How many apps are you running?

by Chris Howard Jul 19, 2005

One of the impressive things about OS X is it’s ability to run a plethora of applications at once.  I often find apps running that I haven’t used for several days.  We Apple users often like to brag about our uptimes for our computers, but what about our uptime for our applications? That’d be fairly impressive too.

Currently I have 17 applications open although I often drift over 20.  The only application I get performance hits on is Safari - which is a memory hog. On top of those 17 applications I have 12 applets in my menu bar - some of which are regularly polling information (eg memory usage, ichat, airport). Just as I rarely shutdown my computer, I also rarely quit applications.

I’m not convinced Tiger is faster than Panther, as I did find I had to upgrade to 1Gb (from 512Mb) RAM to get the best out of it (well - that was my excuse!).  Obviously some would argue that the 1Gb makes a difference and it does but on Panther with 512Mb I used to have almost as many applications open with similar performance.

My specs are a Powerbook G4, 1Ghz, 60Gb HDD, 1Gb RAM

Let us know how many apps you have running (Macs or Windows users welcome to respond). And don’t forget the specs of your machine.

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Comments

  • XP desktop (2.0 Ghz, 1 GB RAM): 7 apps.  Flash, After Effects, Premiere, Firefox, Explorer, Outlook, and AVG.

    Mac Mini (1.25 Ghz, 1 GB RAM): 4 apps, if you count Dashboard and Finder, plus Itunes and DVD Player.

    XP laptop (1.8 Ghz, 512 MB RAM): 4 apps.  Outlook, Firefox, Clicktray Calendar, and AVG.

    Fine performance all around.  No app crashes in quite some time.

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Jul 19, 2005 Posts: 2220

  • Mac Powerbook (1.33 MHz G4, 1GB RAM). I’m usually running 12 apps: Stickies, iCal, NetNewsWire, Mail, Safari, AlphaX, Dreamweaver, iTunes, Mathematica, Freehand, TeXniscope, Terminal.

    eeyore had this to say on Jul 20, 2005 Posts: 2

  • PowerBook G4 1.25, 1 GB RAM, Tiger:
    - 7 apps always open in the Dock - Mail, OmniWeb, iCal, Adium, iTunes, NetNewsWire Lite, VersionTracker Pro
    - 4 apps in the menu bar - iTunes Rating, GmailStatus, Bwanadik, MenuCalendar
    - 7 menu extras - ChangeDesktop, iSync, AirPort, CeePeeYou, Battery, WeatherPop, Clock (with seconds)
    - 21 Dashboard widgets, 10 monitoring different parts of the system
    - a handful of Application Enhancer haxies for a variety of purposes

    Ben Rosenthal had this to say on Jul 20, 2005 Posts: 10

  • Funny you should ask. I just today added 512 to my iBook 1.33GHz to bump it to 768.

    I am now running 10 aps: Safari, Firefox, iChat, Yahoo messenger, Skype, Bloglines Notifier, MS Word, Mail.app, Launchbar

    nickstarr had this to say on Jul 20, 2005 Posts: 1

  • PowerBook G4 1.25GHz 1GB RAM running 10.4.2:
    • 3 Dashboard Widgets
    • 13 apps - Activity Monitor, Temp Monitor, LaunchBar, Stickies, Terminal, Safari, Firefox, TextMate, Adobe Illustrator, iTunes, NetNewsWire, Mail, iChat.

    Illustrator and Terminal are the only apps in that list that are not running all the time.

    Jerry Nummi had this to say on Jul 20, 2005 Posts: 1

  • PowerBook G4 1.67 GHz, 1.5 GB RAM running 10.4.2:
    7 Dashboard Widgets
    6 Apps: Mail, OmniWeb, NetNewsWire, AdiumX, iTunes, Activity Monitor.

