Will Tahoe 26.3 fix 26.2 performance?

I do see some progress that has been made from your previous post and are looking for an alternative to the Clean Install, so this process is time consuming and slower by working backwards to remove the many remnant files installed in several locations to compare your results. Some of the files in your Launch folders may no longer even be used and continue to run. For reference the suggestions from your previous post are here:

Problems with Tahoe - Apple Community

Some observations where you are sitting now:

• You have 3 Finder Sync extensions that would appear to be walking all over each other as seen in the High CPU usage of the spotlight indexing. As stated before, you should pair this down to 1 and compare your results. I would suggest sticking with OneDrive and removing both Dropbox and iDrive to test. Out of the 3, iDrive has the worst user experience causing sluggish performance. One service is "marking" a file to check for sync status, while the other recognizes that as a change thinking it needs to sync that file again in a never ending loop. All that is being done while Time Machine is trying to keep up with the changes.
• The VPN is still showing as loaded from the Virtual Intranet Access app in your Applications folder.
• Your Parallels install seemed to add some Unsigned files that required a Gatekeeper bypass, and I don't have an explanation for that, but is odd. Those are running while the Kernel Extension (prl_hypervisor.kext) is showing not loaded. The single most Energy intensive task you have running is Parallels, followed by Google Chrome.
• The com.DesignScience.DSMTTool.plist file remains in your Launch Daemons, even though it shows as Not Loaded and installed 6 years ago. Not sure if that is something you still use.
• The com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool.plist in the Launch Daemons folder still needs removed.
• What is going on with the running com.oracle.oss.mysql.mysqld.plist? Are you still using this after 6 years?
• Still those Google Keystone launch agents are show and should have been removed. Not Signed and empty.
• A couple of those DropBox files in your User Launch Agents are just danglers showing Not Signed and Empty.

Due to the many LaunchAgents, LaunchDaemons and the applications you have set to run on login, you only have 10MB of Free RAM left. That has resulted in 3.25 GB of Swap files being written to and read from your hard drive. The 16GB of RAM you have is not enough to have all those open and running at the same time without slowing your computer down by managing the RAM usage with Swap Files on your Hard Drive. Parallels is using the most memory.

CPU usage is telling with Parallels showing 237%. Google Chrome is the most resource hungry browser with 79% CPU usage. The EtreCheck showing 87% would be expected as that is being used while the report is generated and the frontmost app receiving user input. WindowServer is a "catch all" for some of those other processes and kernel_task usage is seen when management is needed to control temperatures and adjust fan speed to keep everything operating within a normal range.

Patrick Dixon wrote:

<Etre check.log>

Mac Jim provided an excellent analysis of your Etrecheck report.

iDrive is an online backup service. You also have Time Machine trying to back up, plus there are Dropbox and OneDrive all doing their online syncing and file transfers. As Jim points out, this is probably choking your Mac's internet I/O. Plus you have a VPN, which can throttle things down by 2x or even more (in my experience with my employer's VPN we had to use for access to the corporate network). Then if you pile Zoom or Teams on top of this, I can see how the Mac cannot keep up.

I have the same model as you, 2019 MacBook Pro Intel 16" (mine is 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, 16 GB RAM). I don't think I would run Parallels on it, I don't think it has the juice. But with all the I/O in the background on your machine, it is clearly impacting other aspects, for instance your SSD write speed is sub-par, 2014 MB/s, mine (same Mac) is over 3000 MB/s. Etrecheck reports "poor" performance which is quite unusual, that reflects a high level of overloading.

Also, I counted at least 9 audio plug-ins that were installed before Tahoe came out, some go back to 2018 (does Flip4Mac even still work?). No idea if these old installs are causing trouble but I would check for updates.

Patrick Dixon wrote:

I have had severe performance problems since upgrading to Tahoe 26.2, especially when using video conferencing like Teams and Zoom. Will 26.3 fix this?

