Posts:
9
From:
Chicago, IL
Registered:
Sep 30, 2007
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Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 30, 2009 6:47 PM
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Hi all...
I have a MacBook Pro and installed Snow Leopard over Leopard just yesterday. While the install ran fine and I have had no major issues, I have noticed a substantial slowing of my computer's performance. It's as if the processor is busy or memory is full. Everything happens as it should, but just a lot slower than before. For example, I have expose set to occur when I move the mouse to the upper-left corner of the screen. Before, expose occurred immediately. Now, it will occur after a 0.5-2.0 second lag. Many other apps are slower, such as Firefox, MS Excel, and MS Entourage. Adium also took about 2-3 times as long to launch, though I run it continuously and have had no further problems. In general, I get the pinwheel a lot more, as well as the ticking watch.
I was under the impression that Snow Leopard would improve performance, not slow it. Has anyone else had these issues as well? If so, did you find any way to resolve it?
- Jason
Owner of MacBook Pro, 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3 GB RAM. I have other macs but I'm going to wait to upgrade the OS to Snow Leopard.
MacBook Pro 17", 2.33 GHz, Intel
Mac OS X (10.6)
3 MB RAM
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Posts:
86
Registered:
Jul 30, 2006
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 30, 2009 7:24 PM
in response to: JasonWDC
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You probably have a background process stealing cycles (antivirus program, perhaps) or you need to repair your disk permissions. Check Activity Monitor for background processes and also check your startup items in your user account settings. SL is crazy fast on 4 of my machines.
iMac 24", Macbook Core 2 Duo
Mac OS X (10.6)
I've got a lot of Apple crap!
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Posts:
25
From:
North Hollywood
Registered:
Nov 22, 2007
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 30, 2009 7:39 PM
in response to: JasonWDC
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Was Office certified for SL?
Firefox doesn't work right on SL.
A lot of 3rd party stuff doesn't work right. You'd guess those companies had enough time to check it.
2.5 Dual G5
Mac OS X (10.5.8)
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Posts:
14,825
From:
Apple USA
Registered:
Aug 5, 2005
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 30, 2009 7:42 PM
in response to: JasonWDC
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Hi Jason,
How much free space on the startup disk?
Control or right click the MacintoshHD icon on your Desktop. Click "Get Info". Under the General tab you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure there is at least 10% available disk space, 15% is better.
Insufficient disk space could be the culprit.
Carolyn 
Intel iMac 2.66 Snow Leopard
Mac OS X (10.6)
iPhone 3GS PBookG4 iBookG4 Intuos Tablet Epson Olympus Airport iPods JBL
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Posts:
45
Registered:
Jun 15, 2005
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 30, 2009 7:57 PM
in response to: JasonWDC
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Jason:
I too have had problems with slow running on the MacBook Pro. I have 4GB of Ram and 42GB of remaining HD space. It is like everything is in slow motion. I have done the permissions thing. I am hopeful Apple will have an opportunity to get so patches out here as I doubt you and I are the only ones having these issues. I will not go near my MacPro with this upgrade until it is worked out. I updated FCP Studio3 and it is sitting in the box. Not even going to attempt it since that is the machine I earn my living from. I know some folks are raving about Snow Leopard, but I am afraid I should have remembered you never upgrade to software with a .0!
Phil
G5 Quad
Mac OS X (10.4.9)
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Posts:
85
From:
Indianapolis
Registered:
Jul 8, 2007
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 30, 2009 8:07 PM
in response to: JasonWDC
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My Macbook Pro is running quite smooth, don't know what could cause your issue. Check activity monitor and see if anything is hogging the CPu.
Mac Pro 8 Core 2.226ghz 16GB Ram Nvidia GT 120
Mac OS X (10.5.6)
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Posts:
9
From:
Chicago, IL
Registered:
Sep 30, 2007
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 30, 2009 10:39 PM
in response to: Phil Hanna
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I'm right there with you on that because the MacBook Pro I loaded it onto (so smart of me...) was the one I earn my living from too. Fortunately, I have a time machine drive so worst case, I can always go back but things aren't nearly that bad and seem to be improving. Thank you for the response.
MacBook Pro 17", 2.33 GHz, Intel
Mac OS X (10.4.10)
3 MB RAM, Parallels: WinXP Pro
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Posts:
9
From:
Chicago, IL
Registered:
Sep 30, 2007
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 30, 2009 10:49 PM
in response to: JasonWDC
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In response to everyone:
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my topic. Regarding some of the suggestions:
- I do not have any background processes I have installed myself other than: MS Office for Mac, iTunes, and Mobile Me Sync (which I have noticed is running an exceptionally long time and eats a lot of CPU and RAM). Anything else woudl be apple standard as part of the OS. I do not have anti-virus or any other processes running.
- Remaining disk space is 55MB (I gained about 10MB by going to Snow Leopard).
- As for the processes running, I routinely keep Activity Monitor running so I can see when anythign is bogging my computer. RAM usage has increased prior to Snow Leopard, up to 100% usage in some cases. Sync Services and Firfox seem to go out of control with using RAM now, though not tot he point the system seems to be affected. As for any other system processes that are eating up resources, frankly I have no idea. That's not really my forte and I honestly don't think it should have to be either. Isn't that something the OS should handle on its own?
