Aperture running at a crawl since lion upgrade

Do you know what VM stands for?

Currently on a 10.6.8 system my total VM used is 175 GB I have 8 GB of real memory. I am not paging or swaping, hmmm.

OK, let's ignore this reply, shall we??!!

Ignoring the wise guy connotations of some posts, just to clarify for those looking for help here, when I am talking about a VM size of 7 GB for Aperture I am referring to the active working set for that particular Aperture process, not the size of the paging/swap file. If the working set is bigger than the available physical memory, the miss rate increases, leading to thrashing.

I don't think this will help the average user having a problem understand it better.

Here's hoping that Oct 4th brings OS 10.7.2 and a remedy for this situation. I am of the opinion now that this issue may lie in the OS more so than in Aperture itself. I say this because apparently Lightroom is apparently suffering a similar fate as Aperture is in Lion.

Although switching the kernel to 32 bit has made this issue less pressing for me personally.

Stephen

After upgrading to Lion I immediately started having problems with Aperture. Mine keeps crashing when I try to export. It's not all the time but 1 out of 10 times it will cause Apeture to crash. It worked perfectly prior to 10.7 so it must be 10.7.

Gary Cox1 wrote:

...1 out of 10 times it will cause Apeture to crash. It worked perfectly prior to 10.7 so it must be 10.7.

Probably it is. Apps and the OS get more demanding as they evolve, which is as it should be, because hardware gets stronger and RAM gets cheaper over time. Depending on hardware and apps, it is not always necessarily the best idea to move to a new OS version.

If you are serious about improving your worflow please report all the obviously necessary info we need to help you troubleshoot your problem: such as but not limited to RAM, CPU, GPU, hard drives and how full, versions, workflow.

Switch to 32-bit operation and restart and run Aperture by itself. After switching to 32-bit operation look at the Page Outs number under System Memory on the Activity Monitor app before starting a work session; recheck after working and if the page outs change (manual calculation of ending page outs number minus starting page outs number) is not zero your workflow is RAM-starved. Ignore the pie charts and other info in Activity Monitor.

-Allen Wicks

As an Apple Developer, I am not allowed to reveal what is in an upcoming release.

But I will tell you that I had a dream last night, and in that dream all the members of this group who had been having troubles with Aperture under Lion, breathed a huge collective sigh of release after they installed 10.7.2 .

I can't say if this dream will turn out to be true or not, but I sure hope it does!

But surely we shouldn't have to run in 32 bit mode with 16GB RAM?

MitchSantaCruz wrote:

But surely we shouldn't have to run in 32 bit mode with 16GB RAM?

Who knows? Each setup and workflow is different. Just measure any change in page outs (not all the other stuff!) during typical work, and add RAM and/or switch to 32-bit operation if the manually calculated change exceeds zero.

Note that the shift 32-bit to 64-bit is hugely complex and has been proceeding incrementally among apps/OS/hardware for many years. It is still in process: even the top 2011 Mac Pros do not begin to support the kind of RAM amounts that full-on 64-bit operation facilitates. 32-bit operation should NOT be perceived as some kind of penalty so much as it is an evolving workspace. We are still in the evolutionary changeover 32--->64.

HTH

-Allen Wicks

MitchSantaCruz - for frequent crashes, even (especially) in 32-bit mode, I recommend running Onyx. It solved the problem for me. Your mileage may vary.

And I would imagine that if you have 16 gig of ram and run Aperture in 32-bit mode it would only be able to see 4 gig of it. So if you have more than 4 gig I wouldn't recommend 32-bit mode.

Stephen Cooper wrote:

...I would imagine that if you have 16 gig of ram and run Aperture in 32-bit mode it would only be able to see 4 gig of it. So if you have more than 4 gig I wouldn't recommend 32-bit mode.

Actually not necessarily true. Although 32-bit apps can only directly address ~3 GB RAM, OS X allows apps to utilize much more than the theoretical direct-address 4 GB maximum. Photoshop, for instance, running 32-bit under OS X has been able to take advantage of at least 32 GB RAM since ~CS2.

Note that the shift 32-bit to 64-bit is hugely complex and has been proceeding incrementally among apps/OS/hardware for many years. It is still in process: even the top 2011 Mac Pros do not begin to support the kind of RAM amounts that full-on 64-bit operation facilitates. 32-bit operation should NOT be perceived as some kind of penalty so much as it is an evolving workspace. We are still in the evolutionary changeover 32--->64.

-Allen

Funny - I had a dream last night where I said "thank you, etc nemesis". I wonder what it could mean. 😀

I am sorry Sir, but you must be mistaken. We have heard the GURUS on this forum telling us mortal idiots that we are having nightmares or visions when we see crashes and code defects. In fact, let me remind you, this is a simple application of Moore's law: if there's a bug, buy a faster and bigger machine. It will resolve your problems and bring you one step closer to Nirvana. How dare you, Sir??!!

Some folks have selective listening and are more interested in complaining than in getting to a workflow that works. Hardware is a key component for heavy apps, and stronger boxes do handle challenging workflows and OS/app anomalies better.

Since the early days of Photoshop then Aperture the complaints have been similar. Some folks focus on tweaking setups/workflows and finding solutions until the next OS/app/hardware improvement. Others focus on blaming Apple, with statements like sorin's "Aperture 3 is unusable on Lion" even with lots of RAM. Meanwhile thousands of users are doing just fine.

As regards upgrades, personally I recommend that users wait and see how their most important apps behave under any new OS or app version before committing enterprise-critical workflow to any upgrade.

-Allen

Please, let's keep this forum civil, shall we? This is a community support forum. People here offer their opinions and advice without remuneration; snide remarks will make people less willing to help in the future.

Opinions and advice are exactly that - opinions and advice. People are free to follow them or not. I know that by remaining at 4 gig of RAM I was pushing the limits on the lower bounds of hardware for the Lion/Aperture combination.

While I agree that purchasing new hardware will typically resolve most performance issues, we had reports here that even going up to 12 gig was insufficient. We also had reports here that reverting back to Snow Leopard or 32-bit kernel resolved the issues. I chose to hope that there would be a software solution to my issues.

My plan was and continues to be that if 10.7.2 comes out and does not resolve my issues, I will revert to Snow Leopard on the machine where I do Aperture work. That is my opinion - others may chose to follow or ignore my lead.

Stephen