I don't believe it is an intrinsic problem because I have used both Teams and Zoom recently (on 26.2) on my 2019 MacBook Pro Intel 16" with only 16 GB memory. My laptop is the oldest (and presumably slowest) of the Macs that can even run Tahoe. It is very responsive under Tahoe; it "feels" faster and quicker than it did under Sequoia, but that's just my perception. Some examples: under Sequoia when quitting Safari or shutting down the Mac with many Safari windows open, restarting Safari seemed to take a very long time for all those windows to load again, it is very fast for me under Tahoe; TurboTax under Sequoia would produce a beachball for some seconds (~ 10) when quitting or saving, or installing updates, but I don't see this under Tahoe; and my Time Machine backups run like a Swiss clock with two backup disks attached, I believe they are faster (on visual informal inspection of the time for those backups) than with Sequoia. Perhaps some of what I think are improvements stems from the cleaning out of caches and whatnot from the new MacOS install. I also see many bug fixes under Tahoe (but take note of tbirdvet's post on that).

For Zoom and Teams, make sure you have the most recent updates.

If no resolution, Old Toad's suggestion for an Etrecheck report makes the most sense, that provides a path forward to identify and find a potentially conflicting extension or something installed.

brajesh147 wrote:

Sir,

My MacBook is new, but I have been facing this problem since the very first day. I visited the service center and many other places, but I did not receive any proper help. The service center did not check my device properly. I had also sent you the service center’s diagnosis report earlier.

I do not want a repair. I am requesting a replacement or a refund because this issue has been there since day one.

Please help me. 🙏*** and apple teams and apple products I am broken 💔

If you want assistance, you will need to post the free EtreCheck repost to identify the third party processes that are conflicting on your computer. As seen, Teams works just fine, but you likely have something else launching on startup causing problems for you. It has already been suggested, but you would need to follow through.

How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

If you have not yet updated to OS 26.3, that should be done first. Nobody here works for Apple, we are users just like you assisting other customers. With that said, none of us would be able to give you a replacement or refund, so that is not even an option on this Support Site.

[Edited by Moderator]

Have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?

Please download and run Etrecheck.  The free version is sufficient.

Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

Copy the report

and after clicking on the Reply button use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine the cause of the problem.

Yiou never know until you try because Apple does not always state what bugs or other issues they addressed. I know for me 26.3 (with Safari 26.3) fixed my custom homepage web icon links to show correctly. Before some would not load but now all do and that was never noted as an addressed issue.

Well, ever since I updated to 26.3 my Mac performance has really slowed. Anything having to do with the Internet is unbearably slow, rendering the computer almost unusable. I would say this 26.3 release so far is a disaster for my MacBook Air. I wish I had not updated it.

Well, I spoke too soon. Issue returns with 26.3 so I guess I will stay with sequoia for the time being.

Teams and Zoom worked fine on my Macs on 26.2, and they’re still working fine on 26.3. So I’d say this is a problem with your system, not Tahoe.

The EtreCheck report is a good idea.

Sir,

My MacBook is new, but I have been facing this problem since the very first day. I visited the service center and many other places, but I did not receive any proper help. The service center did not check my device properly. I had also sent you the service center’s diagnosis report earlier.

I do not want a repair. I am requesting a replacement or a refund because this issue has been there since day one.

Please help me. 🙏*** and apple teams and apple products I am broken 💔

[Edited by Moderator]

brajesh147 wrote:

Sir,

My MacBook is new, but I have been facing this problem since the very first day. I visited the service center and many other places, but I did not receive any proper help. The service center did not check my device properly. I had also sent you the service center’s diagnosis report earlier.

I do not want a repair. I am requesting a replacement or a refund because this issue has been there since day one.

Please help me. 🙏102733275883 and apple teams and apple products I am broken 💔

Nobody here can help you as we don’t work for Apple.

Apple will return a Mac within 14 days of purchase. After that the only option is a repair. If multiple repairs do not resolve the problem, they may replace it.