What's the model identifier of the Mac? You'll find it in System Information.
Firmware for Yosemite versus earlier versions of the operating system
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Reverting Back to an Earlier Mac OS X Version
- Thread starter BradHatter
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
What's the model identifier of the Mac? You'll find it in System Information.
Firmware for Yosemite versus earlier versions of the operating system
I'm a bit curious. In your adventures in OS X land, which browsers did you use. I seem to be finding that FireFox seems to be much more stable and up to date on older OS X versions that Safari. Chrome also seems fairly well kept up. I haven't tested any of these in detail, I just noticed that when accessing a news site on an older system recently that was running Snow Leopard, Safari was virtually useless, FireFox worked perfectly, and Chrome was OK but seemed to have a glitch here and there.
I'll chip in why I use Firefox all the way...
10.6.8 - Because Safari is way too outdated to be a safe browser
10.9.5 and 10.10.2 - Because Safari is such a GPU hog that loading heavy websites can potentially cause VLC videos or any other OS X animations to drop frames.
More updates on OS experiments:
I've been continuing to bounce around from OS to OS, focusing primarily on Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion, and Snow Leopard. I continue to use Mountain Lion, which I'll abbreviate as ML as the base OS, but that may change. Yosemite is ruled out as an OS I'll likely use because there are too many applications that either don't work properly under it or they have the prohibited sign through their icon, meaning they don't work at all, but I am still doing some of the tests on it as well just to see how it holds up, and in the event what doesn't work starts to work with updates (current release is 10.10.2) Here's some more info for those interested:
Under Snow Leopard and Lion, Safari appears much quicker and much less resource intensive. When I double click on the icon, it's up and running, period. As the OS releases get newer, Safari becomes more memory intensive and the loading time is quite noticeable.
System Preferences is much quicker on Lion and Snow Leopard as well. Once again, a near instantaneous launch. It's still reasonable in ML, but for Mavericks and Yosemite, it can sometimes take up to 10 seconds for the window to come up. I have no idea why.
The newer the OS is, the more memory it uses, period. Snow Leopard is the clear winner here. I can throw many apps at Snow Leopard at the same time and have it using less than 2GB of RAM. Once again, the newer the OS the more memory it needs. Lion is better than ML in this respect, and ML is a little better than Mavericks. Yosemite is clearly the worst.
Safari under ML and Lion is glitchy, with it being worse in ML. Yosemite tends to orphan some Web processes, and appears to spawn numerous copies while in use, often eating up tons of memory. Mavericks can do likewise, but not as badly. It remains pretty quick in both Lion and Snow Leopard. Previously I found browsers in Snow Leopard and Lion to have some problems loading video content, but these appear to be related to Adobe Flash, and updating that seems to have fixed it.
ML seems to have some genuinely odd glitches. Safari can be erratic, as can other things. Last night while using it, I was doing some browsing with Safari and when I closed it, ML had, for some mysterious reason, move all the icons on the Desktop to the right hand side. I also noticed that iPhoto under ML can be a little flakey.
The two most stable OS releases seem to be Snow Leopard and Mavericks. Both of these still live up to the "It just works" motto. Snow Leopard has absolutely no support for Core Storage and doesn't even really recognize such disks/volumes other than to acknowledge they're attached to the system.
To be continued as time progresses...
I've been continuing to bounce around from OS to OS, focusing primarily on Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion, and Snow Leopard. I continue to use Mountain Lion, which I'll abbreviate as ML as the base OS, but that may change. Yosemite is ruled out as an OS I'll likely use because there are too many applications that either don't work properly under it or they have the prohibited sign through their icon, meaning they don't work at all, but I am still doing some of the tests on it as well just to see how it holds up, and in the event what doesn't work starts to work with updates (current release is 10.10.2) Here's some more info for those interested:
Under Snow Leopard and Lion, Safari appears much quicker and much less resource intensive. When I double click on the icon, it's up and running, period. As the OS releases get newer, Safari becomes more memory intensive and the loading time is quite noticeable.
System Preferences is much quicker on Lion and Snow Leopard as well. Once again, a near instantaneous launch. It's still reasonable in ML, but for Mavericks and Yosemite, it can sometimes take up to 10 seconds for the window to come up. I have no idea why.
