El Capitan running slowly?

A big mess on my Macbook white late 2009 forced to go back to lion 10.7 i think apple is doing that so people buy new computers that's not fair

Ermmm... it is FAIR!

At the end of the day, they don't make a Cent from OS upgrades, but they cost millions to develop and support! The biggest problem with Macs, from Apple's point of view, is that they are just too good: They are very reliable - even the battery life on my 6 year-old MacBook Pro is still probably 75% of how it was when I first got it - and they are timeless in their design. They are so well built that they don't fall apart (like 3 successive Sony Vaio's did before I switched) and Hard Disks don't fail. They don't get virusses that wipe your hard disk, so you feel compelled to start again, afresh and they are fully upgradeable for years, without loss of function.

People like us, who were the 'Early Adopters' and evangelists that got everyone else to switch, are now the thorn in Apple's side, as we never buy anything new! So we now COST them money, rather than make it any more (especially when we put potential new customers off, with our complaints on these forums!)

Having said all that - forcing people to upgrade by rendering their old machines unusable - is the most unpleasant form of marketing in existence... Much better to TEMPT people to buy new machines, with exciting new features, not available on older ones... Thunderbolt could have been the temptation for me, but it's pants as no-one makes any peripherals that exploit its advantages and, within weeks of its announcement, USB 3:0 was launched and almost as fast! If I could have obtained a Thunderbolt memory card reader 4 years ago, I would have updated my MBP there and then!

So, come on Apple - give us some hardware that will tempt us to change, rather than annoy us all by killing our trusty old machines... At this moment in time, for me, my MBP gives no advantage over a modern PC (in fact it is seriously compromised, with all sorts of bugs popping up with 3rd party software, as the OS gets ever more complex and Apple-centric - e.g. the Adobe Creative Cloud issue that surfaced recently!) So, if my MBP dies today, I suspect I will spend half as much on a PC that will perform much better than what I am used to 😉

Vapresto wrote:

Ermmm... it is FAIR!

At the end of the day, they don't make a Cent from OS upgrades, but they cost millions to develop and support! The biggest problem with Macs, from Apple's point of view, is that they are just too good: They are very reliable - even the battery life on my 6 year-old MacBook Pro is still probably 75% of how it was when I first got it - and they are timeless in their design. They are so well built that they don't fall apart (like 3 successive Sony Vaio's did before I switched) and Hard Disks don't fail. They don't get virusses that wipe your hard disk, so you feel compelled to start again, afresh and they are fully upgradeable for years, without loss of function.

People like us, who were the 'Early Adopters' and evangelists that got everyone else to switch, are now the thorn in Apple's side, as we never buy anything new! So we now COST them money, rather than make it any more (especially when we put potential new customers off, with our complaints on these forums!)

Having said all that - forcing people to upgrade by rendering their old machines unusable - is the most unpleasant form of marketing in existence... Much better to TEMPT people to buy new machines, with exciting new features, not available on older ones... Thunderbolt could have been the temptation for me, but it's pants as no-one makes any peripherals that exploit its advantages and, within weeks of its announcement, USB 3:0 was launched and almost as fast! If I could have obtained a Thunderbolt memory card reader 4 years ago, I would have updated my MBP there and then!

So, come on Apple - give us some hardware that will tempt us to change, rather than annoy us all by killing our trusty old machines... At this moment in time, for me, my MBP gives no advantage over a modern PC (in fact it is seriously compromised, with all sorts of bugs popping up with 3rd party software, as the OS gets ever more complex and Apple-centric - e.g. the Adobe Creative Cloud issue that surfaced recently!) So, if my MBP dies today, I suspect I will spend half as much on a PC that will perform much better than what I am used to 😉

You would be best to give Feedback where it will be heard by Apple and not just other Apple users.

Cheers

Pete

Yes, I know, but then so do Apple 😉

I don't think Apple is using planned obsolescence on the Mac. A lot of the new products have less horse power than some previous models, the Mac mini being a prime example. The Late 2012 model of the mini is far and away a more powerful Mac than the Late 2014. So I highly doubt that Apple is doing any of this on purpose.

I have given feedback to Apple and the message you get is basically "no one is going to read this, but thanks"

I don't like the use the word "hate" because I think people overuse it.... but I HATE El Capitan. What a worthless, horrible, unfunctional, frustrating operating system!!!!! I got so sick of it the first time after installing it over 10.6.8 that I completely cleared my hard drive and did a clean install. Still horrible performance! And in such simple tasks too. How ridiculous is it that I have issues simply copying a PDF from one folder to the next. What used to take 1/2 a second now takes 30 seconds, it's insane! The pinwheel is constantly spinning for any little operation. The Adobe CC programs are like using dial up under this OS.

