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Using Safari Slows Your System?
sandoz writes "Macenstein has up an interesting article with some evidence that running Safari seems to slow down unrelated programs. While the speed with which a browser renders a Web page is an important measure, the difference between browsers is usually a matter of a few seconds at most. To my mind, a more important measure of speed is how a browser affects the overall speed of your system." Some responses to the article suggest that memory handling in WebKit may be the culprit. The Safari developers have already responded to this article on the webkit.org blog. They explain why the slowdown might be occurring and how it's (probably) already been fixed in the nightly build. And they request more minimal test cases.
Hey wow, a piece of software isn't perfect, and the developers are trying to fix it. This is an exciting new paradigm for programming. Thanks for keeping me updated!
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I have a 5-1/2 year old iBook. Running anything slows my system down... : p
This guy's the limit!
Don't you realise Windows has this technology already - it's been slowing down unrelated programs for years! (Sorry, I know it's cheap, but I couldn't resist!)
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
A few months ago, I switched to Firefox because I was convinced Safari was slowing down my system. Just this morning, I fired up Safari again - and it is at least three times as fast as Firefox. Don't know what I was thinking...
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I have both the nightly and the original Safari version installed. The latter leaks ram like crazy which tends to slow things down. You would think they would have fixed this ages ago. But they haven't. Try closing Safari periodically.
Another observation I have is that 1GB of ram is really only marginally adequate on my 2.16Ghz Macbook pro. If you have safari open, iPhoto open, and god forbid, a rosetta app (e.g. Word) open - you're waiting five seconds for windows to come up as disk gets paged out. Unacceptable.
Just wondering what other's experiences have been running the nightly code. I've been doing it with Firefox (and when it was Firebird for 2 years). But I've not tried with WebKit. Is it fairly stable, better rending of pages and faster?
There are a few sites that are noticeably slower on Safari. Its one of the only reasons I'm using Firefox. That and there are a few plug-ins that are better than Saaft and company.
I've noticed that Safari takes a lot of CPU on my system. It happens after I have used a specific java-based web app.
I suppose it could be Safari's fault or Java's fault, but I would sooner suspect an issue with a stale clientserver connection or something else within the Java app.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
I know on my core duo laptop running XP, both firefox and IE tend to bog my system down on pages that have flash animations (using 100% of a single core for 50% overall). How is this news on a techie site that running something in the background may have an impact on other processes? Do we want to go back to the OS 8 days when programs could steal all the processor? I thought SMP was a good thing?
today is spelling optional day.
As a recent Mac convert, i'll be the first to admit that Firefox is a better browser for both Mac and PC.
Safari incorrectly renders lots of sites. Firefox seems to be better about most sites.
And....it's free.
-ted
Dave Hyatt actually makes it clear that safari doesn't slow the machine as much as speed up javascript / flash...
I love safari and gladly use it over any other browser. However, since 10.4.5+, I have noticed that (as a whole) there appears to be an inability of OS X to free RAM up as efficiently as it used to. Programs like Safari, after many hours of usage, will remain as a HUGE RAM/virtual memory sink. I constantly quit Safari to try and alleviate/fix this.
But what seems to happen is that the process "kernal task" keeps eating up more and more ram even after Safari is shut down. After a couple days of usage, I feel the need for a restart just to flush out this annoyance.
Sure, in the grand scheme of things, It's only a minor annoyance, but it is definitely noticeable and something I hope is dealt with when 10.5 comes out.
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
Going on Safari is supposed to be a chill out vacation isn't it. And because nature is so balanced, life speeds up for all the wildlife who have to run like fuck when they see you approach with your high powered rifle.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Since I upgraded to 10.4.8, Safari crashes on me about once a week. Forum advice was to run "repair permissions", I did but it didn't help.
I use Safari because I want that whole "Apple" experience, and I also like the bookmark manager. But there have been a few times when web pages didn't work quite correctly in Safari, so I had to run Firefox anyway.
