Aperture horribly slow on retina 16gb

Your problem is excessive swapping of data between physical memory and virtual memory.

That can happen for two reasons:

(1) You have a long-running process with a memory leak (i.e., a bug), or

(2) You don't have enough memory installed for your usage pattern.

Tracking down a memory leak can be difficult, and it may come down to a process of elimination. In Activity Monitor, select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected. Click the heading of theReal Mem column in the process table twice to sort the table with the highest value at the top. If one process (not including "kernel_task") is using much more memory than all the others, that could be an indication of a leak. A better indication would be a process that continually grabs more and more memory over time without ever releasing it.

This suggestion is only for users familiar with the shell. For a more precise, but potentially misleading, test, run the following command:

sudo leaks -nocontext -nostacks process | grep total

where process is the name of a process you suspect of leaking memory. Almost every process will leak some memory; the question is how much, and especially how much the leak increases with time. I can’t be more specific. See the leaks(1) man page and the Apple developer documentation for details:

Memory Usage Performance Guidelines: About the Virtual Memory System

If you don't have an obvious memory leak, your options are to install more memory (not possible in your case) or to run fewer programs simultaneously.

I'm having the exact same problem. Have you done anything to get the problem corrected? I haven't called Apple yet, but I think I will need to soon. Last night was horrific using Aperture while editing through photos.

I've got the same issue on my MacBook Pro 15 inch Retina (2.6 Ghz i7 / 16GB Ram / 500GB SSD).

Aperture is extremely slow compared to my previous 4 year old MacBook Pro 13 inch (which has obviously much lower specs).

What is going on here?

After contacting Apple support they replied and asked for specific files as they relate to my computer and the problem I am encountering while using Aperture. I must give Apple credit for being responsive and interested with uncovering what is going on as they try to troubleshoot and fix the problem. I will update this forum as I learn more from the Apple engineers.

Same here, I thought it was becauwe of the D800 files being so big but am experiencing the same problem with D700 files. As soon as I add some brushing it goes from bad to worse. Restarting the computer helps but only for a while.

Checking the activity monitor:

Real Mem 3,5GB and going up with every pic I edit

CPU peaks at 300-400% when editing or 500% when zooming in 4 pics at the same time (100% zoom - D700 RAW files)

Me too. I have a fully tricked out 15" rMBP: 2.7 / 16 GB / 750 GB SSD - and at least 100 of that free. Even just scrolling through pics I can see the memory getting chewed up, until it freezes (by then only MBs are free). However, if I stop for a few minutes, I can see the free RAM slowly escalating to three to four gigs. The whole cycle repeats as I begin to scroll again (happens a very little with iPhoto but nowhere near as much).

I noticed exactly the same... I can't understand that apple takes so long to fix an issue that is there for a long time. All retina macbooks are near the 3000 euro's, you would expect a bit more support from apple...

However, I do notice that there is no problem at all when not using the fullscreen function op aperture. If I use the windowed modus then I can work fine with aperture. I haven't tried iphoto in full screen enough to see if it occurs there as well.

I recently received an email from an Apple support technician asking me to change preference settings in Aperture to see if the changes helps eliminate the sluggishness of Aperture.

In regard to the performance issues you are experiencing with Aperture, would you try a few things and let me know if they help to improve the issue.

In the Previews tab in Aperture Preferences, would you set the "Share Previews with iLife and iWork" setting to either "When Quitting Aperture" or, if you don't use iTunes to sync images from Aperture to an iOS device, to "Never."

Would you also try using Quick Preview mode for a few sessions to see how that feels. You can activate Quick Preview mode in the View menu or by hitting the "P" key. You can use "P" to toggle Quick Preview on and off. You would have to come out of Quick Preview mode if you want to start editing an image.

I am passing along this information to those following this thread in hopes of learning more collectively, so we can all benefit and find a solution to the problem. Let me know what you discover and if there are any improvements.

Okay... set Pref to "When Quitting" (I sync selected folders via iPhoto with my iPhone) and selected P mode. Quit and restarted Ap (Quick Prev still "on") and began to Browse images in Viewer mode. RAM usage was relatively stable for about 20 images and then quickly began to climb. However, once I stop for a few seconds (e.g. to write this) it releases approx. 1 gig and remains stable. However, when I go back to browsing, repeats the same behavior.

