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Adobe CS3 Slower on Macintosh than Windows

C

chelsel

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 24, 2007
521
296
I just got a Macbook Pro 2.4GHz, upgraded it to 4GB of RAM and it 'feels' slower than Windows when running Adobe CS3, specifically Dreamweaver. Now, a lot of applications on the Mac seem faster, but why would something like Dreamweaver feel like molasses in comparison to running on Windows?

For example, if I click on the menu bar for 'Window' and drag the mouse across the top to 'File' the menus actually follow the mouse movement but about 1/4 second behind... kinda reminds me of an old school Java application with a pokey gui...
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Update: sadly this appears to be a common problem... seems to only affect the Macintosh though... not something you'll see in the Mac vs. PC ads, to be sure: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webfor...=1282017&highlight_key=y&keyword1=performance
 
Oddly enough I find that CS3 runs faster on my Core Duo macbook with 1 gig of ram than it does on my Core 2 Duo desktop with 2 gig of ram. :confused:

Now THAT is odd.
 
Sorry to bring this back from the dead...however, I just downloaded the trial of DW CS3. I am VERY disappointed in the performance.

With every click I make, it sits for seconds before it does anything. There is no possible way of getting any work done with DW behaving so poorly. I have a new 20" iMac with 3GB of RAM.

My cpu isn't the bottleneck, as it only goes from 95% idle to 85% idle when it hangs. My memory isn't the bottleneck, as I have 1.81GB free. There is no swapping going on.

Are others just using a different editor? I typically just use it for the main framework for tables, then I convert everything manually to php and css. If there is another good editor out there for tables, I'm all ears.

Very sad...I was going to drop the money on DW, until I ran into this "un-excusable" issue.

Thanks,
Gary
 
Yikes! As far as I know, not even Dreamweaver 8 that's being EMULATED on an Intel Mac runs that poorly. From what I could see when a coworker showed it to me briefly on a 2.4GHz Core 2 system, it ran perfectly acceptably.

Sooooo...did Adobe actually make the native version run WORSE? Is it possible you're accidentally running it through emulation? I guess the system process app (whatever it's called) would show you whether you're running the PowerPC or x86 version.
 
TemeculaMac said:
Sorry to bring this back from the dead...however, I just downloaded the trial of DW CS3. I am VERY disappointed in the performance.

With every click I make, it sits for seconds before it does anything. There is no possible way of getting any work done with DW behaving so poorly. I have a new 20" iMac with 3GB of RAM.

My cpu isn't the bottleneck, as it only goes from 95% idle to 85% idle when it hangs. My memory isn't the bottleneck, as I have 1.81GB free. There is no swapping going on.

Are others just using a different editor? I typically just use it for the main framework for tables, then I convert everything manually to php and css. If there is another good editor out there for tables, I'm all ears.

Very sad...I was going to drop the money on DW, until I ran into this "un-excusable" issue.

Thanks,
Gary
Click to expand...

I have the CS3 Suite on an MBP17 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM. I'm not a heavy DW user but I do not have lags of seconds with every click I make. Apart from taking longer to load than I would like, it feels pretty snappy to me.
 
I'd really check that it's not somehow being emulated...somehow running the PowerPC version. Don't know if that's even possible, but it's the first thing that springs to mind because of that weird slow performance.
 
Thanks for the replies! I'll check to see if I'm running the PPC version instead of the Intel version. Even a 1-2 second delay with each click is ridiculous. It's bogging down even when I try to use the scroll bars to scroll down a page.

I'll report back tonight with my findings.

Thanks!
 
You are not running the PPC version. CS3 runs a check on your Mac's type before it even installs itself.

And the fault lies with Adobe, not with Apple, but they're not the only ones. Quark also have well-documented problems working with optimising code for both PPC and Intel Macs... Adobe have not only picked up an app from Macromedia, they're dealing with an entirely new (for them) process for coding their apps.
 
I'd still check it though, as it takes two seconds and SOMETHING is wrong since others have confirmed that it should run normally, and I've even seen the previous version running (through emulation) at seemingly normal seed.

Any other ideas on what it could be? Why it could run so slowly?

Could there be something else in the background eating up a ton of CPU time?
 
Maybe I'm just asking too much of it. I have it running on my XP box, and there is no delay. I've checked my CPU states, and it's idle...memory consumption is low...vmstat and iostat shows everything to be okay as well...uptime shows my load very low...there is no swapping going on either. That's what is baffling - there is nothing consuming my resources. It's just flat out dog slow.

I'll keep looking into it...

Thanks!
 
Nice find! Hopefully they'll figure it out and patch it. Didn't think that could be normal, since the EMULATED version runs faster than that from what I've seen.
 
Very nice find!!!!! These are my exact symptoms. I'll run through their recommended fixes to see if it helps.
 
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