I've been thinking about formally switching to Firefox, seems like it would be less trouble, but I'd hate to have to do that somehow.
boxlight
A previous version of OpenOffice spawned about a zillion instances of mono. Eventually the system ground to a halt and the only way to get it going again was to reboot. I removed mono from my system and the problem went away. (OpenOffice 2.1 doesn't have the problem and I've been able to re-activate mono.) The strange thing was that running top didn't show mono taking up an undue amount of cpu or memory. Running ps -A did, however, show up the aforementioned zillion instances.
Anyway; could it be that Safari gives computers mono?
If a train leaves Boston with an I-MAC running Safari doing 40MPH heading west and a 2nd train leaves Chicago doing 60MPH heading East with an mini MAC running Safari and Quake 4. How many I-PODS will be sold funding more "Hi I'm a MAC" comercials before: a. My Karma can be kicked down another notch b. The code will be fixed ? c. This post will be changed to flame bait d. This post is silly and you can't believe your still reading it?
I have that one on a laminated pocket card they issued me the first day of Programming School.
The S60 webkit is a port of Webkit to the Series 60 3rd edition platform. Nokia has created a memory manager for this port that can make the webkit works with low memory. If only I can have the low memory footprint browser in my Mac.
-- tinyhack.com
Using safari slows down any system:
1) You use Safari
2) You state Safari slows down your system
3) You post it
3) Gets posted in Slashdot
4) You get slashdotted
5) The holding system slows down
The funny thing is that Safari may slow down other system than yours as well.
in the macenstein article they too noted that cpuintensive tasks like quicktime were not slowed but memory intensive tasks like photoshop were. Also they noted that the in memory and virtual memory footprints were several fold higher for safari than for firefox.
clearly this is a no brainier. Safari is using more memory and doing so in a demanding way. I don't know why but I assume it probably has something to do with how it handles the back-forward cache, fast page compoaition, and images. Maybe there's some memory leak too, since safari's offtprint grows during the day.
But this is utterly unsurprising. If you run a big memory app like photshop you already know better than to be running other apps that consume memory.
The only problem I've had with safari is not this but there are just some webpages that don't seem to comlicated that make it grind to a halt and use 60% of the cpu. One example is pricegrabber.com.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I couldn't find the root "reply to article" button for some reason, so this should be treated like a new thread. Sorry, avalys... This isn't entirely related to safari slowing down my system, but is a problem that I've consistently had with rendering /. on safari, and was curious as to whether others experience it as well. For some reason, almost every time I click a link in an article page (from someone's post or sig) and then click back to the article page, safari goes down in flames and "unexpectedly quits." This problem is ENTIRELY specific to slashdot, but is very consistent, and I have no idea what could be causing it; I just replaced all my RAM and that didn't solve anything. I'm on a 15" PBG4 1.67Ghz running 10.4.8. Has anyone else had this problem? It's really weird, and it sucks to always open forum links in a new window or new tab.
I left my wallet in El Sigundo!
Since they use the webkit as well.
I've noticed FireFox on OS X seems never to free up memory, and that if I keep putting my computer to sleep the system performance gets really slow to the point of eventually becoming unusable and seemingly unstable. It's not as bad on my MacBook with 1 GB memory but it was horrible on my Mac Mini with 512MB. I still use Firefox as my main browser because of some of its features (I dislike Safari - right down to its all too clever buttons), but this has been a bug I've noticed since before 1.0 and I'm simply amazed no one has fixed it yet.
I think Safari's memory leaks are a much bigger issue. Applications do stuff and consume CPU... no news there. But leave Safari open through a few days of web browsing, run 'ps', and see how much RAM it's consuming. It just grows and grows - there are obvious leaks somewhere. You can close every window in Safari, leave it sit overnight, and it'll still be holding onto a ton of RAM and causing a lot of paging. My solution is to close/relaunch it every so often... but it shouldn't be necessary. (Firefox, whatever else it may do, doesn't seem to have a problem with leaking memory.)
