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2010 MBP slow after Yosemite

After installing 10.10, my MBP 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM is dreadfully slow. I have 200+GB of drive space left. The slowness is many forms. It boots noticeably slower, It launches apps slower, The apps themselves are laggy, and internet browsing is slower in safari and firefox.


An example of lag in apps would be Vienna when moving from one news article to another there I now get the pinwheel. MS word lags behind my typing. This did not happen before the upgrade.


Internet pages now have several seconds of lag before they even start to load. Even pages already visited.

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010)

Posted on Oct 17, 2014 7:19 AM

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65 replies

Oct 22, 2014 10:01 AM in response to DearestClaudio

DearestClaudio wrote:


Disabling FileVault immediately had a huge impact for me. Virtually all the issues that I was experiencing are solved. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to make FileVault encryption opt-out rather than opt-in, but it's pretty safe to say that it was a pretty big mistake on their part.

I'm curious.

How can Apple make File Vault "ON" as a default without giving you your encryption key or displaying the challenge questions needed to store the key with Apple as secondary backup?


I hope Apple isn't encrypting drives on accident. If a user forgets their password they're hosed!
Not only would that be a major violation of basic security protocol, the class action lawsuit would be torrential.

Oct 24, 2014 5:26 PM in response to Todd Getz

hi all


just to update that my machine after the SCM and PRAM reset after installing Yosemite, it is working. after week of playing around with Yosemite, i think the speed so far is comparable to Maverick.


i do hope Apple will hear us out for this slowness issue and quickly come out with solution, Yosemite is not a bad OS in term of the UI revamp, hope all of the apple fans out there can really running it with no issues.


after so many years of using Macbook Pro, this release is the most challenging experience i ever had.



thanks

Oct 25, 2014 10:27 AM in response to Todd Getz

Same issue of slowness after installing Yosemite. I installed it the first day it became available to the public. My iMAC 3.06 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 Ram is slower than then the original Mac I bought back in 1984 ..sheesh.

The FileVault is turned OFF and always has been.

The Accessibility, Reduce transparency is checked.


My old Mac Book is suffering the same fate.


It sure seems like Yosemite is designed to force you to buy new Macs to keep the old speed you had before Yosemite. Sorry to say that but hey, tell me how I am wrong ok ?


Also sorry to say, but the new look reminds me of how unimpressed I used to be as a kid when opening a box of cracker jacks and seeing how crappy the toy was.

Oct 28, 2014 4:33 AM in response to Stekor

Early 2009 13 Inch MacBook (I think this is the oldest MacBook that can run Yosemite). 6GB RAM. Over 300GB free drive space.


This is a follow-up since my last posting when I indicated that ticking the 'Reduce Transparency' sped things up a lot from taking (perceptively) 20X longer to do things to only taking twice as long. I neglected to mention that I was running with FileVault turned on. I need it on for my business.


After further use, the Mac became slightly slower, but still nowhere near as bad as it initially was after upgrading from Mavericks to Yosemite. A reset of the SMC and PRAM provided some temporary improvement. But still the whole Mac seemed too slow. I suspect the SMC & PRAM reset would need to be done maybe twice a day to make the Mac tolerable.


After hearing of others' success with SSD, I thought I'd try something similar. I can't afford an SSD nor even find one the size I need (1TB) so I installed a 2.5 inch Seagate ST1000LM014 (1TB 2.5" Solid State Hybrid (SSHD) 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s). The result was that I am now back to normal.


The install details (In case it's relevant to anyone)

  1. I used Time Machine to backup my drive.
  2. Removed the 1TB HDD (Which is partitioned into 3 logical drives of around 475/475/50 GB).
  3. Replaced HDD with a 1TB SSHD (Seagate ST1000LM014).
  4. Booted to the Snow Leopard DVD and reformatted the SSHD to partitioning same as previous HDD.
  5. Used the same boot DVD to start the restore from Time Machine, which failed to proceed. The error log which auto-appeared on-screen said the restore process can't write receipts to the DVD (Of course it can't, but why would it need to?) so I rebooted the Mac from Mavericks on a FireWire HDD, and started the 'restore from Time Machine archive' again.
  6. The data restored OK. But the backup wasn't encrypted, and now FileVault was turned off. Not surprisingly, the Mac seemed even zipper at this point than previously with Mavericks with FileVault on. Launching 25 various apps didn't slow it down at all.
  7. I turned on FileVault which took about a day or 2 non-stop to encrypt the drive, but that was OK since I could still do my work on it simultaneously.
  8. When FileVault had completed encryption, the Mac was running about the same as I remember it prior to the Yosemite upgrade – possibly even faster.
  9. Previously, with Yosemite running on the HDD, Activity Monitor showed high memory pressure and 20 to 40 GB of Swap Used. Now with Yosemite running on the SSHD, Activity Monitor shows low memory pressure (stays green) and under 300 MB (currently only 91 MB) of Swap Used.


The SSHD has 8GB of Flash space which, due to disk encryption being turned on, may prematurely wear out. If it does, I expect the Mac to slow down again (Time will tell). However, for my sanity, this is the only short term option for me.


Although the SSHD has a throughput capacity of 6.0Gb/s, I think my Mac can only handle half that so it's not making full use of the SSD's capability. Even so, it works well so far (2 days) and I recommend this option to anyone else desperate for a fix for the price of a new drive.

Nov 11, 2014 5:42 AM in response to Todd Getz

OSX 10.10 very laggy on my MacBook Pro 15" (2,66, mid 2010). Reducing Transparency seems to help a little, but not much. Compared to Mavericks, that is.