    MacInBox had this to say on Jul 20, 2005 Posts: 1

  • I better say what I’m running.  Right now it’s:
    - Safari (with 4 windows and a total of 37 tabs/pages open)
    - ical
    - MSN Messenger
    - NetNewWire (with 13 tabs/pages open)
    - Mail
    - Activity Monitor
    - DevonThink
    - Word (2 docs open)
    - Pages
    - iTunes
    - Text Edit
    - Expression
    - Thunderbird
    - Pastor
    - Previews (with 3 docs open)
    - Transmit
    - Skype
    - iChat
    - Preferences

    So 19 now!

    Chris Howard had this to say on Jul 21, 2005 Posts: 1209

  • Powermac G4/2x867, 1.25Gb ram

    Now running in Dock (14):
    iCal, Photoshop CS2, BBEdit, Mail, AdiumX, Ircle, Transmit, Firefox, NetNewsWire, Azureus, iTunes, Adobe Reader, Heidrun, NetBarrier.

    In menubar:
    iScrobbler, iPaste.

    Sauri had this to say on Jul 21, 2005 Posts: 2

  • iBook 12” (1.2GHz, 1.25GB RAM, 60GB hard drive) running Tiger. I usually have these apps running:

    Opera
    iTunes
    Adium X
    BluePhone Elite
    TextEdit
    Mail
    NetNewswire Lite
    Colloquy
    iCal
    Terminal
    4-5 Dasboard widgets

    I find that I do not quit applications to free up memory (try Opera in stead of Safari), but rather to free up space in the Command-Tab menu. I want to be able to switch between applications fast, and that’s hard to do when you have 20 apps open. Furthermore, I don’t have an external mouse I can use with the Command-Tab menu, so I’m relying on the keyboard; that matters a lot.

    nobodyspecial had this to say on Jul 21, 2005 Posts: 5

  • on a 12” PBG4 867MHz/640MB/80GB:

    Dashboard with 8 widgets
    Mail
    Safari (with tons of Windows/tabs)
    iChat (with several chat windows)
    Address Book
    iCal
    iTunes
    Word 2004
    NetNewsWire Lite
    SubEthaEdit
    Transmit
    CSSEdit
    Calculator

    usually I’ll also run one or both of Photoshop CS2 and Illustrator CS2. These two will usually slow the machine to a crawl when switching to and from these apps.

    foresmac had this to say on Jul 21, 2005 Posts: 20

  • I usually have about ten apps running at any given time. But I find that, more than memory or processing power, it’s tools like Expose and Quicksilver that make it possible. They make it super easy and fast to switch from one to the other, and to know at a glance what’s open where.

    Otherwise, I’d be in the habit of quitting applications just so it’s possible to keep track of what’s open. I know that’s how I operate on my Windows machine at work.

    frankp had this to say on Jul 21, 2005 Posts: 1

  • On a 12” PB G4 1GHZ/640MB/80GB

    Photoshop
    BBedit
    Mail
    Safari
    Firefox
    Flash
    Illustrator
    Word
    Excel
    iChat
    Preview
    Acrobat
    Fetch
    iPhoto
    iTunes

    and yes…I generally keep everything open all at once. smile

    Hadley Stern had this to say on Jul 21, 2005 Posts: 114

  • Otherwise, I’d be in the habit of quitting applications just so it’s possible to keep track of what’s open. I know that’s how I operate on my Windows machine at work.

    You do realize there’s a thing called a task bar at the bottom of your screen to tell you what’s open, right?

    Beeblebrox had this to say on Jul 21, 2005 Posts: 2220

  • 1.5 GHz Powerbook G4 with 1GB of RAM, 80GB HD, 128MB VRAM.

    Mail
    NetNewsWire
    Tinderbox
    OmniOutliner
    OmniGraffle
    Safari
    ITunes
    SubEthaEdit
    XCode
    CocoaMySQL
    NetBeans (Java IDE)
    Dreamweaver MX 2004
    Photoshop
    iChat
    Terminal
    Completion Beta (one of my own applications)
    Preview
    iCal
    Transmit

    In practice, about 80-90% of these apps are running at once. Netbeans can be a memory hog, so I don’t leave it running unless it’s actively in use.

    Scott had this to say on Jul 23, 2005 Posts: 144
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