I'm so fed up with my Mac and have been steering any friends or co-workers away from getting them as home computers. GREAT job Apple.

Well, this is strange. I've got a MacBook Pro Mid 2009 and after installing El Capitan (not a clean install, just a normal install) it is running as fast as it never was. I had beachballs before I installed El Capitan, not ridiculous often but sometimes, and after installing the new OS I see no beachballs anymore, only sometimes when a read a DVD. So I guess your problem lies not with El Capitan itself, but with your specific hardware/software situation.

OR... you could look that this post is 20 pages deep, there are hundreds of others online, websites devoted entirely to problems about El Capitan, and horrible ratings for it online.

But yeah, it's my machine 😁

The one that ran perfect before I installed Crapitan.

The user base of El Capitan is 89 million. If there would be really a serious problem with El Capitan there would not be 20 pages, but at least 20.000.

So I assume there is something wrong with your hardware or software. I suggest you do a clean install and do not reinstall your software before you know for sure there is no hardware problem. It can be anything, from CMOS settings to hard disk failure. If you get a smoothy running system try to reinstall your software step by step.

I just posted that above... I've already done a clean install. And if you also read I said in addition to this one single 20 page thread, there are 100's and 100's more online. In this very apple discussion forum there are a ridiculous amount of posts about many different problems with El Capitan.

I've been using Mac's since the beginning. Long time fan. NOT a fan of Apple in the last few years. The last 3 OS releases have been very badly received.

Glad to hear you had luck. The majority however have not.

Here was one simple search, note the related searches at the bottom:

Well, does the fact that I have a perfectly working machine under El Capitan proves that the problem does not lie with El Capitan itself? One counterexample should be enough. Logic dictates that if the OS itself is crappy, there would be not one working machine. So your problem is probably caused by some hardware or software problem or a combined problem. Did you had a working machine with a clean install before reinstalling all your software?

I have to say I hate this social media culture of "if I don't have a problem, everyone that does must be an idiot"

The fact is that El Capitan is the catalyst for so many people's Macs to become virtually unusable... Maybe the failures are other components or software, but in all these cases the problems started (or got significantly worse) the moment they 'upgraded' to EC...

My background is in the car industry and I recall an instance of contaminated fuel causing lots of cars to fail: The fuel companies tried to blame the car owners for not maintaining their cars properly, as the contaminated fuel mostly only caused catastrophic failures in cars that were a bit 'tired', hadn't been serviced regularly, etc. It was true that those cars were a bit neglected, but the fact remained that the fuel CAUSED the failure and some of those cars may have gone on for years and years if they had only ever used good quality fuel...

In my opinion, the 'contaminated fuel' is El Capitan... I suspect all the testing has been done on sparkly new machines, with only Apple software, excess RAM, all up to date and from clean installs, but 'real' users (especially commercial ones like myself) sometimes prefer other software, as it helps us be more productive (precisely what we got a Mac for in the first place). El Capitan seems to trigger a multitude of problems in any machine that isn't in 'perfect health' and/or has any non-Apple software (e.g. the problem with Adobe Creative Cloud - which Mac users have had to switch to in their thousands, because Apple killed off its own (superior) alternative - Aperture).

I switched to Macs at the same time as Microsoft launched 'Vista' - I have a very very strong feeling of deja-vu with El Capitan! I remember the pain of 'downgrading' back to XP Pro, to get a useful machine back again!

No, I'm not saying that you are an idiot.

I'm trying to help.

I have BTW running Adobe's Lightroom on my machine, because Aperture was terminated. On my MacBook this third party-software does run smoothly under El Capitain, in fact it is now as fast as I have *never* seen on my Mid 2009 MacBook Pro.

Of course a new OS can give problems with any kind of third party-software. You can either choose to determine the problem or switch back to your TM backup before you installed El Capitan.

You summed it up perfectly Vapresto. I'm not some "NOOB" to setting up Apple products like Walther seems to think. Yes Walther, I did a step by step install of my software. I had the same mail issues right away, spotlight issues, finder problems, delay doing any little thing, sidebar folders disappearing... among the many problems. I'm connected to a server so could that have problems with El Capitan? Maybe. The point is I had none of these issues before. No co-workers on previous OS gens are having these issues... besides all the issues one had with Yosemite last year. Clearly badly written software at it's core.

Mac used to be a computer that just worked like Steve Jobs envisioned. They have always been a work horse for me and ran the Adobe programs smoothly and effortlessly. Now I literally want to throw this pile out the window. Not being able to do your job is beyond frustrating.

I didn't suffer any of that, wonder why?