Macbook M1 and RAM consumption over its limit by an app (PTGui)

Chantus wrote:

Hello, I have a MacbooPro 16" M1 pro, 16gb Ram, running Ventura 13.2.1 but the issue I need to fix started with Monterey.

Overall the mac works great. Sometimes, with Final Cut X, I got a message from the system alerting that It was out of memory (Not happened yet with Ventura).

But I have an specific issue with an app called PTgui (it's a photo stitcher). I contacted the support but they couldn't replicate my problem yet.

I've tried older versions of Ptgui, and the issue is similar. But, as I said, from the support they stitch my project with no issues on different macs (including m1 of course). So they couldn't replicate the problem.

Any help appreciated,

Pablo

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/1e809365-04ee-4f89-8045-890b0c7f4c4d

<MacbooPro 16" M1 pro, 16gb Ram>

Your third party app does not sound like it is well optimized for the macOS....

Your memory pressure is yellow and not pegged in the red — you do not have to micro-manage memory.

Your Mac is doing well mannaging RAM/VMswap, if struggling your memory pressure would in the red.

Did you try quitting the app and relaunching it...as a way forward(?)

Reboot if necessary....

Run less applications total at one time..

Try a different application if this one gives you issue with no resolve or insight from the developer.

16GB of RAM is about the least I would buy these days...and this just for moderate work machine, let alone intensive photo/video editing work flow.

Free storage space is used as temporary swap files this is your VM.

It's complicated.

The problem here is that RAM, as you know it, really doesn't exist anymore. In modern computers, RAM is always "virtual". It uses the actual RAM chips as more of a high-speed cache and uses the hard drive for most memory uses. Combine that with Apple's ultra-fast SSDs and you get virtually unlimited, high-speed RAM.

But there are a couple of potential problems. Since your RAM is actually on the hard drive, your free storage is actually your free RAM. It is quite common for people these days to actually have more free, actual RAM than they have free storage. When you see people complaining because they can't install the latest version of Ventura, that is almost always the problem. How these people even make it through an average day with their hard drive so full, I'll never know.

You have experienced that problem before. But now, I think you have a different problem. When apps try to allocate and manage RAM on their own, they have to fight the operating system for it. They will essentially lie to the operating system about their needs. This has been going on for many years, so the people who write operating systems know about this problem. In turn, they simply lie to apps about what they are doing. As you can imagine, when you have to parties constantly lying to each other about shared resources, hilarity ensues.

I'm afraid there is no solution. The app developer simply has to accept the fact that the 1990s are over and we are using virtual RAM now. I checked the website for that app and it appears to be a cross-platform Java app. So yeah, stuck in the 1990s.