I frequently disable plugins and java in Safari to reduce the cpu consumption of the process by managing these. None of my own websites require this stuff, nor any of my internal corporate websites. If I am watching strong bad, or doing something else, sure, i may need to re-enable them but in reality, I don't need those plugins and the cpu suck that goes along with doing that animation or even the bw suck of downloading those files. I suspect that most people don't need them for regular web surfing. On FF i use flashblock, so I can set the few websites that need it to work properly, but on my macs i primarily use safari and disable the plugins. it's a big win, try it, you may not mind the extra work to watch your "Will It Blend" and Home*.
So when I read this item, I told myself "oh, so... what I'm experiencing isn't normal. it can be news in slashdot... wow." Firefox has different effects on different people I guess...
* Using a clean profile + a nightly build doesn't help. Submitted bug reports do not get any interest from devels except tagging it with "perf" (I know, they're busy, but look - it's news on slashdot when it's Safari on Mac).
bugs in question? so far, I was lazy enough to file just these: 366728; 368365; 368908; 369044; 369682; 370697
pls don't reply w/ "worksforme". I spent considerable time trying to not reproduce the slow down effects, as you might guess...
safari has always been horrid when it comes to leaking memory. This isn't a new phenomenon. Anyone who leaves safari open in the dock when they are done browsing is a fool.
Every time I've setup a Mac, I've used Safari exactly once, to download Firefox.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You keep using this word, leak. I do not think it means what you think it means. :-)
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
consider this a +1 Great Quote mod
A guilty conscience means at least you've got one.
Well that may be to your mind. To my mind, that's nothing more than your entire rational for writing this article. For most people, when they're browsing they're not doing anything else at the time except perhaps checking for e-mail, so that the performance hit on any other applications is non-consequential.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
My buddy kept complaining about how his entire system was so bloody slow. He couldn't figure it out. He decided to buy more RAM, and right before he did it I got a hold of his MacBook, took a look at the Activity monitor and found that, for some odd reason, he had been running Safari in Rosetta. I put it back as non-Rosetta and suddenly his MacBook flew again.
From the article:
<quote>
The only thing different was that I had been surfing the web a bit while the render was going on that day, where the day before I had not. "Surely surfing the web on a mulit-processor machine shouldn't add 15 minutes to a render", I thought. Well, yes it does actually, if you're using Safari.
</quote>
<p>Put another way: "Surely letting the computer ONLY do my render won't be any faster than letting the computer render AND surf the web". Surely you jest? Doing a standalone render vs. doing (anything else) while rendering should make your render take longer. If it doesn't, file a bug with Adobe and ask them why they aren't utilizing the hardware properly.</p>
I am also a new Mac user, since early January. Whilst I love my new machine (MacBook Core2 Duo) and the OSX those few application with "Brushed Metal" don't really fit in with what you call "whole Apple experience". Ironically Firefox has a more modern and proper theme then Safari.
I wonder if Safari 3 has shed it's metal look.
It is funny that Apple gets so much praise for it's consistant UI, where I am surprised by all the different looks.
Here are some programs I use regularly and often concurrently:
Safari: metal
Mail: light grey, Adresbook and Calender: metal - these 3 are often open next to each other. I don't see the logic, this is just slack.
iPhoto, iTunes: Dark grey
Apple Aperture: very dark brushed metal. A wonderfull application nevertheless. Pity I have to keep Photoshop just for artwork.
Ms Office: Pinstriped blue and while plus horrible floating taskbars. Unusable. I am currently deciding between NeoOffice (very slow on first launch) and my licenced copy of OfficeXP in Crossover (does not look to good).
Apple should really focus on UI look consistency in the next release - and please don't make stuff black like Vista, it'll look bad on my shiny white Mac!
It took me while typing this in Safari, my next post will be from Firefox!
Seriously, dude. Just WTF.
This is Slashdot. What sort of stories do you expect? Would you rather that Safari users be made completely uninformed about the situation? Slashdot has stories about technology, about developing technology, about problems with technology. What is so egregious about this story that makes it any different from other Slashdot stories?
So it's a simple speed-for-memory tradeoff. The same sort of thing programmers have been making since the dawn of computing.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
want "the apple experience"?
CAMINO, baby! (it's mozilla as well)
fastest OSX browser there is
http://www.caminobrowser.org/
I use FireFox for web development. I use Safari for general surfing. I very rarely quit out (just close the MacBook's lid...)
