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10.7.4 - Programs start faster!

W

waynep

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 31, 2009
434
0
I really like the 10.7.4 update so far. My 201 MBP is performing better. Programs open faster. Microsoft Word used to take about 10 bounces of the icon to open. Now the icon bounces once and the program is there. It's not just MS software that starts faster, this is true with Pages, Number and iTunes as well. Everything starts quicker.

Anyone else experiencing similar good things?

I know there are threads bashing the update . . . I thought I would say something good about it.
 
thermodynamic

thermodynamic

Suspended
May 3, 2009
1,341
1,192
USA
waynep said:
I really like the 10.7.4 update so far. My 201 MBP is performing better. Programs open faster. Microsoft Word used to take about 10 bounces of the icon to open. Now the icon bounces once and the program is there. It's not just MS software that starts faster, this is true with Pages, Number and iTunes as well. Everything starts quicker.

Anyone else experiencing similar good things?

I know there are threads bashing the update . . . I thought I would say something good about it.
Click to expand...

How much longer is the boot time?

10.7.4 must be caching frequently-ran components during start-up, giving an impression of better performance.

Microsoft started that trick with XP and enhanced it for Win7...

I highly doubt 10.7.4 does a defragmentation to optimize locations of frequently used files toward the inner tracks of a HDD... 3rd party defragmenters have done that for years and Win7, if I recall, now has its defragmenter doing the same thing...
 
W

waynep

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 31, 2009
434
0
thermodynamic said:
How much longer is the boot time?

10.7.4 must be caching frequently-ran components during start-up, giving an impression of better performance.

Microsoft started that trick with XP and enhanced it for Win7...

I highly doubt 10.7.4 does a defragmentation to optimize locations of frequently used files toward the inner tracks of a HDD... 3rd party defragmenters have done that for years and Win7, if I recall, now has its defragmenter doing the same thing...
Click to expand...

Boot time has not changed. The machine seems a little snappier all around. I think it's a good update.
 
E

Eithanius

macrumors 68000
Nov 19, 2005
1,541
412
I cannot discern if programs launch faster since I'm on SSD, but one thing remain unchanged, it's still RAM and VRAM hog... Active RAM takes up 3 - 4GB only with Safari 5 tabs without Flash, Chrome 1 tab, and iTunes. BOINC WUs still error out due to insufficient VRAM even after quitting Photoshop or Aperture, VRAM still get stuck somewhere. Snow Leopard has none of these problems...

Btw, anyone knows of any Terminal command that can purge out VRAM just like a Purge command to clear out inactive RAM...?
 
SR45

SR45

macrumors 65832
Aug 17, 2011
1,501
0
Florida
thermodynamic said:
How much longer is the boot time?

10.7.4 must be caching frequently-ran components during start-up, giving an impression of better performance.

Microsoft started that trick with XP and enhanced it for Win7...

I highly doubt 10.7.4 does a defragmentation to optimize locations of frequently used files toward the inner tracks of a HDD... 3rd party defragmenters have done that for years and Win7, if I recall, now has its defragmenter doing the same thing...
Click to expand...

First boot time was a tad over 1 minute with my Mac Mini 2011, and today it was 32 seconds. Guess it just needs time to settle in, so to speak.

Not one crash for me, but I don't have lots of programs or applications installed
 
O

old-wiz

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2008
8,331
228
West Suburban Boston Ma
When 10.7.4 rebooted after completing the install it was very slow to get going; I was about ready to give up and go back to 10.7.3. I haven't rebooted again, fortunately.
 
O

omro

macrumors regular
Sep 30, 2010
186
18
Is preview faster? Annoys me that it takes 20secs to open a jpg on my year old MBP, while my three year old XP laptop can open the same jpg in 3secs.
 
throAU

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
8,818
6,985
Perth, Western Australia
Pretty much everything IO related is faster. 10.7.4 is what should have shipped on Lion's release.