Time Machine is a complete mess, i only can browse through time if i open "Macintosh HD" and then open Time Machine, otherwise i cannot browse (see discussion: Time Machine not working with Yosemite)


Phone Calls via handoff with an LED cinema Display attached not working properly at all, allways using internal mic so nobody can hear you (see discussion: Phone calls over OS X 10.10 Yosemite with LED Display uses MacBook's internal mic only)


And a ton of other bugs ...


All my hopes go for the 10.10.1 Update! If that doesn't boost up performance and fixes most of the bugs, i am ready to go back to mavericks ... which i am not looking forward to.

Nov 11, 2014 8:53 AM in response to kjl3000

I posted earlier here about slowdown issues after Yosemite. A few days ago I doubled the RAM in my iMac and it got the machine back to about the same speed as before Yosemite. Then on by old MacBook, I doubled the RAM and replaced the hard drive with a new 7200rpm drive and it got my speed back to almost like it was before Yosemite. So..for me, Yosemite was not free.

Nov 18, 2014 2:18 PM in response to Todd Getz

Funny how things turn out sometimes.

I spent the last two or three weeks installing 10.10 on all but one of the machines under my control, and must in all honesty vouch that no previous OS X version was ever this easy to deploy and ready to run flawlessly, with no tweaking at all.


In my own experience, which I'll concede is limited to about 10-12 different machines I personally use and/or manage, Yosemite installed, and runs to date, silk as smooth, piece o' candy, faster and more fluid than Mavericks. Each and every one of the Macs I touch almost daily, from the oldest and slowest of the bunch, early-2009 MacBook Pro 13", or the early-2009 iMac Core2 with 4GB RAM, all the way up to to the latest Core i7 Retinas with 16GB RAM, with different iMacs and Mac minis in between... you name it, I installed it, and it just went up like... bam, done, sky.


Well, almost. Nearly. You know which one failed, albeit with just a minor glitch?

The most recent and fastest MacBook Pro Retina 13" with Core i7 and 16GB RAM is the one that I'm not entirely happy with! Mind me here, it runs great, stable, fast, with a great feedback under my fingers... pity, it just gets dizzy at shutdown, when it drags for a good 30-40 second (with a seemingly frozen progress indicator), after which it then shuts off to dark perfectly fine. There's surely a reason for this, although I couldn't pin the behaviour to any specific file.

And while this MacBook Pro is the only one I'm not happy with, it's not the only one of the pool that had to get content with an installation on top of the previous 10.9.5: all others, too, didn't qualify for a clean install of OS X 10.10.

Now, lacking any more tricks off my hat, that's the only thing left to try to solve the time-drag before shutdown, a brand new installation, or (even better) a complete wipe of the internal FLASH memory before a new install straight from the emergency netboot.


Roger and out, re-install will commence in a few minutes! Wish you all had been as lucky as I've been.

Nov 18, 2014 4:20 PM in response to rbbrnck

...and here comes my own troubleshooting, too.


After I swapped things in and out of folders, in order to avoid third-party services and processes to run automatically at login, I placed again all bits and pieces in the right place one by one to check and observe which one might be causing the timewheel freeze at shutdown.


Found it, it's a popular anti-virus engine; quit it before shutdown, machine folds in a matter of seconds, way faster than with Mavericks, but if it's still on and running, it just drags for half a minute, or slightly more.


After having reproduced the flaw on another machine (as the one I'm having the problem with was indeed the only one in my pool to run it), I went onto the support file of the anti-virus. Other users are describing the same symptom, and there's a lot of activity in researching what causes the problem, which is the reason why I'm not quoting this application by name... it's good, it's solid, perfectly functional and greatly supported, they don't really deserve to be flamed for something that doesn't seem to be a fault in their own architecture.


Too bad, 10.10.1 dripped down this evening, I was secretly hoping it would have solved the issue, but it doesn't.

For the time being, I'll run the anti-virus engine selectively, on specific actions and instances, and quit it before shutdown if I'm in a hurry.


And, how comes, I don't have a problem in accepting a faulty behaviour when I know what causes it. I can keep it close to me, I can live with it, it won't bother me (to some extent, since performance isn't affected at all, just shutdown, which can be avoided by... just stopping the machine). It's actually not knowing what causes it, this or any other malfunction, to make it into a(nother) sleepless night into the quest for reasons.


By the way, selectively loading and unloading services and processes was the step I took after having re-installed Yosemite from the boot off the emergency partition (which, of course, didn't help at all).


Hope this can help someone else with yet another place where to poke in search of hints and (if luck helps) answers.

And now, even my last machine with Yosemite runs (and shutdowns) at blazing speeds. Lucky me? Not exactly.

Given on how many different machines Yosemite is providing me the same good performance, despite severe limitations in processing power, RAM and disk storage, i can't help but say that I see and appreciate a job well done when I see one. The very machines that now whirr merrily with 10.10.(1) were unmercifully sweating and trying to climb the hill with Mavericks and, much worse even in terms of overhead, Mountain Lion, and if you wanna shout curses to operating systems I believe there are a lot of better candidates to turn your anger to.

Jan 19, 2015 4:01 PM in response to Todd Getz

I've been monitoring this post for some time and was scared to install Yosemite on my MBP Mid-2010 with 4GB RAM, original 5400 RPM HD. I finally decided to give it a try when Mavericks started to act up.


I've only had to play with it for a few days, but I'm actually "OK" with the performance so far. I think it may actually run a little faster?


I mainly use my laptop for browsing, email and iDevice backups. FileVault is turned off.

2010 MBP slow after Yosemite

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