After a week of uptime, and a week of use of Safari, it had got reeeaaaaaaallllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
So I quit it. 17 MINUTES of thrashing like a dead whale later, it finally died. 17 minutes to quit on a 1.83GHz Core Duo with 2GB of memory. Wow. I mean really. Wow. That. App. Leaks!!! (Safari has saft installed, and RSS disabled. This box was also running mail.app, terminal, SOHOnotes, gvim and iTunes. I checked!)
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
Safari slows down other programs so that it can look faster in comparison. So that's the secret of their success!
I'm reading people complain about 200 mb memory leaks. My Safari usually eats up 800, 900 megabytes of RAM even after just starting up. I'm running SALR but still.
Is it normal that at startup my powerbook has over a gig of virtual memory?
what slowed down the system was walking Windows users through OS X *grin* (Please don't have me killed ... It's a joke :))
Bark less. Wag more.
For me, it's the memory issue. I tend to run Safari for days without restarting, and while I cannot confirm that there are memory leaks, I can tell you that it eventually consumes any memory that it can find. Closing all open windows has little or no effect (I did not trying clearing the cache on the odd chance that it might be affecting the situation). If I restart Safari, the memory footprint shrinks back to "normal" (whatever that is), and the entire performance of my system improves.
When I get an overall slowdown, top shows lots of pageouts. I'm guessing the disk hits are what is actually killing much of the performance.
Occasionally, I go to a page that sucks the CPUs dry, but that's the exception. Memory seems more of the culprit...
I'm not an apple fanboy yet, but I'm really impressed with the immediate response of the Safari development team. Imagine if IE was slowing down some other program--the last group you'd expect to hear from would be the IE dev team--so far outside the realm of possibility as to be laughable.
My PC speeded up after removing the Flash plug-in from Firefox
I've seen similar issues with Safari's memory footprint. After a while it needs to be restarted. Also, I've started manually emptying the cache at least every month, as my system once slowed to a crawl when Safari's cache got to be about 1.5 GB. Apparently, there is no way to limit the size of the cache.
I still use Safari over Firefox or Camino as the page rendering and scrolling are much smoother on Safari. I've tried changing the scrolling settings on FF and Camino, but the scroll acceleration on Safari seems to be more refined.
Sent from my iPhone
You keep using this word, "quote." I do not think it means what you think it means.
Prepare to die.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
WTF? This is the most retarded article I have ever seen. People seem to think it is a problem - amazing.
So, tell me, why then do people dedicate machines to intensive database applications?
So, according to this story, I should be able to run an infinite number of applications on a computer with no adverse effect on performance?
I think this guy needs an HP Superdome to get the performance he expects of a personal computer.
As a recent Windows convert, i'll be the first to admit that Internet Explorer is a better browser for both Mac and PC.
Firefox incorrectly renders lots of sites. Internet Explorer seems to be better about most sites.
And....it's free.
--
My point is that a lot of the sites that are rendered incorrectly do so because they were made non standard to work with Netscape, so Firefox just keeps on misrendering them. WebKit/KHTML are actually far more standards compliant than Firefox (which is probably one of the least standards compliant browsers, not counting IE which is just so bad as to make Firefox look good), they just don't handle bad code (that Netscape/IE helped create) as well as Firefox and IE. How browsers handle bad code is important though, which is why tests like the Acid2 test ARE important (browsers need to render both bad code and good code the same so this horrible nightmare of crappy websites that only rendering in one browser will end).
The web site you are trying to view is not compliant with web standards. This may be:
- part of a grand conspiracy by the creators of this web page and others to force you to switch to a monopoly-controlled computing platform,
- simply an indication of their ignorance, or
- an attempt by the creators of this web page, their advertising partners, or some random cracker to exploit a security defect and turn your system into a password, identity and bank account stealing botnet daemon of spamming death.
Do you really want to load this broken and possibly malicious web page?[Cancel ] or [Allow ]
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
> While the speed with which a browser renders a Web page is an important measure, the difference between browsers is usually a matter
> of a few seconds at most.
