Mountain Lion Performance?

I downloaded Mountain Lion on the date of release onto my mid-2008 17" MacBook Pro. As of now, I will say I regret installing it. My computer is not reacting well from the new download and while I do think that software updates will me available in the coming weeks, the side effects of installing ML make it such a pain to use.

Here are some of the symptoms my MacBook Pro has. Boot up time lags. It takes about sixty seconds to boot to the log in window, then another 45 seconds. It was previously about half as long with Lion. Application launches lag. Safari and iTunes top the list, both taking about one minute to launch. All other applications lag too upon launch; about twice the amount of time it previously took to launch an application. Safari performance *****. Loading Facebook takes 30 seconds! Clicking onto a friend's profile takes 30 seconds to load! This is the most frustrating out of anything. Also, Skype video no longer works. I had to update Skype because of some type of software issue from the install of Mountain Lion. Switching between applications typically results in the rainbow swirling ball for about 15 seconds (ie: Safari to iTunes). Spotlight searches are much slower as well, and it seems like it is constantly loading new results. Overall system performance is noticeably sluggish in comparison with OS X Lion.

Positives of Mountain Lion? I noticed that graphics and video is a little sharper. I always appreciate that. Also some of the new apps included are cool, although I haven't really used them. With notes syncing to my iPhone, I thought I would use this convenience more, but it isn't something I use.

Anyway, Mountain Lion has potential. Apple needs to release an update soon though. This version of Mountain Lion is horrible. I don't think Steve Jobs would appreciate the quality of this software and all the negativeness associated with system performance.

FWIW Early 2008 MacBookPro 15" I've been steadiy upgrading OS since new. Did a clean install of Lion. Worked fine, no complaints though perhaps a little pokey. Knocked up RAM to 4GB and it improved things quite a bit.

Upgraded to Mountain Lion (no clean install). All's good. Feels more responsive, all apps work as they should. It's not nearly as fast as my gal's I7 Air, but I think I can squeeze a couple more years out of the MBP.

I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard. I’m running Cs5.5. I’ve been finding my InDesign crashes at start up way too often after OS upgrade. Mail freezes at start up very often too.

I haven’t reformatted the HD and start fresh with the Mountain Lion install. I migrated data from my old 2007 Macbook (running Leopard [upgraded from Tiger] then) to brand new 2011 MacBook Pro (running Snow Leopard). And now upgraded to Mountain Lion. Should I reformat to get rid of some of the “old junk” and start fresh install of Mountain Lion?

My 2011 Macbook Pro has 8GB RAM and 300GB free HD space. Just wondering what anyone think what causes the Mail freezing at start up and InDesign crashing at start up. I’ve been thinking whether upgrading RAM will solve the InDesign crashing issues?

MangaGal wrote:

I recently upgraded to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard. I’m running Cs5.5. I’ve been finding my InDesign crashes at start up way too often after OS upgrade. Mail freezes at start up very often too.

I haven’t reformatted the HD and start fresh with the Mountain Lion install. I migrated data from my old 2007 Macbook (running Leopard [upgraded from Tiger] then) to brand new 2011 MacBook Pro (running Snow Leopard). And now upgraded to Mountain Lion. Should I reformat to get rid of some of the “old junk” and start fresh install of Mountain Lion?

My 2011 Macbook Pro has 8GB RAM and 300GB free HD space. Just wondering what anyone think what causes the Mail freezing at start up and InDesign crashing at start up. I’ve been thinking whether upgrading RAM will solve the InDesign crashing issues?

Do yourself a great favor and instead of bothering to buy more RAM or anything, just bite the bullet, back up your data, and format + reinstall fresh. Clean install of ML. Then copy all your stuff back.

Trust me, all of this will take no more than a day or two -- and it took me two only because I had to install my Apache server, Postgres, design tools etc -- and when you're done you will be MUCH HAPPIER.

Cyberpundit wrote:

Do yourself a great favor and instead of bothering to buy more RAM or anything, just bite the bullet, back up your data, and format + reinstall fresh. Clean install of ML. Then copy all your stuff back.

Trust me, all of this will take no more than a day or two -- and it took me two only because I had to install my Apache server, Postgres, design tools etc -- and when you're done you will be MUCH HAPPIER.

Reinstalling fresh is my preferred solution to start with. I'm glad you agreed. I'll have to find a time to do it. Thanks for your help.

Now I figured out the issue that was causing the my MBA to shutdown slowly. It was Mail which was not shutting down immediately. If I closed mail myself and then try the shutdown, the shutdown takes only 3-4 seconds in my MBA with ML. So, I change my opinion about ML. Its indeed better than SL.

I'd like to weigh in on this. I have a MacBook Pro 13 inch 2.8Ghz with 4GB RAM and it came factory installed with lion. I upgraded to lion when it came out and at first it really did run well. Now when i started to use more labor intensive programs it started slowing down and it got to the point where running google chrome by itself would cause it to freeze pariodically for 10 - 20 seconds. I couldn't even think about more than one program at a time without it slowing down. Now I downgraded to lion and when i was moving my programs back in i accidentally double clicked while holding the apple key and about 50 programs opened at once. Now i automatically thought i'm going to have to restart my computer but to my amazement, the same computer that would have slowed down for iTunes to play a song, opened all the programs without a stutter.! Lion worked better for me and some other people had opposite effects. My advice would be to try both OSX's and pick the one that works for your machine.