The newer the OS is, the more memory it uses, period. Snow Leopard is the clear winner here. I can throw many apps at Snow Leopard at the same time and have it using less than 2GB of RAM. Once again, the newer the OS the more memory it needs. Lion is better than ML in this respect, and ML is a little better than Mavericks. Yosemite is clearly the worst.
Safari under ML and Lion is glitchy, with it being worse in ML. Yosemite tends to orphan some Web processes, and appears to spawn numerous copies while in use, often eating up tons of memory. Mavericks can do likewise, but not as badly. It remains pretty quick in both Lion and Snow Leopard. Previously I found browsers in Snow Leopard and Lion to have some problems loading video content, but these appear to be related to Adobe Flash, and updating that seems to have fixed it.
ML seems to have some genuinely odd glitches. Safari can be erratic, as can other things. Last night while using it, I was doing some browsing with Safari and when I closed it, ML had, for some mysterious reason, move all the icons on the Desktop to the right hand side. I also noticed that iPhoto under ML can be a little flakey.
The two most stable OS releases seem to be Snow Leopard and Mavericks. Both of these still live up to the "It just works" motto. Snow Leopard has absolutely no support for Core Storage and doesn't even really recognize such disks/volumes other than to acknowledge they're attached to the system.
To be continued as time progresses...
You're misunderstanding how modern browsers work. Each tab or window in Safari is now its own process. This is to improve reliability and security. If there's a crash in one tab or window, the browser will keep working and simply reload the crashed window. My computer has more than 2GB of RAM so I simply don't want all my apps to fit into 2GB and leave the other 14GB sitting around wasting my money.
That's definitely not normal operation. Spending some time troubleshooting what's going on might be worthwhile.
I think what you are seeing is from having Spotlight suggestions turned on. I noticed the same thing. You search in Spotlight and it preloads some web search results there and those show in Activity Monitor looking like Safari instances when they are not.
So if I disable this feature then I assume some memory may free up, right?
I really don't use Spotlight that much. That doesn't mean the feature won't be active. However, I have noticed that if I watch something with video, more and more WebProcesses start kicking on. Sometimes they're not even what I'm intending to look at but commercials in the sidebar.
For example if you check football ratings on ESPN, if you go down through the pages inevitably you'll run into some video report, which of course, is preceded by a commercial. On some sites, and I'd question whether or not the sites are properly written, pages seem to spawn these things like crazy.
The problems don't seem to occur on OS releases before Mavericks, but then again I haven't done a formal test on this.
A long time ago I had one of the early iBook 500MHz units. When I loaded it with memory as far as it would go and loaded Tiger on it, it worked, but it's response was sluggish. With Yosemite I get the same sort of sluggish feel. I'm not so offended by the looks of it that I couldn't live with it if I had to, but I don't see the new look as an asset.
I found a fix for the icon problem with Mountain Lion re-aligning all the icons on the right side by simply stopping the Desktop from using the snap-to-grid feature. Unfortunately with Mountain Lion, the Safari glitches are real and I have to wonder if they'll ever be corrected.
I found a fix for the icon problem with Mountain Lion re-aligning all the icons on the right side by simply stopping the Desktop from using the snap-to-grid feature. Unfortunately with Mountain Lion, the Safari glitches are real and I have to wonder if they'll ever be corrected.
Still running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. - my original OS out the box on my MBP. Very few problems at all - don't have high speed broadband, get relatively little beach balling. Web pages open pretty zippy in Safari and Firefox - both equally fast in my experience - especially after a regular Defragging. Occasionally get a Flash compatibility message ..... but soon find an easy way round it ..... HD videos in Youtube buffer on play occasionally at peak times and when friend is streaming as well - well, it's not high speed BB! Really recommend this OS. Yes, it just works!
Guess it's all about getting the most out of your machine and getting tasks done quickly and efficiently - booting up and shutting down speeds are not really important in that respect - If you count the number of threads on MacRumours with Yosemite/Mavericks related problems - it's astronomical! Ok, some people are having a relatively pain-free experience ..... but others seem to be wasting a lot of time trying to sort out OS issues
...... So fall in love with your Apple device again ..... and if you can .... regress back to Snow Leopard - and if you can't, dust off an old machine and go Retro and see how it compares to your present experience.
..... ok, it may not be compatible with iCloud ..... but there are better alternatives out there which are easier to use/edit and keep secure CONTROL of your data.
