Re: Quitting all active applications

FROM : Ken Thomases
DATE : Fri Aug 29 00:17:31 2008

On Aug 28, 2008, at 4:53 PM, Sherm Pendley wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 12:37 PM, Phil Faber 
> <<email_removed>> wrote:
>

>>
>> All I'm trying to achieve is a tiny app that only quits open apps 
>> and then
>> quits itself; the purpose being when I want to release as much 
>> memory and
>> disc space as possible before I run another memory / processor 
>> intensive
>> app.

>
>
> Not much point in that, IMHO - the virtual memory system will 
> usually swap
> out inactive apps to make room when the active app needs more 
> physical RAM.
> And if an app is in the background just waiting for user input, 
> it's taking
> a tiny amount of CPU anyway.


In fact, telling all applications to quit forces the OS to page in 
significant chunks of those apps so they can actually execute the 
quit request.  That causes a bunch of VM churn and will hurt 
performance in the immediate term.

Cheers,
Ken