New in Snow Leopard: Activity Monitor shows you exactly what is killing your CPU

Seth Weintraub
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June 27, 2009
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Before, you'd just see that Safari was nailing your CPU. Now there's a more specific breakdown, which shows the true culprit.  Plug-in sandboxing is good thing.  It is especially helpful when a plug-in is not responding and you want to quit it without killing your browser session (below).

 

 

This has been around for a few weeks but comes in very handy.

Comments (22)

JavaGuy (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 6:52am

Not exactly new. This appears to be just the Unix "top" command given a shiny Mac GUI. Start up a terminal shell and type in the command.

TomHarte (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 7:27am

Ummm, no it's not. It's either an extension of Activity Monitor or a side effect of the plug-in sandboxing as suggested below. On v10.5 system, neither top nor Activity Monitor (a version of which has been in OS X since day one, albeit as Process Viewer in the past) do that.

Of course, it's all slightly moot since if I want to know what's killing my CPU then I can just look at the screenshot above. It's invariably Adobe Flash.

Moblin88 (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 7:07am

This is not the same breakdown that top gives you, and is probably a result of Safari's new plugin sandboxing in Leopard, which was talked about at WWDC.

Apple also mentioned that Safari is going to be 64 bit. The problem with other 64 bit browsers is that many plugins (flash in particular) has no 64 bit version, so you can't have Flash.

Apple seems to be literally launching plugins in their own process to sandbox them (a la tabs in Chrome), and also can launch them as 32 bit processes while the browser runs in a separate 64 bit process. Note the Safari process is 64 bit while the Flash process is 32 bit and that they are indeed separate processes with different PIDs.

The reason we now see Flash separately is likely because it is now a separate process, where before it was not.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 8:29am

They really really really need to increase the Flash performance under OSX.. its a joke that I cannot watch those High Quality Youtube HD videos (the ones that run over the whole width, not the little HQ ones) fluently without stuttering on my 2.4Ghz Macbook (Unibody, Late 08)...

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 8:47am

I know right

TomHarte (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 9:15am

Proof of the same thing: for the first 720p video I found in Youtube (this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TRkZpFgJcI), Safari/Flash consumes roughly 120% CPU to play the thing back, but downloading it (finding it in the Activity window, copy and pasting the URL into the downloads window) and playing it in QuickTime costs just 50% CPU. And this is QuickTime 7, without any of the optimisations they're promising for QuickTime X.

Louis wheeler (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 9:16am

My understanding is that Adobe creates their own plug ins.

Snow Leopard is supposed to have direct access to YouTube. Hopefully, this will be in H.264, not flash. Flash is so old, that it is approaching un-usability.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 9:26am

They being Adobe

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 9:27am

And they wonder why Apple doesn't want it on an iPhone

Claude (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 9:28am

why the hell are there scientology ads in the sidebar!!!!! WTF!!!! This annoyes the hell out of me.

Seth Weintraub | June 27, 2009 - 2:02pm

 no idea.  They pay Google to be all over the web.  Sorry bout that :(

Anti-Scientology Guy (not verified) | June 28, 2009 - 1:50pm

Well, 9-5 Mac provides useful information, Scientology is a noxious pig of an organization, so there's nothing to do but click on the ad and ensure your 9-5 Mac experience is supported by those you hate, at no cost to you.

xenu-hater (not verified) | June 29, 2009 - 5:41am

Scientology, really?!? Okay, I am off then. I'd rather get my news from macrumors in the future.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 9:50am

flash for os x, lmao.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 10:06am

Very nice feature. Look forward to it.

  • TomHarte "if I want to know what's killing my CPU then I can just look at the screenshot above."

    • Hahaha. Too funny. Too true.

    Bokzee (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 10:54am

    Scientology BLOWS!

    AlfieJr (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 11:34am

    once upon a time, Flash was a great step forward, the first easy media viewer. now years later it is a millstone around the neck of the web. proprietary and obsolete, but still used by lazy website designers everywhere. for years now Adobe has failed to make it work better - shame, shame. even Silverlight is more advanced, but still proprietary and built to feature DRM. the coming generation of new web standards will hopefully bring Flash to its end. Apple has refused to play Adobe's game, to their credit.

    in the meantime, just install ClickToFlash to make Flash run only when you want it to.

    Neil Anderson (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 5:18pm

    Excellent. Sure to help usability.

    not a fagget (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 7:50pm

    I'll stick with htop, and a browser that keeps each "tab" for lack of a better word, as a seperate process.

    No need for superfluous brushed aluminium rubbish.

    TuckBodi (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 8:47pm

    Haha, like how Flash is highlighted. The borg which sucks up all my virtual space if I leave Safari running for a few days.

    9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | June 27, 2009 - 8:58pm

    and it has since 1996

    Walt French (not verified) | June 28, 2009 - 6:57pm

    There are a couple of reasons that it'd be even MORE helpful to know WHICH WINDOW of Safari was bogging down. First, Flash is pervasive enough that having multiple windows open sometimes means multiple instantiations of Flash; some might be benign and one badly written or perhaps even exploited. Second, Flash is hardly the ONLY that Safari can lock up -- some non-graphic pages perform badly or hang Safari when I have iffy internet access, fr'instance.

    So Bravo! for a halfway step that is long overdue. But c'mon, Apple. This ain't exactly "it just works" to have a techie's tool show something that noobs couldn't possibly understand and doesn't tell them what of their activity to modify.