I configured Activity Monitor like this on all of my machines. I also set up my non-techie friends' Macs this way as well:
It was the best "health snapshot" for the Mac I'd figured out, and not hard to set up. I'd advise friends & clients to always make sure they "see green" when they're having system speed or responsiveness issues.
And then, this was a great signal that either a RAM upgrade is called for, or some app is out of control.
But now, this option was removed in Mavericks. And it's extra annoying because Mavericks promises to use memory better on some laptops. And I was looking forward to seeing how the pie chart compares.
Does anyone know a way to (1) simply display this same chart, or even (2) set the Activity Monitor's dock icon to it?
vm_stat
rather than going over why (or whether) Activity Monitor has changed. That seems to be covered well on the other thread that is linked.