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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

This looks like a clone of iStat Menus which I had installed for years and years till one day I realized I basically never look at it and the icons were just taking up space in my menu bar. I finally un-installed it.

The activity monitor in my dock set to show CPU is sufficient for my needs.

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the one I use most often is about://peformance in Firefox

I used to open up Activity Monitor, but every single time my laptop fans kick on, it was the browser. with the browser performance monitor, i can see exactly which tab is being naughty. So now, I skip Activity Monitor and go straight to the source. Usually, a cmd-R on the offending tab brings it back under control. I assume some JS dev has not tested their code by having it running in a tab for an amount of time other than how long it takes to test their changes.

do you mean `about:processes`?

`about://performance` doesn't work at least from my FF, but `about:performance` redirects to `about:processes`

yes. about:performance

the // was just muscle memory/brain fart/oops

i never really noticed it redirected to processes.

It's also often just ads, and installing a blocker helps

blockers are fully engaged. it's not definitely not ads.

I think in the latest nightly, this is about:processes

omg thank you so much for this! Totally did not know this could be done from within FF!

Inhad no idea this existed.!

TIL you can show useful stats with 'Activity Monitor.app' right in the dock by right clicking the icon and selecting from the 'Dock Icon' menu item. Thanks!

Thanks for pointing that out. Unfortunately, the option I'd want - memory utilization - doesn't seem to be one of the choices.

+1, thank you js2!

It is indeed a clone of iStat Menus. But a very good one, which I discovered when I got tired of paying for the yearly upgrade to iStat.

I'm using an old version of iStat Menus, works fine. I did try Stat but the text in the menu bar is too thin for my eyes, and the developer wasn't receptive to my PR that addressed the issue. Which is fine. But makes the app not for me.

I was finally persuaded to subscribe to Setapp. I had already paid for licenses to most of the software on Setapp, but as I have more and more of them roll into a “free” upgrade, I definitely think it’s worthwhile.

I did the same. I used to have iStat Menus running all the time, until i took a good look at how many resources it actually consumed showing me things i never looked at.

These days i keep Little Snitch's network monitor around, which i actually do look at sometimes, though mostly to get a glance at where my traffic is going.

I found iStatsMenu also destabilized my system. I’d get random kernel panics, while it was running.

It may have been just one of the display modules, as I didn’t use the default set, but I never felt like tracking it down, so I uninstalled it.

Every now and then, I try reinstalling it, but it still crashes the system. Not a big deal. Just eye candy.

I’m very curious what it is doing to panic your computer

I was, too, but I knew it would be a huge pain to track down (the crashes are very random). This is the kind of thing that MacsBug was good for.

For me, it doesn’t really have a ton of actual utility. It’s more of a “toy,” so I don’t really lose sleep over it.

I’m sure it works fine, for the vast majority of folks, so it’s obviously not something the authors worry about.

This also looks like a clone of the Old system stats for the GNOME 2 panel.

It made more sense when I used a dirt cheap computer and squeezed every Hz of it.

TIL you can set live dock icons. This is all I need too. Thank you.

iStat menus hit a lot harder when 8GB of RAM was a $2000 upgrade.

I remember when 4MB of RAM was several hundred dollars.

My first computer (a VIC-20) had 3KB of RAM. There was so little memory, that I had to write most of my software in 6502 Machine Language.

That’s great. You could map 3KB on, like, a sheet of paper.

I learned Photoshop 2.5 on a 5MB RAM/40MB HDD Mac IIvx (512KB video RAM, hell yeah). Seems incredible now, but that capability after upgrading from a pre-Windows 286 felt incredible then.

Now my Apple Silicon machine bogs down when everything’s trying to use the same core for UI I guess, and each browser tab consumes more resources than Mac OS 7.

> 5MB RAM/40MB HDD Mac IIvx

That was a top-of-the-line Mac, back then. On a par with a maxed-out Studio.

Not sure the IIvx was ever the top of the line, more like the butt of jokes. The 68040s were out in Quadras already, and this was a hobbled IIci. I remember we got it when they were slashing prices near the EOL, which is what made it a decent buy.

You’re right. I got it mixed up with the original Mac IIx (the gray box).

The first computer I programmed on was a Data General mainframe with 8k of RAM. But shortly before my first class they got CRT terminals so I didn't have to use punch cards, and it did support BASIC.

> The activity monitor in my dock set to show CPU is sufficient for my needs.

Another #TIL for Apple hidden features

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