Accidentally downgraded slow Tahoe, big relief

[redjar597]

I have a M4 Air (32GB) and M4 MBP with M4 Pro chip and 24 GB of RAM

Tahoe is just slow as sludge. It stutters, it glitches. Even resizing windows is a pain. This was on a clean install too. Got rid of all Electron apps, went onto 26.1 beta, still slow as sludge. Sharing screen on Teams was a nightmare.

The design changes folks moan about I don't mind. I'm fine with it on iOS. It's just that it's made a computer seem unusable.

Got myself a M4 Mac mini from Amazon yesterday. Only the base model with 16 GB of RAM.

I guess it's been lying around at Amazon for over a month because it came with Sequoia. It's like a dream compared to the more powerful MacBooks I have.

Fast, responsive, no glitching. And I'm not missing any Tahoe feature I can think of.

I always upgrade as soon as a new release comes out. I'm a dev tester too. I've never known a MacOS so bad in terms of being like sludge and buggy. Design is subjective for people so we can argue about that.

My adult son who is a senior dev is finding the same. Work machine is a M4 MBP 16 inch with M4 Pro CPU and 48 GB of RAM with Tahoe.

His own older machine is M2 MBA with 24 GB of RAM.

He's switched to his M2 MBA with Sequoia over his M4 MBP with Tahoe for coding and work, simply because it's faster in the day to day and isn't glitching under load from multiple applications even though it has half the RAM and half the CPU and GPU.

First time, I've felt compelled to say this is a terrible release in terms of performance and usability. It feels that Sequoia is the newer OS and Tahoe is the older, clunkier OS.

 

[ebika]

I'm with you, Sequoia is still more polished. I experience stutters and glitches too (control center can't seem to cache the rendered widgets, notification clearing still stutters), but perhaps not as severe as what you're experiencing. This is on my 14 MBP M4P 24GB. I saw they identified the fix for Electron apps, so I think all my affected apps have updated at this point. Out of curiosity, what happened with your Teams screen sharing? Teams UX always sucks in new and evolving ways, so I'm not shocked, I'm just curious.

I mentioned in another post that my main reason to persevere is that I'm following the development of Apple Containers that really needs Tahoe for all intents and purposes. I'm confident they'll keep smoothing out these rough UI edges in Tahoe. Hopefully 😆.

 

[Technerd108]

Odd, I have not experienced any glitches, stutters, or general slow downs except for initial boot up?

I have an initial release M2 MBA and I wiped the drive and installed Sequoia then upgraded fresh to Tahoe. Maybe the system in general feels a few milliseconds slower than before but it is barely noticeable and in some cases it seems more responsive than Sequoia?

I am not saying 26 is good. There are a lot of GUI issues but in terms of smoothness and usability I haven't noticed slow downs or instability with multiple apps. My M2 will only heat up if charging or under benchmarks. Personally I loved OSX tiger which had liquid glass. That GUI was fantastic and if Apple was to focus on making the new liquid glass more like the old one with better effects I would be much happier. I don't understand how an old GUI is harder and more resource intensive than a new one? Beside AI I don't understand why each OS update is more massive and more resource hungry while delivering fee new features to justify it.

I have Apple Intelligence turned off. It is simply taking up storage and resources while when I did try it barely used the AI in real life. I would rather have a faster, more efficient and responsive OS than a slow bloated one. Leave the bloat to MS it is what they do best!

The direction MacOS in general has been going in the last few years is not my favorite. Apple is sort of like capitalism. It is the worst system devised to distribute wealth but the best system we have available. I think Churchill said it much better. Apple is the same. It can be the worst in some ways but it is the best option we have available.

 

[Wolf1701]

The direction MacOS in general has been going in the last few years is not my favorite. Apple is sort of like capitalism. It is the worst system devised to distribute wealth but the best system we have available. I think Churchill said it much better. Apple is the same. It can be the worst in some ways but it is the best option we have available.

Of course, going from being the best to being the least worst is not exactly the desired trajectory.

 

[gilby101]

Tahoe is just slow as sludge. It stutters, it glitches.

Not my experience (M3 MBP). I may not like the interface gloss, but the underlying system works as well, if not better than macOS 15.

