wrapper on an sql DB is a total delight to use, because everything happens instantly. Even opening it is instantaneous.

Modern software is such a bloated mess that you kind of get used to a 20 second start-up and a .25-1 second delay on every action. Then you use something that isn't bloated junk and it feels like actual magic.

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#332

Post by metadat »

ndriscoll wrote: post #37

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.

I still miss Battlefield 2. There is really nothing like it today, not even close. The dynamics with squads and a commander and A+ physics and overall game balance remain unmatched for all FPS games.

Fortnite, PUBG, COD, all are disgraceful in comparison.

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#333

Post by danpalmer »

odo1242 wrote: post #244
danpalmer wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple weather is fully native from what I understand. I suspect the 250MB comes from the video backgrounds they play. Arguably that would be a reasonable thing to sacrifice on low memory systems, you'd barely notice.

I was able to do some tests with AI agent help and got: - ~45 MB on buffers for animated backgrounds - ~10 MB used for the Swift language runtime (runtime type information) - ~44 MB used for system libraries: libSwiftCore, CoreFoundation, libobjc, Metal, VFX - ~21 MB used on GPU buffers (GPU memory is also part of used system memory because of unified memory) - ~6.3 MB for the weatherd daemon that actually collects t…

Nice find and summary. Of I'm not surprised to see the ~75MB for the high graphical fidelity of the app.

I am however surprised that 10MB is Swift language runtime - with ABI compat this is supposed to be shared, and that the weather daemon is >6MB (surely this is just a simple API client?!).

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#334

Post by danpalmer »

exceptione wrote: post #253
odo1242 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to do some tests with AI agent help and got: - ~45 MB on buffers for animated backgrounds - ~10 MB used for the Swift language runtime (runtime type information) - ~44 MB used for system libraries: libSwiftCore, CoreFoundation, libobjc, Metal, VFX - ~21 MB used on GPU buffers (GPU memory is also part of used system memory because of unified memory) - ~6.3 MB for the weatherd daemon that actually collects t…

Relatively optimized? typo?

I think this depends on perspective. Compared to an Electron app, it's significantly better. Compared to a hand-optimised app implemented in a low level language it's not great.

I've not done a lot of Swift/iOS/macOS, but I have a passing familiarity. These numbers are basically what I'd expect for a normal app. In other words I think the relative optimisation comes from the fundamentally better technology choice rather than from being particularly careful about performance.

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#335

Post by misswaterfairy »

metadat wrote: post #332
ndriscoll wrote: post #37

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.

I still miss Battlefield 2. There is really nothing like it today, not even close. The dynamics with squads and a commander and A+ physics and overall game balance remain unmatched for all FPS games. Fortnite, PUBG, COD, all are disgraceful in comparison.

Check out BF2Hub. The community isn't big, but you can generally find a server or three with real players in it (just look for players with a ping; 0 ping means a bot).

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#336

Post by rgmerk »

It will be interesting to see whether OS and application developers start to face commercial pressure to debloat their applications.

For operating systems and their bundled applications, Apple's integration is an advantage here; the OS designers work for the hardware company and have aligned incentives. That doesn't mean they necessarily align with their customers, just that they are internally aligned.

Microsoft...do they even care about the snappiness of Windows desktops any more?

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#337

Post by kalleboo »

ColdStream wrote: post #301
ed_mercer wrote: post #292

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?

Here is an example of one built using Real Basic on Mac Os system 7+. Probably uses less than 1MB. https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads/snazzy-weather-a-snazzie...

And what's funny was at the time, REALBasic apps were seen as "bloated"

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#338

Post by inigyou »

Const-me wrote: post #142
perching_aix wrote: post #112

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…

Before Windows Vista, Windows apps normally didn't have framebuffers. There was one framebuffer for the whole screen, and apps drew into it. That's why dragging another window over a non-responsive window left a "slime trail" - the non-responsive window wasn't redrawing parts of itself when the window covering them moved away.

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#339

Post by inigyou »

Const-me wrote: post #307
torginus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There’s a reason why all modern desktop environments are designed the same way: power efficiency when multitasking. Imagine you have 3 windows visible at the same time: a videogame rendering at the refresh rate of the display 144 Hz, a video player rendering frames at 30 Hz, and a text editor rendering blinking cursor at 2 Hz. Because the videogame wants to deliver frames at 144 Hz, the desktop compositor has to deli…

I don't think this is any better for power efficiency? You're taking the modern system as an axiom, which it isn't. The old system didn't "deliver frames at" any specific rate. The graphics chipset sent to the monitor whatever was in the framebuffer at a specific rate, and windows updated whenever they wanted to. The text editor didn't "deliver frames at 144Hz" or any other Hz - it updated some of the pixels in the framebuffer when you pressed a key.

It cost nothing to not change the pixels when you didn't press a key, no matter whether you weren't pressing keys at 60Hz or you weren't pressing them at 144Hz.

Re: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM

#340

Post by inigyou »

MindSpunk wrote: post #312
torginus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most games haven't rendered directly into the "screen buffer" for 15-20 years. 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.

It's one possible rendering pipeline. Is it really most games?

Regardless, video games normally update the entire screen (or window) every frame, because the screen is so dynamic. This is unlike Microsoft Excel which has a mostly static screen. Building Excel as if it's a video game is going to waste resources.

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