Comments on: Lion’s App Resume: How it Will Probably Work

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 22:14:42 +0000

I’d hate to have this. As a power user I want control over when my apps are running or not.

Moreover, imagine trying to work on a memory intensive song in Logic, running Photoshop and all of a sudden you’re frozen whilst Mac OS X realises it wants to go and serialise 2GB of Logic’s process memory onto a disk.

iOS apps are tiny and also run on flash. The majority of computers are NOT flash.

By: Derek

Derek — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:08:38 +0000

Another option for suspend/resume is to leverage the fast app switching API introduced in iOS 4.0. On quit, exit, or low memory the app receives a message telling it to save state. The state is serialized out to disk and the app is given the chance to restore state on startup. iOS doesn’t doesn’t drop app memory to disk just application object state. This is a lot less glamorous then never running out of ram but as has been stated OSes solved that problem long ago and OSX already does a good job.

By: JD

JD — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 05:11:53 +0000

Please explain the difference between “memory” and “RAM”.

By: Louis Wheeler

Louis Wheeler — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 20:07:12 +0000

you don’t seem to know much about Macs. Mac OSX doesn’t run out of RAM now. It has had Virtual Memory since 1998. You never have to quit applications and apps can even run in background. Windows Seven is decades behind Mac OSX in this.

iOS is a very limited version of Mac OSX. It was hardware limitations which kept Copy and Paste, along with Virtual memory. off the iPhone. What Apple did was invent some cosmetic differences to satisfy some of the special needs of phones. It seems that Apple will be importing some of those new conventions to Mac OSX. This is fine if it unifies the OS. Eventually, the iPhone hardware will be robust enough to handle all of Mac OSX. But, it won’t be for several years.

By: James

James — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 00:46:06 +0000

I think that in general, most power users will simply fall back on “if I wanted an iPad I would have bought one” – and I couldn’t agree more.

However, we’re basing a whole lot of discussion on a whole lot of thin air. More intelligent discussion is not to be had until next summer. Until then it’s just idle speculation and assumption.

By: David

David — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 15:26:15 +0000

Most computer professionals think of “memory” as “main memory” or “random access memory”, not a disk. If you do mean disk, then this is already what every OS in use (including OS X and Windows) does. This is not new in any way. The only change would be adding flash (NAND) storage, but this is a hardware change, not an OS change, and any operating system will benefit from this.

By: Tuomas

Tuomas — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 15:25:13 +0000

I fail to understand the magic here. Care to explain it technically, not just conceptually? Where would apps suspend themselves into when the system runs out of RAM? They can’t just save their state into thin air.

By: Greg

Greg — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 14:35:54 +0000

What bugs me the most about this is the apparent move away from a desktop environment, to something more like the iOS environment. I use a mac at work all day long, and I need to be able to get in and monkey with the settings on my programs, to install plugins, etc. If the OS goes the direction of basically sealing all of that off so I can’t touch it, then I’m done. I will have no more use for Apple products at that point, if it comes to that.

By: bcarter

bcarter — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 13:26:58 +0000

The entire concept is pointless to me. Have we all become so drivin by convienance and laziness that we feel the need to somehow develop the means to keep from having to simply quit or launch an application based on need? And besides, I’m a power user, fairly advanced in terms of use and although I demand a lot of my Macs resources-I have rarely run out of RAM. My Mac consistently has no less than 12 user apps running at any given time with an uncanny ability to always be active and available when needed. The idea that this would somehow be better due to caching apps to memory seems poposterous. Have we not had virtual memory for years? The only way to vastly improve this technology is through the advancement of hardware suchas flash drive technology and new forms of RAM capable of greater capacity and speed.

Enough, I’m typing this on my iPhone so I’ll need to cut my comments short… Something to think about.

By: Alex Layne

Alex Layne — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 02:51:03 +0000

Notice I said “from memory”, not “from RAM”.

The reason I think this will be a huge advantage over Windows is that you’ll never have to manage applications. No more slowdowns and no more hitting Cmd-Q.

At least, that’s what I hope Apple accomplishes.