Thanks for your interest.

I have the same issue with my MBPr /16 GB Ram / 765 SSD. There seem to be many people with this issue and if you Google it, you will find many complaints, but not a single person who states that the issue was solved. Given that Aperture is a professional software and the MBPr the ideal tool to run it on, it is hard to understand....

The interesting part is that Aperture swollows and extrem amount of memory, the moment you open it. While using it that gets even worse. It's not only the picture viewing which is a nightmare, it's also editing photos. I change the sharpness and I have to wait one or two seconds until I see the result, while on my lower powered old iMac the change happens instantly.

I called Apple Care and they stated that they NEVER heard of this issue. Then they forwarded me to a special hotline for Aperture. They also stated they NEVER heard of this issue. Then they gave me some generic tips like to reinstall the software and told me that if I would request further investigations on their side, they would charge me, as issues with Aperture would not be covered by Apple Care....

I have to say, I'm extremely unsatisfied with the way Apple deals with this issue and I'm so frustrated with the absolutely unusable performance of Aperture at the moment, that I stopped my photo editing. I really wonder if I should wait for Apple or rather change software and/or hardware.....

I did a couple of things to resolve this issue and it was very succesful for me from what I can tell so far.I would like to share this information with everyone. For the record, I recently bought a standard MBP with the i7 2.6GHz CPU, discrete GT650M GPU with DDR5 1GB, and the Hi-Res AG screen. I dropped in 16GB RAM from Crucial and a Samsung 830 512GB SSD. So technically, my MBP with the exception of the retina screen should be pretty identical to the tech inside the rMBP. The SSD I installed also uses the same ATA controller as the Apple OEM NAND in the rMBP.

Thanks to Linc Davis I used his suggestion to look for memory leaks within the Aperture application and my findings so far seem to dictate that he's probably right. I did some comparison with other editing software that I use and none of those exhibited the same behavior. The leaks detected with the "Aperture" process were exponentially higher than say "Photoshop" or "Elements." I think Apple has some code repair to do with Aperture. They rushed 64-bit and Retina support and somewhere the code got sloppy. As Linc also stated, it's tough to track a memory leak, but I find it strange that Aperture reports more leaks than other similar applications?

After doing quite a bit of research, because I do like Aperture a lot as a workflow engine, I had to try my best to fix this. Personally, I don't think this has anything to do with our hardware. Everyone on this thread has the maximum amount of memory supported by their MBP's, so there's not much more that can be done here. Also, the rest of the tech is high-quality IMO. The problem I believe is the order that things have flowed with OSX updates, released, the most recent Aperture update, and the move to 64-bit forced by Mountain Lion. That said, here's what I suggest:

1. Make sue that you have all of your updates for OSX, Aperture, and iPhoto if you're using a shared library.
2. Backup your machine with TM. When this is done, moved on to #3.
3. Download "Rember" and test your RAM just to make sure it passes all the checks.
4. Check SMART status and make sure your SSD is not reporting any I/O errors. If all is good, continue.
5. Download and install the latest version of ONYX 2.6.7.
6. Using ONYX, go to the "Cleaning" tab and do a generic cleanup of all the crap on your machine.
7. Using ONYX, go the "Maintenance" tab and repair permissions, run all the Scripts, and most important - rebuild Launch Services and the DYLD shared cache.
8. Reboot your machine.
9. Start Aperture holding down the OPTION and COMMAND keys. You will get prompted to REBUILD the database. Do this, not REPAIR (that does't really help). After the rebuild is complete, launch Aperture.
10. Within Aperture, go into PREVIEWS tab, and set "Share previews with iLife and iWork" to NEVER.
11. Go ahead and try... what do you think? For me, it runs much better, more reliable for sure.

