Questions dealing with performance of Apple hardware or software, especially about troubleshooting or improving poor performance.
2
votes
4answers
708 views
Retina Macbook Pro now has faster battery drain
I have disabled Hibernation mode and Deep Sleep mode, I also keep the charger plugged in about a week before removing it if I want to go somewhere with the laptop.
I don't know if this is normal, but ...
2
votes
2answers
111 views
Safari “Find” is slow
Safari is fast at everything, except "Find". When I hit command-F, I get the beachball for 5 to 25 seconds (and then the Find bar appears as normal and everything's good again).
I have plenty of ...
1
vote
2answers
1k views
Can I improve network speed with VirtualBox between host and guest?
I use a VirtualBox machine with Arch Linux as development web server. I want to improve rsync transfer speed via smb://. What kind of configuration is best to improve file transfer/synchronization?
...
0
votes
2answers
211 views
Spotlight on mid-2012 MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion Constantly Re-Indexing
On my 4-month old mid-2012 MacBook Pro I observe that Spotlight seems to want to ALWAYS re-index. I frequently notice that the performance will get unbearably slow and I can hear the hard drive ...
3
votes
1answer
157 views
How To Record CPU and Memory Usage Data
I want to profile the execution of a program to see what in particular is slowing it down - whether it hits a memory cap or if my CPU is not powerful enough.
Activity Monitor (the one that comes with ...
1
vote
1answer
21 views
Hot File Clustering with multiple partitions
I'm planning a performance-oriented clean install of OS X 10.6 and I was wondering if the hot file clustering feature will exists only on the boot partition or if there will be one for each partition ...
1
vote
1answer
64 views
Want to increase spead and reponsiveness in older Mac
Current Information:
Software: Mac OSX (10.5.8)
Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 1 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
I want to get my computer moving faster, specifically around safari, itunes, ...
1
vote
1answer
126 views
Move Large, Frequent files closer to center of HDD
Is there a native/third-party utility (or native trick) to move large, frequently-used files closer to the center of the disk?
I was under the impression that the OS tried to automatically optimize ...
1
vote
1answer
383 views
Why does Reminders seem to be syncing with the network, even though I have reminders turned off in iCloud settings?
I started using Reminders.app as soon as I got iOS 5.0, and for me it mostly works very well. As soon as I got an iCloud account, of course I turned reminder syncing on there as well.
However I soon ...
1
vote
1answer
2k views
How to troubleshoot stuttering iTunes video playback while downloading on Mac OS X 10.7.2?
Observations: Recently, not sure when it happened, with upgrade to Lion or before, but I have not been able to cleanly watch a video of any type in iTunes while something [movie, tv show, app, ...
0
votes
1answer
203 views
iPad Mini vs iPhone 5 browser speed
Is typical browsing speed on iPad Mini noticeably slower than iPhone 5?
This is assuming I don't have any other apps in RAM, and I'm not loading any extremely difficult sites. And for the purpose of ...
0
votes
1answer
1k views
Can imagent in OS X Mountain Lion be made to consume fewer resources?
imagent is constantly consuming CPU cycles and a couple of GBs of "real memory" on my wife's MacBook Air since upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion. I believe this is part of the Messages app.
Is there ...
2
votes
0answers
121 views
How do I troubleshoot appalling write performance on DIY Fusion Drive?
I recently bought a 120 GB OCZ Vertex 3 and stuck in my 2009 Macbook White, together with a optibay-adapter for the old 500 GB HDD and configured them as a corestorage "fusion drive" by using the ...
2
votes
0answers
370 views
How to fix 10.8 internet sharing resulting in poor file sharing performance and no Time Machine server?
TL;DR - File sharing performance is extremely poor on a Mac Pro running 10.8.2 with file sharing enabled. Using it as a Time Machine server also no longer works in this setup.
I have been ...
1
vote
0answers
95 views
Why are disk images on AFP shares being disconnected?
I have a FreeNAS File Server which provides AFP shares to my Mac OS X clients. I'm seeing some strange performance issues between OS X 10.7.5 clients and the FreeNAS server.
My goal is to use the ...
1
vote
0answers
113 views
Is 3G-less iPad considerably faster on wifi than iPad 3G?
I've just experimented with three 3G-less iPads and they all were much faster than this one iPad 3G that just never goes through my 128mb download, all over the same wifi. They're also all 16gb, if ...