And with macOS 15, since 15.7 my 2019 iMac is the one suffering stutters and glitches.

 

[redjar597]

Out of curiosity, what happened with your Teams screen sharing? Teams UX always sucks in new and evolving ways, so I'm not shocked, I'm just curious.

With the large caveat that Teams is generally horrible, on Tahoe there was further general system slow down while in a Teams meeting, this got worse when screen sharing, which really didn't work. There was some type of panic, even swiping between desktops and apps slowed to almost nothing, and where the screen should have been shared I got the Teams red border showing what was being shared, but the the screen within that went blank and white. It was like the system was completely overloaded.

Want to emphasise, this isn't a post against 'change' or 'the new'. I look forward to new MacOS and iOS releases, which is why I'm a dev and beta tester.

This is just about bugginess.

 

[redjar597]

I've noticed 26.1 RC, which I have running on one of my machines is somewhat of an improvement, but it's not there yet.

For those who say never upgrade on a .0 release. I've always done so. And sure the software improves with each iteration.

But the last time I remember a .0 release this bad was the original Mac OSX back in 2001, which they then had to ship free CDs of OSX 10.1 six months later due to it being slow. That was more understandable as the original OSX was a complete overhaul.

 

[redjar597]

Not my experience (M3 MBP). I may not like the interface gloss, but the underlying system works as well, if not better than macOS 15.

And with macOS 15, since 15.7 my 2019 iMac is the one suffering stutters and glitches.

From what I'm reading on forum it seems to be machine / spec specific. Some are fine, some aren't.

Even with your M3, the reason for the quick release of 26.0.1 was there there was some type of problem with the M3's and 26.

 

[redjar597]

I have Apple Intelligence turned off. It is simply taking up storage and resources while when I did try it barely used the AI in real life. I would rather have a faster, more efficient and responsive OS than a slow bloated one. Leave the bloat to MS it is what they do best!

Agree on this too. Zero point to Apple Intelligence at this point. Zero point to Siri too imo. I also have it off, using other models instead.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I've noticed 26.1 RC, which I have running on one of my machines is somewhat of an improvement, but it's not there yet.

For those who say never upgrade on a .0 release. I've always done so. And sure the software improves with each iteration.

But the last time I remember a .0 release this bad was the original Mac OSX back in 2001, which they then had to ship free CDs of OSX 10.1 six months later due to it being slow. That was more understandable as the original OSX was a complete overhaul.

I still remember getting my 10.1 CD from CompUSA lol. OS X was the reason I got my first Mac in 2001. I needed UNIX access for CS classes as well as commercial apps like MS Office for other schoolwork.

If you want to talk about slow though, I had to run SPIM (MIPS emulator + ASM IDE) through Windows via Virtual PC. Talk about emulatorception.

 

[redjar597]

I still remember getting my 10.1 CD from CompUSA lol. OS X was the reason I got my first Mac in 2001. I needed UNIX access for CS classes as well as commercial apps like MS Office for other schoolwork.

If you want to talk about slow though, I had to run SPIM (MIPS emulator + ASM IDE) through Windows via Virtual PC. Talk about emulatorception.

I remember it well. I had to search for a newsagent shop that had the 10.1 CD attached to some magazine in the UK.

We used to be the young, cool ones, the first gen iMac users, Gen X, and still feel that way, now we have children, and perhaps grandchildren too 😂. What the hell happened!

 

[Lloigorr]

Sequoia, the new Snow Leopard?

 

[alanvitek]

This is also the first release where I've held off from upgrading and usually I'm also on the Beta releases and such for iOS development. I might be waiting until macOS 27.2 at this point

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I remember it well. I had to search for a newsagent shop that had the 10.1 CD attached to some magazine in the UK.

We used to be the young, cool ones, the first gen iMac users, Gen X, and still feel that way, now we have children, and perhaps grandchildren too 😂. What the hell happened!

 

[AppleTO]

I won't be upgrading any of my Macs or family Macs past Sequoia for the foreseeable future.

 

[sw1tcher]

Tahoe is just slow as sludge. It stutters, it glitches. Even resizing windows is a pain. This was on a clean install too. Got rid of all Electron apps, went onto 26.1 beta, still slow as sludge. Sharing screen on Teams was a nightmare.