..... Maybe this will be the Rebirth of a new Retro Apple Appreciation Movement (RAAM - a bit like OMMM with similar Karmic influences on ones' psyche!) where old machines are dusted off and given a new lease of life ..... and independent programmers support retro compatibility.
At the end of the day ..... it's all about performance and if the new machines with the new OS can't hack it ...... well ..... a retro backlash will hopefully force Apple to "shape up"
Two really bad OS in a row - cynical conspiracy theorists are beginning to circle this corpse and look at how many people have had their machines trashed and made obsolete by this disaster and been forced to buy new hardware .....
..... better to send a clear message to the marketing dept. that may have 'engineered this disaster' to stick their new machines ..... and go Retro instead!
A better way to send Apple a message may be to literally send them a message by filling out their feedback form. Here's a link:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
I really don't like the hardware/OS obsolescence that occurs as time progresses. For example, I see no good reason why something that's still fairly popular, like Snow Leopard, doesn't get updates for newer hardware, and everything else for that matter.
As an FYI you can take a look at the following to see Yosemite's acceptance:
https://www.gosquared.com/global/mac/yosemite/#beta
The graph doesn't include Snow Leopard, which I believe still manages to get 10-15% of the users. It shows Yosemite adoption has leveled off at roughly 40% since January.
If you go to the bottom of the page you can see how Mavericks did by clicking on the "OS X Mavericks Adoption Rate" button. Looking at that you see Lion, Mountain Lion, and Snow Leopard all dropping together in a group while Mavericks ascends all by itself. You don't see this behavior at all with Yosemite. It's essentially stuck almost in a dead heat with Mavericks. This tells me a lot of people just don't like it.
https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
I really don't like the hardware/OS obsolescence that occurs as time progresses. For example, I see no good reason why something that's still fairly popular, like Snow Leopard, doesn't get updates for newer hardware, and everything else for that matter.
As an FYI you can take a look at the following to see Yosemite's acceptance:
https://www.gosquared.com/global/mac/yosemite/#beta
The graph doesn't include Snow Leopard, which I believe still manages to get 10-15% of the users. It shows Yosemite adoption has leveled off at roughly 40% since January.
If you go to the bottom of the page you can see how Mavericks did by clicking on the "OS X Mavericks Adoption Rate" button. Looking at that you see Lion, Mountain Lion, and Snow Leopard all dropping together in a group while Mavericks ascends all by itself. You don't see this behavior at all with Yosemite. It's essentially stuck almost in a dead heat with Mavericks. This tells me a lot of people just don't like it.
Not sure Apple will be happy to hear I'm perfectly content running Snow Leopard .... but I get your point!
So in theory this 40% adoption rate may actually go down over time as more people get wise as to how poor it really performs in the real world.
Do independent Apple analysts out there produce a performance chart that lists each operating system, what apps/plug ins/other programmes it is compatible with and statistical speed analysis on how fast it takes to complete a series of set tasks devised to push each app to the limit? ..... then we could look at these stats and make a more educated guess as to which OS system is going to satisfy our needs with the programmes WE want - before we "upgrade" and 'descend' into ..... God knows what .....
So in theory this 40% adoption rate may actually go down over time as more people get wise as to how poor it really performs in the real world.
Do independent Apple analysts out there produce a performance chart that lists each operating system, what apps/plug ins/other programmes it is compatible with and statistical speed analysis on how fast it takes to complete a series of set tasks devised to push each app to the limit? ..... then we could look at these stats and make a more educated guess as to which OS system is going to satisfy our needs with the programmes WE want - before we "upgrade" and 'descend' into ..... God knows what .....
I'd complain anyway, in fact I already did. What's Apple going to do? Disallow you from using their products?
Yosemite doesn't run several of the applications I rely on and I'm not the only one with that problem. The appearance of it doesn't nauseate me like it seems to do with some, but I'd hardly call it an improvement.
Ethanius said:
According to some recent sales reports they lost share in computer sales. Not by a lot, but they did lose a small section. WWDC is often filled with Rah-Rah boys and girls that will never complain about anything Apple does. What will be interesting to see is whether or not they even acknowledge there are any types of problems with what they're producing and its quality.
I booted off an external Snow Leopard partition and it booted almost as fast as Mountain Lion off an SSD. I ran Performance Probe on it and the memory use to run a Safari session with video was about 800MB total. I did the same experiment with Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and Yosemite.