I suspect they've fixed some debug stuff in Core storage, which was (from memory) new in Lion - another layer of abstraction for the disk subsystem.
 
Z

ZipZap

macrumors 603
Dec 14, 2007
6,076
1,448
Slightly off topic ...

I just resized my partitions on my MBA and when it was done everything ran FASTER.

I dont know what Stellar Partition Manager did, but I am happy!
 
chevalier433

chevalier433

macrumors 6502a
Mar 30, 2011
510
13
i think its your idea..application start faster has nothing to do with os and updates its a matter of disk speed.
 
throAU

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
8,818
6,985
Perth, Western Australia
ZipZap said:
Slightly off topic ...

I just resized my partitions on my MBA and when it was done everything ran FASTER.

I dont know what Stellar Partition Manager did, but I am happy!
Click to expand...


I noticed this also, i suspect OS X does a defrag and compact files to the start of the disk (the faster part) to re-size.
 
chevalier433

chevalier433

macrumors 6502a
Mar 30, 2011
510
13
throAU said:
I noticed this also, i suspect OS X does a defrag and compact files to the start of the disk (the faster part) to re-size.
Click to expand...

Hmm....hard to believe after a week of use in a raid 3g finally i haven't noticed any speed improvement only in RAGE game graphics a little boost.
 
M

mycompdr

macrumors newbie
May 22, 2012
2
0
Re: Programs Start Faster!

waynep said:
I really like the 10.7.4 update so far. My 201 MBP is performing better. Programs open faster. Microsoft Word used to take about 10 bounces of the icon to open. Now the icon bounces once and the program is there. It's not just MS software that starts faster, this is true with Pages, Number and iTunes as well. Everything starts quicker.

Anyone else experiencing similar good things?

I know there are threads bashing the update . . . I thought I would say something good about it.
Click to expand...

No question about the speed increase. On my Mac Pro desktop with 6 GB of RAM, Word used to take 15 to 30 seconds to open. I clicked on the icon just now and it popped open in less than 5 seconds. Photoshop was always very slow to open, now it's remarkably fast. I also noticed a big difference opening Windows 7 in Parallels Desktop 7. Really impressive improvement in speed. It’s like getting a new computer.

Just FYI, startup and shutdown seem to take about the same time as before.
 
haravikk

haravikk

macrumors 65816
May 1, 2005
1,499
21
thermodynamic said:
I highly doubt 10.7.4 does a defragmentation to optimize locations of frequently used files toward the inner tracks of a HDD...
Click to expand...
Technically it does, but it's nothing specific to 10.7.4; OS X has performed gradual defragmentation of commonly accessed files since Panther I think, so OS components and frequent apps slowly move toward the inner tracks of hard drives. I think it's the feature called "Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering" but that might be something else.

I haven't noticed any difference with 10.7.4, but then I'm using an SSD for most applications so speed has never really been an issue.

It could still be memory caching related even if boot time isn't affected, as one of the things that Lion opens soon after startup up is the process "warmd" that preloads various things into memory. So unless you're opening an application immediately after startup then its entirely possible that some, or all, of it has already been loaded in anticipation of it being used. Maybe there was a bug with the preloading that affected some people and has been fixed by 10.7.4?
 
randolorian

randolorian

macrumors 6502a
Sep 3, 2011
565
1,753
I benchmarked disk IO under 10.7.3 and 10.7.4 on a 2008 MBP. 10.7.4 is consistently faster using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test.
 
kemo

kemo

macrumors 6502a
Oct 29, 2008
821
201
I've been trying to switch from 10.6.8 to 10.7.x since day one, but the number of bugs and issues was too high for me, until yesterday I gave a last try to install Lion over my SL and update it to 10.7.4 and I have to say Im pleased with performace and until now zero issues/bugs. Sad is that ML is coming and I bought Lion for lets say 2-3 months of use? I hope ML will be at least that great/fast/bug-less as Lion 10.7.4 from day one.
 
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