You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Is Mavericks making your machine run slow?

I downloaded Mavericks this afternoon and installed it on my iMac i7 24GB RAM Everything seems to be slow in transitions from one app to another and many apps stall for severeal minutes as if the processor is playing catch-up. Thoughts? Should I just reinstall the update?

Posted on Oct 22, 2013 5:12 PM

Reply
324 replies

Oct 25, 2013 8:05 AM in response to Brian Campbell3

I have Mac mini i5 late 2012 (which is quite NEW machine, I think). After upgrading from 10.8.5 to 10.9 evarything is slow, I see pizza almost all the time. Boot time is several minutes ⚠, I must wait about a minute more than on 10.8.5 to see the Dock... ***?! Streaming videos over my WiFi are laggy now, Mail is slow like ****. I did the persmissions repair in the Disk Utility, but I don't see any progress with system speed. I guess this should't happen on such a new computer. I'm disappointed 😟 I don't have time to back up and install the system from scratch or downgrade to previous OS X version. This behaviour is annoying and it's restraining me in my work.

Oct 25, 2013 8:13 AM in response to Brian Campbell3

WoW. Too disappointed. I should have learned my lesson, but no. I do the backups/clone and always have a bootable escape plan. However, I forgot how painful the recoveries can be. Especially, when you have multiple booting partitions.


I have a 24 inch 2009 and 17 inch mid 2010. I have already rolled back the Macbook Pro. The loss of Expresscard eSata access crippled my external drive access. That is unacceptable. The system ran reasonable well with that exception.


Both machines have 8gb RAM, but the iMac's 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo with 1067 doesn't process as well as the 2.66GHz Core i7 with identical RAM.


ARD users will find a multitude of issues with interface bugs and serious lagging even before the memory is exhausted and running any memory pressure.


The performance was my reason for upgrading. Perhaps, the issues will be resolved. However, this is not ready for prime time on 2-3 year old machines. Too many disadvantages outweighing the broken promises of improved performance and more socially integrated OS features.


Sorry. I'm an early adopter, but these issues that hamper both work and play make this OS a nonstarter. I'll be rolling back the iMac as soon as I can stomach the wait of a full bit for bit recovery. I found that recoverying just the one partition failed on the MBP as the recovery partiion was still 10.9. I removed the recovery partition from 10.7 and 10.8 as they have been known to present issues in juggling quad boot partitioned drives.


My advice, even though I didn't take it myself (this new download now for free cought me off guard) JUST WAIT until they fix most of the issues that the early adopters suffer through first.


My only concern right now is that there may not be enough incentive for 3rd party providers to go back and get the 2-3 year old machines interoperable in light of the newer Thunderbolt and lack of 17inch MBP's since production stopped.

Older machines will need the benefit of the fusion drive technology that I'm reasonable certain is why my MBP ran well on 10.9 (except for ARD and its memory leaks and bad interface changes) since having an 8gb solid state onboard a 750GB set of platters.


Hope that was useful to someone.

Oct 25, 2013 8:17 AM in response to Brian Campbell3

I reinstalled with Recovery mode and it is faster now. Also moved my old server info /Library/Server to /Library/Server.backup and deleted server app. I reinstalled the server app but I haven't reset up server because it seems that the sharing is working just fine without it for now. I do need to test it again later for work but wondering if that was causing the major Mavericks slowdown.

Oct 25, 2013 8:31 AM in response to Brian Campbell3

I had extreme slowness with Mavericks on my mid-2011 27-inch iMac, 16 GB, 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5.

After much troubleshooting, what finally worked was repairing permissions.

I booted from another volume (the recovery disk should work fine for this) then used disk utility to repair permissions on the slow volume.


Here are the steps, for those who might need them:

Apple menu > Restart. Hold down the option key. Select "Recovery-10.9" when it comes up. (You might have to use keyboard arrow keys to select it, then press Return.)

When OS X Utilities appears, Click on Disk Utility then Continue.

On the left side, click on the hard drive where you installed Mavericks.

In the main window, click Repair Disk Permissions. It may take at least several minutes to complete, maybe much longer. Let it finish.

(I also did Verify Disk. It reported "The volume appears to be OK." so I did not click Repair Disk.)

When it's finished, go to Apple menu > Restart.

For me, the extreme slowness was gone after repairing permissions.

(I do occasionally still see some slowness the very first time an application is opened after installing Mavericks.)


It's possible that just repairing permissions without booting from another partition would work. My personal preference is to do it from another volume so I have the Repair Disk option.


This may not work for everyone, of course. I also installed Mavericks on a different partition that I had just erased. This was on the same computer. I never saw any of the slowness when I booted from that partition.

Oct 25, 2013 2:41 PM in response to Brian Campbell3

I installed Mavericks on my late 2010 aluminum Macbook Pro. I upgraded this from running Snow Leopard. When I turned on my Mac with Snow Leopard it took 2-5 sec for the computer to load and come to the main screen. Now with Mavericks I see the gray Apple screen with the circle going round and round it it takes at least 15-20 sec for my Macbook to load. Some of my apps are slower to open as well. Is anyone finding this and is there a fix to this?

Is Mavericks making your machine run slow?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.