Now for the last and most controversial topic that has to do with TRIM. Problem is, people with an rMBP can't disable TRIM support on their SSD from what I can tell. Maybe I'm wrong? However, call me crazy, but when I had the TRIM hack enabled for my SSD, I saw some screwy things happening with I/O during Aperture use. According to everything I read from extremely knowledgeable people of the subject, TRIM is one of those uncertain grey areas. In theory the tech sounds logical, but in reality, I'm not sure if it's impacting I/O by making it unreliable? After all, those commands between the OS and the ATA controller have to be perfect in every way possible - otherwise it will create problems. In the case of Apple usage with there OEM NAND, it seems to be engineered. Can't say the same for Trim Enabler?? Just use caution IMO. Like I said, for me, I saw some weirdness, mainly beachballs. As soon as I disabled the TRIM patch, they went away. If you have a quality SSD like a Samsung or Intel, just rely on the firmware's GC. Do what I do, just let your system sit at the login prompt idle once a week.

Another suggestion; use the PMSET command and change the default values for 'standbydelay" from 1600 to 86400 (24 hours). This will tell your MBP to stay in standby mode longer and only after 24 hours will it execute 'Standby' mode (which will write memory contents to the SSD - this just burns NAND P/E cycles unnecessarily). Don't know about you, but who the **** leaves their MBP in stanby mode for 30 days (based on Apple's logic)? I use it daily, so 24 hours fof sleep for me is fine. And, the MBP battery is great and can easily stay in sleep mode for at least 7 days untouched. Point is, less hibernation is better. The command is >>

> sudo pmset -a standbydelay 86400

Good luck!

Update to my last post on this issue. The freeze happended again, but it's not happening as much as it was previous to the suggested changes I posted. However, the more I research this problem, review of my crash reports, and based upon my usage of the MBP overall. I'm going to state that the issue has to be related to the discrete video card and Aperture. I used Photoshop for hours and hours doing even more advanced digital editing techniques and never once did the MBP beachball, freeze, lockup, or miss a beat. Even using Google Earth for a few hours (I use it to search for good photo ops), never once did it react badly.

There are A LOT of people with MBP's and iMac's complaining about this problem. That's not a mere coincidence if you ask me. They need to fix Aperture, because running the application in 32-bit mode in Lion and Snow Leopard did behave this way IMO. Apple has some code cleaning to do. If they read these posts and I should hope that they do, they need to listen and do what's right for the professional community. These days they only seem to care about the general consumers who care only about content consumption. However, if it wasn't for us artistic and creative individuals that use Macs to work on the nice content for general comsumption, the consumers would have nothing to look at.

Listen Apple, take your head out of the sand for once and listen to the pros that rely on your products to be creative! Fix Aperture already!!!

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I have same problem with my MacBook Pro Retina 15" , 16Gb ram, 500Gb SSDm. Aperture 3.4.3. is unusable while editing RAW photos from my Canon EOS 5D Mark III. I tought maybe the problem is storing photos on external hard drive, while library is on MacBook SSD, so i created a new Aperture Library on MB, imported RAW photos into the library (master files also on MacBook SSD), and got the same slow, choppy performance.

I use Scaled resolution - "More Space" option, and when i put it to "Best (Retina)", editing in Aperture gets faster, but still that is not what i was expecting from this kind of computer.

Also the problem seems to get worse over time while working in Aperture. Restarting the computer helps for a little while.

This is a third major problem i am experiencing with my MBPRetina15", i replaced my screen due to known ghosting problems (LG display vs Samsung), + i have a know problem with sound - skipping and crackling audio while on Intel Integraded GPU, and now this !

Still without official info from Apple regarding any of above problems. I'm dissapointed.

I was ready to order a refurbished retina MacBook Pro until I read this post. I was planning to purchase the rMBP 2.3ghz 8gb 256gb SSD version for photo editing on aperture while away from my desktop. But this issue is not good news. Perhaps I should wait. Thanks for sharing this info.

Just a bump of the OP.

I have the same issue:

40K Managed Aperture Library.

rMBP, 17 inch 2.7 i7, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB, 768GB SSD

Everything is up to date.

Can take 1-20 seconds to preview the next image.

Very frustrating.

I've noticed memory drops fast while previewing images, the bounces back when switching.

I've iLife preview sharing set to "on closing", and browsing in preveiw mode doesn't help.

How can these specs not be enough?

My gut says graphics card.

It's a shame, I like the aperture workflow, but I'll be looking for alternatives soon.