1
vote
0answers
61 views
Emulating lower speed CPUs on Mac mini
I would like to ask whether it is possible to develop OS X application (especially for Lion) on a Mac mini, being able to test how the performance would be on a lower speed CPU. For example: ...
1
vote
0answers
141 views
Guide on removing unused Agents and Daemons to speed up MacOS
Can you point me to a good guide on spotting and getting rid of running Agents, Daemons and Processes that aren't useful to me anyway and are taking up memory and CPU cycles?
1
vote
0answers
502 views
helpd uses 100% CPU after installing any application with documentation
I see that after installing a software that ships with documentation in OS X’s help document format, the helpd process uses 100% CPU for up to 5 minutes or so. I also see this when you first install ...
1
vote
0answers
141 views
How about Parallels 7's Lion support especially in graphics performance?
I heard that Parallels 6 lack of GPU acceleration with Lion guest. So it's very slow. How about this on Parallels 7?
1
vote
0answers
620 views
How many CPUs can be assigned to a Parallels Desktop VM?
I have an iMac with the quad core i7 CPU which shows up in Mac OS X as an eight core CPU (thanks to Hyper Threading, I think). Parallels Desktop allows me to assign 1-8 cores to the Windows VM that ...
0
votes
0answers
72 views
Mac Mini has slowed to an unbearable crawl!
I've read a lot of other questions about speed, but my question does not seem to be answered anywhere. My Mac Mini is running so slow that I cannot see what I am typing. It takes up to 15 seconds to ...
0
votes
0answers
187 views
Cursor stuttering: “IOHIDSystem cursor update overdue. Resending.”
My 2011 iMac running Lion recently developed a new problem; the mouse cursor stutters. At random intervals when I move the mouse it lags, then jumps, like it missed a couple of frames. Ordinarily I'd ...
0
votes
0answers
31 views
Performance monitoring tools for connected devices
I am looking for something on a Mac OS using which I can monitor the performance of upto 8-10 devices connected to a MacBook using the Hot-Spot or directly via USB, etc.
Is there any single/multiple ...
0
votes
0answers
324 views
How to troubleshoot slow-as-molasses Safari 6?
When I upgraded to Lion, Safari 6 came along, and I find it so slow that it's almost unusable.
The problem is most pronounced when first fetching pages, especially in the first few minutes after it ...
0
votes
0answers
192 views
What performance or battery impact does FileVault2 (disk encryption) have on a MacBook Pro Retina?
I'm interested in seeing the performance difference (or load) of FileVault 2 on a MacBook Pro Retina (with SSD)
What are the performance differences and power consumption differences with and without ...
0
votes
0answers
136 views
Apple TV required switching hardware / mobile WiFi router
I am considering Apple TV for a trips, but usually the hotels' wifis' connections are separated. I came up with using my Vodafone branded Huawei R201 mobile wifi router for that purpose, but I am not ...
0
votes
0answers
1k views
Mountain Lion is slow in VMware 8
Mountain Lion works very slowly in VMware 8. XCode 4.5 is terribly slow. I tried the following things to speed things up:
Installed VMware tools from darwin.iso provided with the vmdk file of ...
0
votes
0answers
107 views
Macbook Air Turbo Boost feature: can improve PDF rendering speed?
I would like to know if the Turbo Boost feature of Macbook Air (1.7 -> 2.6 Ghz) can affect tasks like PDF rendering. If yes, in which extent/way? What is the comparison to Mac Mini with fixed CPU ...
0
votes
0answers
51 views
Is there a way to monitor the stack of execution in order to find the longest hangs?
Related to this unsolved mystery: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/62416/why-do-i-get-serious-execution-lag-on-clicks-application-switching-and-general
I'm wondering if there's a way to see which ...
0
votes
0answers
54 views
Apple iPad - intermittently crashing
I've inherited a 1st generation iPad. It seems to work fine, except for the reason I inherited it, which is that every so often, whichever app is running will simply close for no discernible reason. ...
0
votes
0answers
75 views
Measure Application Load Times?
Anyone know a way to measure application load times? I've looked at instruments but having a hard time pinning down the statistic/event I should be looking for.
I want to measure how long it takes ...
0
votes
0answers
160 views
iPad/iPad2 - PDF page rendering speed
I would like to know how long (in milliseconds) does it take for the iPad/iPad2 to render a PDF page. Every page and every PDF are different, of course. I am interested in average figures if you have ...