On a side note, I use Entourage for my mail (though comptemplating a return to iCal / Mac Mail) and noticed that any saved searches are now blank, I read in Mactopia that doing a search index rebuild (Entourage->Preferences->Spotlight->Rebuild) will rebuild the index Spotlight maintains that Entourage uses for that purpose. The rebuild will take a long while (up to many hours) and there's no way to monitor when it's complete other than watching the process in Activity Monitor. Your messages will slowly begin to re-appear in a saved search.
I did do a reboot of my laptop (this is the second reboot since the upgrade process's reboots) and things are running somewhat faster. Maybe there's a period of "settling down" while indexes and shortcuts and so on are re-learned and re-written and so on.
I have not yet had any major issue that wasn't resolvable by a google search. I figure posting my experience will help others as well.
Thanks again to all for responding.
MacBook Pro 17", 2.33 GHz, Intel
Mac OS X (10.4.10)
3 MB RAM, Parallels: WinXP Pro
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Posts:
9
From:
Chicago, IL
Registered:
Sep 30, 2007
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 30, 2009 10:55 PM
in response to: JasonWDC
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Oh, forgot a few other suggestions:
- Logging on to another account: Not possible, I only have my one account as myself. I am, should only ever be, the only user on this laptop for security reasons.
- Office for Mac 2008 wasn't "certified" for Snow Leopard because Microsoft is saying they didn't know about Snow Leopard, according to posts on Mactopia, Microsoft's own forum on its Mac products. Whiel I think that's more marketing rhetoric than truth, my Office apps seem to be running okay, if not just as slow as they usually are. Maybe a re-design of them by MS to 64-bit will improve things but then if we got into a list of things MS could do to make them better, that'd need a forum unto itself.
Thanks again to all for the comments and suggestions!
- Jason
MacBook Pro 17", 2.33 GHz, Intel
Mac OS X (10.4.10)
3 MB RAM, Parallels: WinXP Pro
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Posts:
2,523
From:
Washington State, USA
Registered:
Oct 29, 2007
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 30, 2009 11:14 PM
in response to: JasonWDC
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- Logging on to another account: Not possible, I only have my one account as myself. I am, should only ever be, the only user on this laptop for security reasons.
Nobody said you have to lower your security. It's a pretty simple matter and a basic troubleshooting technique to add a temporary admin user and test to see if a strange or unexplained problem happens in the new (clean) user account. It's a way to cut a problem's possible solutions in half.
You log into the new account and if the problem you are trying to solve goes away, then you don't need to worry about system problems and broken updates. You work on your user account's plists and plugins.
If the problem still happens in the new temporary user account, then you've got a system problem and know that if you have to you can always just do an 'Archive and Install' repair to the OS, run the updates, and that it will fix the problem.
When you are done testing, you delete the temporary account and get on with business.
Meanwhile, I suppose that people forget about the initial slowness of MacOS after installations. Part of this is due to heavy indexing of the thousands of new files by Spotlight. Also, most of the caches have to be rebuilt so that the OS will boot faster and run some applications in a more spritely manner. Mac's don't need to be rebooted often, but after a major update, it's essential.
iMac24 3.06, MBP 2.33, iMac 20 2.1, Dual G4 1.42 Leopard Server,iPhone, AppleTV
Mac OS X (10.6)
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Posts:
6,581
From:
Central WI, Oshkosh 'B Gosh
Registered:
Aug 2, 2002
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Posts:
8
Registered:
Aug 25, 2006
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 31, 2009 12:27 AM
in response to: JasonWDC
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I have a 18 month old Core2Duo iMac and after the Snow Leopard upgrade the machine was running very very slow. After a bit of investigation I found the Activity Viewer was showing Core Audio as using all my available RAM (about 1.7Gb). As suggested on a few threads I deleted /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist
The machine is now back to normal speed and running well.
Various
Mac OS X (10.6)
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Posts:
3
From:
Croatia
Registered:
Mar 20, 2008
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 31, 2009 6:58 AM
in response to: JasonWDC
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Hi Jason,
I have pretty much the same machine as you do (Tiger OS, 2.33 GHz, Core2Duo, 3GB RAM), and after reading your post I'm doubtful about upgrading to Snow Leopard. What is your recommendation (having your experience after upgrade to SL), should I go for it or not? Have you noticed any advantages like gain of speed, or maybe disanvatages, like speed loss in your daily usage? Because of numerous effects and somewhat smoother graphics built in Snow Leopard, I think it should be more hardware demanding than the Tiger - or am I wrong?
Other opinions (preferably based on experience) are welcome, thx!
KM
MacBook Pro 17"
Mac OS X (10.4.11)
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Posts:
4
From:
Chicago, USA
Registered:
Aug 31, 2009
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Re: Snow Leopard performance slow...
Posted:
Aug 31, 2009 10:07 AM
in response to: kmohl
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I'm a bit annoyed at some of the sluggishness I'm experiencing since I upgraded to SL. Verifying and repairing disk permissions fixed 95% of the issues, and I hope that upgrades in Firefox and Entourage help in the future. My Adium is working fine, oddly enough my outgoing text is now show in a much smaller font.
Beyond that, I have noticed significant and welcome speed and functionality increases with SL- just make sure to repair disk permissions.
MPB 17" Unibody
Mac OS X (10.6)
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