I am running aperture on my macbook and it lags ... a LOT

Your laptop is limiting to Aperture. Whether your performance is normal or not would require some quantification of what you are observing. To optimize we need lots more info on wokflow, setup, etc. but here is some generic info from an earleir post of mine:

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Aperture is a heavy pro graphics app that is very demanding of hardware. Your Mac's CPU, GPU and/or RAM are probably limiting to Aperture so we need to do what we can to optimize. Some steps:

• Set Previews to only be built manually, and only tell Aperture to build Previews when you are not otherwise editing in Aperture.

• Keep the internal drive underfilled for speed, which sooner or later usually requires using a Referenced-Masters-Library with Masters on external drives. Back up originals _before_ importing into Aperture or any other images app.

• The Aperture Library should be on an internal drive.

• Turn off [i]Share Previews with iLife and iWork[/i]

• Remember that HDs slow as they fill and keep the internal drive underfilled. Approx. 70% full _maximum_ is a good guideline.

• If page outs increase significantly during operation, *max out RAM* and/or try to run Aperture by itself. On my C2D MBP with its max of 3 GB RAM I always did a restart prior to a heavy Aperture session to clear any memory leaks and make sure no other apps were open. Browsers in particular will often suck RAM Aperture would otherwise be using.

IMO all Aperture users who can should routinely bump RAM to at least 8 GB.

• Some users have observed that it can take a new Aperture installation time (weeks) to stabilize. So do not panic; and allow Aperture to continue background work by not fully shutting down the computer. Personally I never fully shut down Macs except during electrical storms.

• I recommend *always repairing Permissions* immediately _before_ and immediately _after_ every install of any kind.

Some folks consider it a waste of time but after years of listening to others have problems while I have had problem-free usage of heavy graphics apps (Aperture, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Painter, etc.) on multiple Macs I am fully convinced that although [u]repairing Permissions is not a "fix"[/u] it is very useful maintenance for users of heavy graphics apps.

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HTH

-Allen Wicks

Also running Aperture on battery only will slow the machine down and lag the system.

josephleebrown wrote:

Also running Aperture on battery only will slow the machine down and lag the system.

I'm not aware of any step-down anymore when on battery power (at least on my mid-2009 MBP). Is it machine-specific?

I'm on a 2.53 GHz i5 MBP with 8GB RAM ( July 2010 ) and I do notice a slow down when using Aperture when on battery.

I know there is no processor speed reduction when on battery anymore and it is automatic graphic switching nowadays but it does slow down no matter what Apple says when on battery.

RAM is memory, and it is the limiting factor when multitasking.

I posted some comparison numbers in this post.

4 GB RAM is enough to run Aperture well, as long as it is the only program running.

If you want to run more than one program, more RAM is an enormous performance gain, but Aperture won't (mostly) run any faster than if it were running alone.

If you want Aperture to run faster, and you have 4 GB of RAM, you will have to upgrade your hardware:

. faster drive throughput

. faster GPU

. faster CPU

Keep in mind what Allen said in introducing his excellent advice above:

Aperture is a heavy pro graphics app that is very demanding of hardware.

There's just no way around that except with higher-performing hardware.