Q: Is Mavericks making your machine run slow?

Stridr8808 wrote:

 

John Galt, am I missing something?  For the late 2009 Mac Mini, Apple lists the maximum RAM as 4 GB. See http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4432#2 . If they're wrong on this, that would be great...

Apple only specifies RAM configurations that were available at the time the Mac was released. Check OWC's website - if they say 8 GB will work, it will.

Mavericks will run well in 4 GB though, due to the memory compression algorithm that was not present in ML. Apple's claim that memory compression will result in 4 GB effectively performing as if it were 6 GB is accurate, slightly conservative actually, in my testing of it. 8 GB will perform as if it were 12 GB.

"Mavericks I believe is the reason Adobe Flash doesn't work properly with Safari on my Macbook Mid-2009 13"."

In case you didn't know, there's a new "feature" in Safari under Mavericks that is supposed to conserve power. You might sometimes notice a message in the Flash content window if you happen to move the mouse cursor over the right place. I found myself having to constantly reload pages with Flash content until I found where to turn this new feature off.

Peferences->Advanced->Internet Plug-Ins->Stop Plug-In to Save Power

Uncheck that box and Flash will load immediately.

Since I almost always work with my MacBook plugged in, the power-saving feature is unnecessary.

I will say that the main issue seems to be leaving my computer on and having it go to sleep then wake up.  With Mountain Lion I could do this pretty much in perpetuity and day 30 would be as fast as after a reboot, but Mavericks seems to slow down over the course of sleep/wake cycles.

Once rebooted things are basically back to normal.

I found that repairing the 'permissions' sorted out the 'slow' problem.

I ran a 'verify permissions' from Disk Utility and discovered that about a quadrilion files were looking in the wrong direction, and once I had run a 'repair permissions' on them everything ran as normal again.

I didn't need to run a clean install.

I also did the safe erase of hard drive before installing mavericks.  It takes about 1 hour for 500 GB hard drive

I did the update on a 27" fall 2013 iMac (base model). Everything was fine right at the start, but my mac got slower and slower with time. Restarts did next to nothing. The comparison someone else made was 'ten year old windows laptop'. Even internet browsing dropped to a snails pace and it would take sometimes 10-20 seconds just to open a new tab. It would take a similar amount of time to do simple things, like allow you to scroll down a word doc. Bottom line: UNUSABLE. Something to note is that I could hear the hard drive operating at full whack all the time, regardless of what I was or was not doing.

I went into disk utility and did the 'identify' and 'repair permissions' options and what a difference!  The initial 'identify' took about 45 mins and there was an endless list of problems, 90% of which were related to iBooks, but with a good number of others.

Once the repair completed, my machine is back to normal. I think. I need to do a restart and really make sure, but the dreaded spinning colour disc is not popping up every time I try to do things and Adobe LIghtroom is operating at great pace once again. My hard drive is also not chattering away constantly and the Activity Monitor shows that the machine is under little load.

Whether I decide to do a clean installation remains to be seen, but if you have not tried disc utility, I strongly recommend doing so. Its a night and day difference on my machine.

Sheggan wrote:

 

I also did the safe erase of hard drive before installing mavericks.

I'm guessing you mean a "Secure Erase"?  That's only necessary if you are planning on getting rid of the hard drive and want to ensure that there is no recoverable data remaining on it.

Hello to all. I did all the above, clean install with erasing hard disk using a flash drive. Also upgraded memory from 4gb to 12 gb. Anyway try everything. Conclusion my system was not faster or better.

Guest what an upgrade to Maverick just came in and after the install, guest what again, my system was up and running as fast as with ML. Thanks Apple it was about time. Hope it works with all of you that had problems.

Hi, I'm a totally new iMac user , and after reading about Mavericks I find this really scary . I purchased in April an iMac i7 etc . Primarily for 3d and photo work . I started with OS X 10.8.2 , then 10.8.3 stopped there as my bro installed 10.8.4 and had more spinning balls of death than I had with 10.8.3 . Still within 6months , it then went to 10.8.5 and then Mavericks .

Ok , my fault for not reading more about Apple products before I/we switched from PC to Mac . I for one in the past read nothing more than good things about Apple . Saved for along time to get one . Glad I also have the 3year insurance . Found Aperture was really brush lagging , support couldn't sort it , couldn't even link there computer to mine with my following the supports step by step to be able to look in the system  . . .

Not knocking Apple , as most seem to get something's sorted . Seems like if you do not have guys like " ALL "in this forum , then your stuck paying out to get sorted . Hm . . .

Must admit , not over impressed yet , lovely screen 27inch . Just optimistic , about downloading from within the app update on the iMac . As I / we have no clue about OS X10.8.5 let alone Mavericks may do/upset . Hence the reason for researching what problems people are having . Good that you know what you are talking about and good for me to follow the forum . Other than installing Poser Pro , Aperture , Final Cut Pro , Pixelmator and photoshop Editor , I have only installed Flash .

Think I best wait a while to see where Mavericks go's , as reading the forums it appears Apple might just get their act together like they used to. Here's hoping  . . .as all the updates now showing I must have Mavericks installed to update all others . . .

SKrace wrote:

 

Hi, I'm a totally new iMac user , and after reading about Mavericks I find this really scary .

You do realize the only people who post here are the people having problems. The other Millions have no problems at all.

There is nothing wrong with Maveri is for many millions of users. Only people with issues come here and in number represent only a tiny amount of Mavericks users. You will rarely read a positive comment in a troubleshooting forum. If you took this as a representation of all Mac users then you would never even buy a Mac. The Windows forums are even worse.

As I say, the vast majority have no issues. I have five Macs running faster with Mavericks than any previous OSX and no glitches.

But if you had issues with a past ML update then I would have your Mac sen to by an Ape Store ASAP. As this is indicative of an issue which is not normal.

Cheers

Pete

petermac87 wrote:

 

There is nothing wrong with Maveri is for many millions of users. Only people with issues come here and in number represent only a tiny amount of Mavericks users. You will rarely read a positive comment in a troubleshooting forum. If you took this as a representation of all Mac users then you would never even buy a Mac. The Windows forums are even worse.

 

As I say, the vast majority have no issues. I have five Macs running faster with Mavericks than any previous OSX and no glitches.

 

But if you had issues with a past ML update then I would have your Mac sen to by an Ape Store ASAP. As this is indicative of an issue which is not normal.

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Absolutely. Given enough monkeys and enough time, anything is fixable. Sorry, I simply couldn't resist....

.

I would have your Mac sen to by an Ape Store ASAP. As this is indicative of an issue which is not normal.

Lol. Oh I see. Typos! Darn Samsung Android phone I'm on and that cursed Auto Correct. Ape=Apple. Samsung are clever little devils. Lol.

Although the advice may not be lost on the poster I replied to!

Merry Christmas

Pete

Haha, same to you, Sir. I think they Apple should rename it the Ape Store now.