That is a few seconds for every page. Here is a casual suggestion to lose a minute of your life for every 20 Web sites you visit, so that you can make background tasks go faster.
I have a macbook, non pro. 2ghz, 1 gig of ram.
I regularly run photoshop, or illustrator, along with safari, textmate, adium, and mail All open. Sometimes a terminal is thrown in there for good measure. I am not waiting on anything. Yes, some of the filters take a bit on photoshop when I'm using so many other apps, but if I'm using the other apps everything is snappy. Oh, I forgot Quicksilver, and often iTunes.
This is my daily routine, every day. You have a faster processor, and much better graphics card. There is no reason you should be experiencing what you describe, take it in.
Safari does slow the system a bit. If you use it for a while, you will find you start to feel a little bloated, and it becomes more and more difficult to offload all that pizza and cola after it's been digested, partly because Safari has so little roughage, there's not much for your system to work with to get it moving.
My advice would be to take a little extra fibre in your diet - maybe some bran on your breakfast or eat some apples and maybe a pear or two.
On the other hand, it's better than IE, which, while not slowing your system, causes nausea, vomiting and vertigo.
Firefox, as the name suggests, is very spicy and will really get your system running. Definitely the cure for a sluggish system, but doesn't go all that well with apples. Nicer in a taco shell or on toast.
Anyway, excuse me while I finish my breakfast.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Yours is a frightfully humorless post from somebody who has "It's funny. Laugh." in their sig. Is your blood-caffeine level at a critially low level? Did your barista spike your latte with decaf?
See the "Security" @ Get A Mac commercial as well as many of the hideous intersitial warnings that Microsoft Internet Explorer produces for reference.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
What is not always realized is that there are two Safari versions.
Safari 1.x runs on OS X 10.3 and earlier.
Safari 2.x runs requires OS X 10.4.
All the performance fixes go into Safari 2.x only. The only fixes for Safari 1.x are for security problems.
I'm running OS X 10.3, and I have noticed that Safari has severe severe performance problems. I think it is caused by Flash applets, which bring it to its knees. Websites with flash applets frequently will cause 100% cpu usage. And trying to use flash based video players often can't keep up, because it is demanding more than 100% cpu.
So now that there are so many flash ads, exploring the web is a painful experience.
* * *
OK, I know this is futile, but I'll try to head off the obligatory responses:
Q. Do you really expect Apple to enhance Safari for older operating systems?
A. I don't expect them to. But I wish they would fix the performance problems.
Q. If Flash ads are the problem, why don't you block them?
A. The ads pay for the web sites.
Q. Why don't you upgrade to OS X 10.4?
A. Because that would break certain other software needed for work.
Q. Why don't you use another browser?
A. I do.
Q. Why don't you just get a get a new, faster computer?
A. Because I keep expecting Apple to release a new model, in between a Mac mini and a Mac Pro.
switcheur \'swi`ch &r\, n.
A person who thinks that they are a Mac user but are really just trying to be. The mistake they make is to try to become a Mac user, when real Mac users are all about not trying to be anything and following your own rules. There is no fashion code to being a Mac user. There are no rules as to what applications you have to run.
Recent converts like you are ruining the old school Mac community because you are posers. Apple releases one OS that popularizes Fitts' law and the Genie effect, and suddenly people assume being a Mac user is all about owning a Mac. But a real Mac user is born, not made. You "switchers" are misrepresenting yourselves and the Mac platform. You're giving people the wrong idea of what Macintosh is.
switcheur: shops at hot topic, thinks Firefox is a good Mac app, waiting for OS X port of PayrollPro 2000, follows any hint of a fashion trend (instead of setting them!), wouldn't know Clarus from Carl Sagan.
real Mac user: someone true to who they are, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world.
I agree with a lot of the comments here. The GUI design of Safari is good; however, the low level functioning needs an overhaul.
I also find the persistent "memory leak" problem referred to by others. In addition, when an page is slow to load - and the "beachball" is going - I often cannot cancel the page load by clicking the "X" button; the application will not respond.