by Reader Elsa Pederson finds her Mac mysteriously out of memory. She writes:
Today I saw a message I’d never seen before. It indicated that my Mac had run out of application memory. In order to keep working I had to force quit some of my open applications. Is there a way I could have known which application was causing the problem?
Yes. In some cases, the misbehaving application will appear in red, followed by the words “Not Responding.” This strongly hints that this application has gone on a RAM binge and has consumed so much of the stuff that it can no longer move. One way to tell if that’s the problem application is to force quit a different application. If the once-red application starts responding again, it tells you it’s now happy because it has more RAM to chew on.
The list of applications may not contain a single red one, however. In either case, you should check Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities), as it will detail exactly what’s going on.
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