Base-model Macs won't be able to take advantage of Apple's flagship Xcode 16 feature: Predictive Code Completion.

There were a number of exciting announcements from Apple at WWDC 2024, from macOS Sequoia to Apple Intelligence. However, a subtle addition to Xcode 16 — the development environment for Apple platforms, like iOS and macOS — is a feature called Predictive Code Completion. Unfortunately, if you bought into Apple’s claim that 8GB of unified memory was enough for base-model Apple silicon Macs, you won’t be able to use it. There’s a memory requirement for Predictive Code Completion in Xcode 16, and it’s the closest thing we’ll get from Apple to an admission that 8GB of memory isn’t really enough for a new Mac in 2024.

  • lastweakness@lemmy.worldEnglish
    163·
    6 months ago

    So we’re just going to ignore stuff like Electron, unoptimized assets, etc… Basically every other known problem… Yeah let’s just ignore all that

    • Aux@lemmy.worldEnglish
      38·
      6 months ago

      Is Electron that bad? Really? I have Slack open right now with two servers and it takes around 350MB of RAM. Not that bad, considering that every other colleague thinks that posting dumb shit GIFs into work chats is cool. That’s definitely nowhere close to Firefox, Chrome and WebStorm eating multiple gigs each.

      • lastweakness@lemmy.worldEnglish
        142·
        6 months ago

        Yes, it really is that bad. 350 MBs of RAM for something that could otherwise have taken less than 100? That isn’t bad to you? And also, it’s not just RAM. It’s every resource, including CPU, which is especially bad with Electron.

        I don’t really mind Electron myself because I have enough resources. But pretending the lack of optimization isn’t a real problem is just not right.

        • Aux@lemmy.worldEnglish
          27·
          6 months ago

          First of all, 350MB is a drop in a bucket. But what’s more important is performance, because it affects things like power consumption, carbon emissions, etc. I’d rather see Slack “eating” one gig of RAM and running smoothly on a single E core below boost clocks with pretty much zero CPU use. That’s the whole point of having fast memory - so you can cache and pre-render as much as possible and leave it rest statically in memory.

          • lastweakness@lemmy.worldEnglish
            6·
            6 months ago

            CPU usage is famously terrible with Electron, which i also pointed out in the comment you’re replying to. But yes, having multiple chromium instances running for each “app” is terrible

                • Aux@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  12·
                  6 months ago

                  Do you really want me to go into the details of how JIT works in V8 and which Electron APIs allow the apps to idle correctly?

              • Shadywack@lemmy.worldEnglish
                22·
                6 months ago

                Yes it is.

                “iT’S oNLy a FeW hUnDrED MB oF LiBRAriES and BiNAriES pEr aPp, iT’S oNLy dOuBLe oR tRiPLe tHe RAM, DiSk, anD cpU uSAgE”

                Then we have the fucking shit show of 6-8GB of RAM used just by booting the fucking machine. Chromium/Webkit is practically an OS by itself for all the I/O, media handling, and built in libraries upon libraries of shit. Let’s run that whole entire stack for all these electron apps, and then fragment each one independent of each other (hello Discord, who used Electron 12 for WAY too long) then say “bUt iT’s pORtaBLe!”.

                Yes, it isn’t just terrible, it’s fucking obnoxiously and horrendously terrible, like we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory terrible, and moronically insipid. Optimization in the fucking trash can and a fire hydrant in all our fucking assholes, terrible. That’s HOW terrible it actually is, so you’re wrong.

          • jas0n@lemmy.worldEnglish
            21·
            6 months ago

            Just wanted to point out that the number 1 performance blocker in the CPU is memory. In the general case, if you’re wasting memory, you’re wasting CPU. These two things really cannot be talked about in isolation.

            • Aux@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              6 months ago

              No, that’s the other way round. You either have high CPU load and low memory, or low CPU load and high memory.

              • jas0n@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                6 months ago

                I’m not sure what metric you’re using to determine this. The bottom line is, if you’re trying to get the CPU to really fly, using memory efficiently is just as important (if not more) than the actual instructions you send to it. The reason for this is the high latency required to go out to external memory. This is performance 101.

          • Verat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            6 months ago

            When (according to about:unloads) my average firefox tab is 70-230MB depending on what it is and how old the tab is (youtube tabs for example bloat up the longer they are open), a chat app using over 350 is a pretty big deal

            just checked, my firefox is using 4.5gb of RAM, while telegram is using 2.3, while minimized to the system tray, granted Telegram doesnt use electron, but this is a trend across lots of programs and Electron is a big enough offender I avoid apps using it. When I get off shift I can launch discord and check it too, but it is usually bad enough I close it entirely when not in use

            • Aux@lemmy.worldEnglish
              11·
              6 months ago

              Telegram is using only 66 megs here. Again - it’s about content.

                  • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
                    3·
                    6 months ago

                    If a program has to keep in RAM all the things you are not currently, like right now, displaying or editing, then its author shouldn’t be in the profession. That also applies to the portions of a huge text file or a huge image you are not touching right now.

                    EDIT: Thankfully people writing video players usually understand this.

      • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        11·
        6 months ago

        What’s wrong with using Gifs in work chat lmao, can laugh or smile while hating your job like the rest of us.