<b>Continuing reports of memory leak problems in Mac OS 8

I continue to get reports of memory leak issues in Mac OS 8. Not everyone seems to have these problems, but it appears quite serious for those that do. For example, Julian Cross writes: "Whenever I am working with several applications simultaneously that use significant amounts of RAM (such as Navigator 3.0x or 4.0x, Photoshop, GraphicConverter, etc.), after I quit one or more of these applications, often the RAM used by the program is not re-released to be available to other programs. My largest unused block keeps shrinking, and even upon quitting all open applications except the Finder there is often still a 10 - 25 Mb block of RAM unavailable that is trapped. FixHeap and MacOSPurge do not release the memory. Only quitting the Finder (gracefully, using the Terminator Strip) is sometimes successful in freeing this memory." John Hildebrandt writes of a similar issue specific to Netscape Communicator. MacInTouch has also been covering this problem.

Update: Several readers have already commented that these memory leaks are nothing new and have been around since at least System 7.5.5. I am aware of this and it is an issue that has been extensively covered in prior Late-Breakers. I am assuming that some of these newly reported leaks represent a different issue; but I cannot yet be certain of this.