Yosemite running very slowly on new MacBook Pro

Yosemite really wants more RAM and an SSD. You can upgrade both on that machine.

The warranty entitles you to complimentary phone support for the first 90 days of ownership.

One of the myths that circulate on this site is the myth that the current version of OS X always needs to more than 4 GB of memory to run well. The myth is based on nothing except the fact that some people keep repeating it. Apple is today selling new Macs with 4 GB of memory that can never be upgraded after they leave the factory. Those Macs come with Yosemite preinstalled, and it can never be downgraded to an older version. So if you were to believe the myth, you would also believe that Apple knows that it's selling products that are permanently crippled right out of the box, no matter how they're used. Read this discussion before you spend money on memory that you may not need.

Some users do need more than 4 GB of memory for full performance. They are running memory-intensive applications, such as photo or video editors, or they're running many programs concurrently, or they have more than one account logged in at the same time. Whether you're one of those users can be determined, in part, by observing the level of memory pressure in the Memory tab of the Activity Monitor window. If the memory pressure graph always stays in the green zone, then a shortage of memory is not causing the problem.

Even if memory pressure is high, that doesn't necessarily mean that adding more memory will help. If one or more processes has a memory leak—a kind of bug—then adding memory, no matter how much, won't help. It will merely delay the onset of the problem, perhaps only by a few minutes or less. That is very likely the case if you already have more than 4 GB.

There are literally thousands of posts virtually identical to yours here on Apple Support Communities. Your machine was designed in 2012 to run OS X 10.7 "Lion", not OS X 10.10 "Yosemite". Your operating system is shutting parts of itself down as it struggles to make RAM available. Your machine is upgradeable and upgrading the RAM and/or hard drive is perfectly safe and will not void your warranty.

What is not safe is running dangerous Terminal commands posted by anonymous strangers on the internet. The thread that Linc cited even includes the most dangerous command of all. With that command, one wrong keystroke can delete all of the data on your machine, including any external drives. Even without that command or the Terminal, you could follow Linc's advice and delete all of your e-mail.

Rest assured however, that if that happens, other people here on Apple Support Communities will be here to help. Just remember one very important detail. All of Linc's copy-and-pasted boilerplate instructions start with the line "Back up all data". He's not kidding.

The 2 places I’ve seen recommended most to buy reliable RAM are below. I have purchased RAM several times from Other World Computing and have always been very satisfied with the product and service. They have on-line instructions on how to replace the RAM. OWC has also tested RAM above what Apple states is the maximum. I now have 6GB installed on a early 2008 iMac supposedly limited to 4 GB and noticed an improvement.

Crucial

Other World Computing

Linc Davis wrote:

One of the myths that circulate on this site is the myth that the current version of OS X always needs to more than 4 GB of memory to run well.

Wasn't it Bill Gates who famously said: "You can never be too rich or have too much RAM!?! 😁

MlchaelLAX wrote:

Wasn't it Bill Gates who famously said: "You can never be too rich or have too much RAM!?! 😁

I think you are talking about the quote "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need", but Bill Gates never actually said it.

etresoft wrote:

MlchaelLAX wrote:

Wasn't it Bill Gates who famously said: "You can never be too rich or have too much RAM!?! 😁

I think you are talking about the quote "640K is more memory than anyone will ever need", but Bill Gates never actually said it.

It is a joke, which is noted by the Laughing Emoticon afterwards...

It is a "play on words" on the oft-criticized statement: "You can never be too rich or too thin!"

I was making satirical fun of Linc's contrarian viewpoint against the plausibility of adding more RAM!

MlchaelLAX wrote:

It is a joke, which is noted by the Laughing Emoticon afterwards...

It is a "play on words" on the oft-criticized statement: "You can never be too rich or too thin!"

I was making satirical fun of Linc's contrarian viewpoint against the plausibility of adding more RAM!

Hello again MichaelLAX,

I know all that. But your post got me thinking and I did some research. While I was always annoyed that DOS took so much of it for its own use, leaving so little for 3rd party developers, I think the 640KB limit was a good thing. While we try to explain to people how modern OS X manages memory so well that people don't need to interfere, there is no denying that Windows has always ran faster and on less RAM than OS X on equivalent hardware. These days, our only hope to reverse the situation is the inevitable merger of OS X with the more RAM-restricted iOS.

I have never had an experience where adding more RAM was the wrong thing to do.

Anecdotally speaking, every Mac I have ever owned, has outlived its capacity to utilize as much RAM as I would have liked to install in it, including the Mac SE/30 which capped out at 64MB (using very expensive, at that time, 8MB SIMMs).

When it comes to the 4GB soldered Mac Mini, so long as the buyer is adequately informed of their inability to add more RAM, it offers "appliance" users a nice package at a nice price.

I am even considering buying one for my accountant who needs to do a forensic project for me, and all of my preliminary work has been done by me on Quicken 2007 for Mac.

He is currently limited to Windows machines, and I am shocked to discover that my following the official Intuit instructions on converting my Quicken for Mac file to Quicken for PC injects multiple random severe errors in categorization in the resulting Quicken for PC file; rendering the PC file unusable!

A 4GB Mac Mini, at $500, will be much cheaper than his having to re-input my workflow on his Windows machine!

MlchaelLAX wrote:

I have never had an experience where adding more RAM was the wrong thing to do.

I do. I have a 2011 MacBook Pro that I upgraded to an SSD with 16 GB RAM just so it would run Yosemite and my virtual machines. Very soon after my warranty expired, the keyboard started having problems. Some of the keys on the left side of the keyboard don't want to register. They will work, if I type hard enough, but I often found myself missing 's' letters.

For a while, I was telling everyone complaining about Yosemite to upgrade the 4 GB and get and SSD. But then I felt guilty about that. What if someone dumped $400 into an old MacBook Pro only to see the logic board flake out a few months later? That money would have been better spent on a new machine. I even would up buying a new MacBook Pro. The keyboard was my primary motivation, but I must admit that a modern machine has lots of nice features to it. I just wish Apple had made those features work on the older ones too. The whole "legacy airport" issue is a real annoyance. And the truth is, aside from the keyboard and the lack of OS compatibility, the upgraded 2011 machine seems to be just as fast as the 2014 machine.

When it comes to the 4GB soldered Mac Mini, so long as the buyer is adequately informed of their inability to add more RAM, it offers "appliance" users a nice package at a nice price.

I am not sure that people are being adequately informed. I don't have any experience with a RAM-limited new machine to really be able to say. But I would be worried about someone later trying to run more RAM-intensive software. Sometimes I take digs at Linc's insistence that "Apple wouldn't sell no junk", but I can't really say for sure. I have seen what happens when an older RAM-limited machine runs Yosemite and it isn't pretty. 3 Ghz on a 2009 machine feels a lot like 200 Mhz on a 1999 machine. I give Apple the benefit of the doubt that they have been some improvements made since 2009, but still, I have seen it with my own eyes.

These days, you can expect to get 3 solid years out of even base configurations if you stick to the Mac App Store. But after that, you are on your own. If you don't know what will happen in 2-3 years, I suggest a build-to-order with more RAM.

etresoft wrote:

Sometimes I take digs at Linc's insistence that "Apple wouldn't sell no junk", but I can't really say for sure.

I stopped giving his posts any credence after he incorrectly insulted my professionalism and would not retract it...