As each OS gets newer, so does their RAM consumption. Yosemite's is somewhat higher than Mavericks, Mavericks is somewhat higher, but a little more noticeably than Mountain Lion. Both Lion and Snow Leopard use a pittance and both boot fast.
Has Apple just gotten into the bad coding habits process? Do they not bother to check the efficiency of what they produce anymore?
As each OS gets newer, so does their RAM consumption. Yosemite's is somewhat higher than Mavericks, Mavericks is somewhat higher, but a little more noticeably than Mountain Lion. Both Lion and Snow Leopard use a pittance and both boot fast.
Has Apple just gotten into the bad coding habits process? Do they not bother to check the efficiency of what they produce anymore?
Instead of just letting RAM sit unused Yosemite is using as much it can for caching. Yosemite will free up the cache when it needs to allocate for another purpose. Open Activity monitor and look at the pressure graph for memory consumption. It should be green. Also look at the swapping amount. When swapping is above zero that indicates that the OS is using disk storage for swap space. So it's not how much RAM is being used that really matters, its swap space amount and the memory pressure color. After all RAM is there to be used.
I'd say it's due to the constant new features that they introduced and the annual release cycles. Snow Leopard was efficient because their major new feature introduction was back in Leopard in 2007, and from this period up until 10.6.8, they had about 4 years of code cleaning and optimisation. That's 4 years...! Nowadays they emphasised on feature introductions before they could even clean up the bugs, what's more cleaning up the codes at 1/4 of the said period.
The more useless stuff OS X got, i.e. iCloud (sorry guys, I still believe in SyncServices), the more processes it needs to launch for every boots. Nevermind the RAM pressure zone Taz Mangus described, just fired up Activity Monitor on both SL and Yos and do a comparison, and you'll find more processes taking up your ever constant amount of RAM.
Now you see the successive buildup of craps post-SL. Every iteration of OS X since then has been more resource intensive. And just look at Finder alone. It got progressively worse off since Lion, now on Yosemite it is almost unusable.
I am convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the reason Activity Monitor got rid of the memory pie chart and replaced it with "memory pressure" was to hide the fact that what they're producing is crude, poorly written, and memory excessive code. I remember during the early iterations of the extremely buggy releases of Mountain Lion, which remains buggy to this day, people were complaining about "memory pie charts gone-wild." They'd launch something with Safari and one minute it would say 100% of the memory was used and the next only a fraction of that was used.
Guys, memory use is reported by the kernel. If you want to check it using a command line program, you can do it with a program called vm_stat. This is the same stuff Activity Monitor used to monitor. Now it's hidden from us with "memory pressure." "Memory Pressure" in my opinion, is just a way of hiding poorly written code.
..and it shows in the newer OS releases performance. All those people leaving negative reviews about Yosemite's performance in the App Store aren't doing it for *****'s and grins.
Guys, memory use is reported by the kernel. If you want to check it using a command line program, you can do it with a program called vm_stat. This is the same stuff Activity Monitor used to monitor. Now it's hidden from us with "memory pressure." "Memory Pressure" in my opinion, is just a way of hiding poorly written code.
..and it shows in the newer OS releases performance. All those people leaving negative reviews about Yosemite's performance in the App Store aren't doing it for *****'s and grins.
Last edited:
Your conspiracy theories about what Apple is trying to hide is very interesting and entertaining to say the least. Modern OS's use all available memory as it is more efficient. But if it makes you feel better to believe otherwise so be it.
Getting back on topic, I've found the version of Safari in Mountain Lion to be excessively buggy. I was able to pretty much fix the IconServicesAgent problem in Mavericks by adding a few non-Mavericks volumes into the fstab file which prevents them from mounting then adding a script to kill IconServicesAgent and allow it to restart.
It seems to me IconServicesAgent makes whatever errors it's making at boot time when it apparently goes out and interrogates all OSes on your drive (I have a multi-boot system). After that's done and the "bad" disks are unmounted and it's allowed to restart, memory use is way down in Mavericks.
I may switch back to Mavericks just because Safari has a few too many kinks in it on ML.
It seems to me IconServicesAgent makes whatever errors it's making at boot time when it apparently goes out and interrogates all OSes on your drive (I have a multi-boot system). After that's done and the "bad" disks are unmounted and it's allowed to restart, memory use is way down in Mavericks.
I may switch back to Mavericks just because Safari has a few too many kinks in it on ML.