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Safari ridiculously SLOW in Snow Leopard

I was very happy with Safari 4 performance in my 2008 iMac. But since I upgraded to Snow Leopard (10.6.1) the browser is simply too slow to be usable. Really, really slow. You can see every single element of a website loading (like the background drawing from top to botton, things like that), while before it just appeared instantly.

I have an old macbook (2.0ghz, Core Duo - not core 2 duo, 512MB RAM) running Leopard and I did some side by side tests. My iMac has a 2.66 Core 2 Duo Processor with 4GB ⚠ of ram. Both machines side by side, on the same Wifi network.

Even tough I pressed enter simultaneously in both machines, the iMac is now taking 3 to 5 SECONDS more to load a page than the old macbook ! I did tests in MANY websites, like digg.com, new york times, college humor, and so on.

What gives ? Why is Safari so slow in snow leopard ?

Apple Macbook 13inch 2.0ghz Core Duo 512 60GB White SuperDrive, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Sep 19, 2009 7:07 PM

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51 replies

Sep 19, 2009 7:16 PM in response to Barry Hemphill

You are wrong. Like I said, it was MUCH faster while it had Leopard running on it, not by a little marging, but by something like 5 times faster.

The Macbook has a really old and well used Leopard installation, really bloated with DJ Software and has only 4GB left in the HD (the iMac has 68 GB free), and even considering all this the Macbook is still blazing fast while surfing the internet if compared to the iMac with snow leopard.

Sep 20, 2009 10:23 AM in response to FelipeRaul

Repair Permissions:
Go to the Hard Drive icon, upper right of your screen.
Double click, go down to Applications folder. In there, find the Utillities folder.
Open Disk Utilities, select your HD icon on the left hand side of that pane,
and then select "Repair Permissions."

Relax. It will take several mins, anywhere from 5 to 15, depending.

And now there are no moer duplicates, right? Tiny dost all gone?

Sep 21, 2009 7:05 PM in response to Barry Hemphill

I think this is Safari and not SL, since I have these troubles now with Safari 4.03 and I am running Tiger. There are many threads in this forum saying that Safari is slow. You may not be "wrong" Barry, but this appears to be a problem. I do know that these boards end up with complainers, since people with no problems don't need to ask questions here.

Sep 21, 2009 8:06 PM in response to FelipeRaul

If it is only Safari that is running slowly you may also have an incompatible plugin. Are you using any third party software plugins or input managers with Safari? For the plugins, the easiest test is to disable plugins in the preferences and see if this improves things:

Safari Menu/Preferences
Click on the security tab
Uncheck the "enable plugins" check box

If Safari runs better you probably need a newer version of some of your plugins.

Safari was drastically improved in Snow Leopard. It is now a 64 bit app. It is a speed demon on my machine, with only the speed of the server to slow things down.

Are all apps running slow or is it just Safari?

Kurt

Oct 4, 2009 10:06 PM in response to Donnie Ashworth

I went on your thread and followed some of the users suggestions and Safari works so much better!!!

I had a problem where Safari kept crashing after I instaled Snow Leopard. At one point It took over 90 seconds for a new tab to be opened and work without the turning rainbow wheel. It would lag every time; firefox was not as bad but it did run noticeably slower. Even Dashboard and Exposé would lag/hang like crazy.

I find that now everything works faster, safari, firefox and finder.

I did a few things I'm not sure what did the trick exactly.

-I tried disabling the internet plug-ins to see if it changed anything. I don't think this did much. I checked my folder (/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/) and nothing really looked suspiciously out of date except for 'Flip4Mac WMV'

-I got OpenDNS, I don't think this was a solution but it seems like a useful thing to have in the long run

-I also played around with the Render Before Display timer, but that didn't do much either. ( http://guides.macrumors.com/SpeedupSafari)

-I went through all my applications and got rid of a bunch of the ones that weren't necessary and may be clashing with Snow Leopard, especially since a lot of them wouldn't have been updated for the new OS


-Repairing Disk Permissions from Disk Utility did wonders I think. I never thought to do this after I installed Snow Leopard but after it finished everything seems to be running a lot smoother

Everything seems to be a lot quicker now, so hopefully it'll stay this way after a reboot. Good luck with your computer, I think it is a matter of little kinks here and there slowing the computer down overall especially in the web-browsing area. Run Disk Utility and go through your applications and update/put away the ones that are out of date and may clash with Snow Leopard

Oct 5, 2009 4:09 PM in response to TildeBee

I just upgraded to OS X 10.58 and downloaded a bunch of updates incl Safari 4.0 while waiting for my Snow Leopard to arrive. This "upgrading" has essentially slowed my network connection to molasses. It has also slowed my system response too. I want to thank Bee for her suggestions on the Permission repair and font thing....I think it helped some. I am also trying disabling the plug-ins, as suggested here, to see if it helps. So far it is still SLOW! Funny thing is that I cannot load an Apple page without going into my security software (InternetCleanup) and erasing all cookies.....doing that seems to allow the Apple pages to load. Does this give a clue to what is going on? My security program is about a year old. My system was running just fine until I upgraded. One more question......anyway to disable the icon "favorite sites" in Safari 4.0? I am very concerned about loading Snow when I get it.

Oct 5, 2009 4:29 PM in response to Kurt Weber

I too have a slow leopard problem. My network still allowing download speed of >700-900kB/sec (verified by other computers). My iMac goes at around 7kB/sec-10kB/sec, extremely slow. Both Firefox and Safari behave similarly.

I think SL messed up the TCP/IP stack or something, which I am not technically knowledgeable enough to check it out. Any networking guru out there can give us a hint to troubleshoot the machine?

Safari ridiculously SLOW in Snow Leopard

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