First time, I've felt compelled to say this is a terrible release in terms of performance and usability. It feels that Sequoia is the newer OS and Tahoe is the older, clunkier OS.

A beta version of macOS is slower and glitches more than a macOS that has seen over a dozen bug fixes and other updates since its release? Man, that's crazy. Who could have ever expected this?

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

i'm tempted . but while ios takes me 1h30 for a clean install, macOS takes me...days. it exhausts me

 

[Astuces iOS]

Reinstall macOS that's it... Everything works fine for me

 

[splifingate]

With the large caveat that Teams is generally horrible, on Tahoe there was further general system slow down while in a Teams meeting, this got worse when screen sharing, which really didn't work. There was some type of panic, even swiping between desktops and apps slowed to almost nothing, and where the screen should have been shared I got the Teams red border showing what was being shared, but the the screen within that went blank and white. It was like the system was completely overloaded.

Want to emphasise, this isn't a post against 'change' or 'the new'. I look forward to new MacOS and iOS releases, which is why I'm a dev and beta tester.

This is just about bugginess.

Yes; but "TEAMS"!!1! 🤷‍♂️

 

[Cape Dave]

I have a M4 Air (32GB) and M4 MBP with M4 Pro chip and 24 GB of RAM

Tahoe is just slow as sludge. It stutters, it glitches. Even resizing windows is a pain. This was on a clean install too. Got rid of all Electron apps, went onto 26.1 beta, still slow as sludge. Sharing screen on Teams was a nightmare.

The design changes folks moan about I don't mind. I'm fine with it on iOS. It's just that it's made a computer seem unusable.

Got myself a M4 Mac mini from Amazon yesterday. Only the base model with 16 GB of RAM.

I guess it's been lying around at Amazon for over a month because it came with Sequoia. It's like a dream compared to the more powerful MacBooks I have.

Fast, responsive, no glitching. And I'm not missing any Tahoe feature I can think of.

I always upgrade as soon as a new release comes out. I'm a dev tester too. I've never known a MacOS so bad in terms of being like sludge and buggy. Design is subjective for people so we can argue about that.

My adult son who is a senior dev is finding the same. Work machine is a M4 MBP 16 inch with M4 Pro CPU and 48 GB of RAM with Tahoe.

His own older machine is M2 MBA with 24 GB of RAM.

He's switched to his M2 MBA with Sequoia over his M4 MBP with Tahoe for coding and work, simply because it's faster in the day to day and isn't glitching under load from multiple applications even though it has half the RAM and half the CPU and GPU.

First time, I've felt compelled to say this is a terrible release in terms of performance and usability. It feels that Sequoia is the newer OS and Tahoe is the older, clunkier OS.

I hate this new OS and am running a Linux machine in parallel so when I am forced to update, I will likely go to Linux unless they have fixed every bug and given me my freedom to NOT have that despicable Glass Effect.

 

[Cape Dave]

Odd, I have not experienced any glitches, stutters, or general slow downs except for initial boot up?

I have an initial release M2 MBA and I wiped the drive and installed Sequoia then upgraded fresh to Tahoe. Maybe the system in general feels a few milliseconds slower than before but it is barely noticeable and in some cases it seems more responsive than Sequoia?

I am not saying 26 is good. There are a lot of GUI issues but in terms of smoothness and usability I haven't noticed slow downs or instability with multiple apps. My M2 will only heat up if charging or under benchmarks. Personally I loved OSX tiger which had liquid glass. That GUI was fantastic and if Apple was to focus on making the new liquid glass more like the old one with better effects I would be much happier. I don't understand how an old GUI is harder and more resource intensive than a new one? Beside AI I don't understand why each OS update is more massive and more resource hungry while delivering fee new features to justify it.

I have Apple Intelligence turned off. It is simply taking up storage and resources while when I did try it barely used the AI in real life. I would rather have a faster, more efficient and responsive OS than a slow bloated one. Leave the bloat to MS it is what they do best!

The direction MacOS in general has been going in the last few years is not my favorite. Apple is sort of like capitalism. It is the worst system devised to distribute wealth but the best system we have available. I think Churchill said it much better. Apple is the same. It can be the worst in some ways but it is the best option we have available.

Every day I think God for Linux. Nice to have options.