All round speed-upper?

[seggy]

One of my years-long ongoing issues with MacOS is the seeming expectation that users will want a very deliberate confirmation of what they're doing, and as a result everything feels slower than what I'm used to (MacOS is currently a minority in terms of use-time). This goes for OS animations, dock show speed and even seemingly response to clicks, etc.

I know how to resolve most of these issues individually and I do so when I set up a new system (and rather tellingly it *all* has to be done outside of the GUI), but I'm wondering if anyone else has had this for a while and decided to resolve them as a package. Links appreciated.

 

[NLLV]

Seggy, if you are experiencing issues which i was in the past with my 2020 10 core intel imac, you could try this, which made my mac feel literally brand new without a restore.

I used CleanMyMac X which I never believed would work.

I launched it and used every option from the left starting at the top, it took me about 45 minutes to go through everything.

I carefully considered what was launching at startup, deleted a LOT of it, researched what I did not recognize to determine if I needed it or not, deleted what I could or disabled others that I wanted to keep but not run at start.

I deleted temp files, deleted purgable space, fixed disk permissions, even ran malware scans.

I hunted for apps I was no longer using, deleted large ones.

Literally everything in the menu, I did it.

Restarted and wow, honestly the machine is like it was on week one, fast and responsive.

 

[seggy]

Seggy, if you are experiencing issues which i was in the past with my 2020 10 core intel imac, you could try this, which made my mac feel literally brand new without a restore.

I used CleanMyMac X which I never believed would work.

I launched it and used every option from the left starting at the top, it took me about 45 minutes to go through everything.

I carefully considered what was launching at startup, deleted a LOT of it, researched what I did not recognize to determine if I needed it or not, deleted what I could or disabled others that I wanted to keep but not run at start.

I deleted temp files, deleted purgable space, fixed disk permissions, even ran malware scans.

I hunted for apps I was no longer using, deleted large ones.

Literally everything in the menu, I did it.

Restarted and wow, honestly the machine is like it was on week one, fast and responsive.

So I don't think we're necessarily on the same wavelength - nothing I use is more than three years old, and most of it is top-end spec for the model.

It's not resource optimisation that's the problem. It's the overall slow response of the UX out of the box in everyday situations compared to Windows or Linux on similar hardware - or even ARM.

 

[NLLV]

Okay. And I described to you what I did to my ten core i9 September 2020 (less than two year old) iMac with a 16 gigabyte amd 5700xt.

So I am not chugging away on a garbage system.

What else are you using that is higher end? An m1 max studio maybe?

If you want to tweak things like interface so you don’t have to deal with window transitions etc to make it feel faster (it won’t be faster) you can get an app called almighty.

It allows you to change settings like how to dock and finder behave. There is I believe options to tweak animations and other little tweaks you can do there.

As for quality of life tweaks some are as I understand it baked into the OS.

EXAMPLE - as a video editor I have a lot of drives. I remove sd cards several times a day.

I wish I could disable the message about ejecting them. They are unfortunately part of the walled garden and can’t be turned off.

I totally get it. I love macOS because it is stable and doesn’t crash like windows tends to but I love windows for being able to tinker with the underlying kernel and changing things at a registry level to my liking.

 

[AltecX]

So I don't think we're necessarily on the same wavelength - nothing I use is more than three years old, and most of it is top-end spec for the model.

It's not resource optimisation that's the problem. It's the overall slow response of the UX out of the box in everyday situations compared to Windows or Linux on similar hardware - or even ARM.

I think you may be referring to animation speed? That can have a big impact on the perception of performance. For example its why Vista 'felt" slow vs Windows 7 even though in benchmarks they performance within 5% of each other. Vistas animations were laggy and choppy, but by Windows 7 they managed to redo them and either eliminate, downsize or make them smoother. Which made 7 FEEL faster.

 

[NLLV]

I think you may be referring to animation speed? That can have a big impact on the perception of performance. For example its why Vista 'felt" slow vs Windows 7 even though in benchmarks they performance within 5% of each other. Vistas animations were laggy and choppy, but by Windows 7 they managed to redo them and either eliminate, downsize or make them smoother. Which made 7 FEEL faster.

Indeed. And as I said it doesn’t make the OS faster which is why I sort of took exception to the implication OP was somehow on better hardware.

 

[chown33]

I usually turn off the whizbang animations.

Stop or reduce onscreen motion on Mac

On your Mac, stop or reduce the movement of elements on the screen.

support.apple.com

Without knowing the details of what you've done "outside the GUI", it's difficult to suggest anything specific.

 

[throAU]

It's the overall slow response of the UX out of the box in everyday situations compared to Windows or Linux on similar hardware - or even ARM.

Having used various Raspberry Pi as desktops (including Pi 400), including "even ARM" is a bit of a stretch.

 

[seggy]

I think you may be referring to animation speed? That can have a big impact on the perception of performance. For example its why Vista 'felt" slow vs Windows 7 even though in benchmarks they performance within 5% of each other. Vistas animations were laggy and choppy, but by Windows 7 they managed to redo them and either eliminate, downsize or make them smoother. Which made 7 FEEL faster.

I'm also referring to more bizarre stuff like mouseclicks. I have to actually slow down my left clicking in MacOS *even on the same Mac with the same mouse at the same DPI / polling* for one.

Animation speed is one and I've resolved pretty much all of that by turning it off thru CLI, but response of the UX is again a factor. e.g. I've never, ever got the popup dock to work in a way I'm comfortable with at my working speed.

 

[seggy]

Okay. And I described to you what I did to my ten core i9 September 2020 (less than two year old) iMac with a 16 gigabyte amd 5700xt.

So I am not chugging away on a garbage system.

What else are you using that is higher end? An m1 max studio maybe?

If you want to tweak things like interface so you don’t have to deal with window transitions etc to make it feel faster (it won’t be faster) you can get an app called almighty.

It allows you to change settings like how to dock and finder behave. There is I believe options to tweak animations and other little tweaks you can do there.

As for quality of life tweaks some are as I understand it baked into the OS.

EXAMPLE - as a video editor I have a lot of drives. I remove sd cards several times a day.

I wish I could disable the message about ejecting them. They are unfortunately part of the walled garden and can’t be turned off.

I totally get it. I love macOS because it is stable and doesn’t crash like windows tends to but I love windows for being able to tinker with the underlying kernel and changing things at a registry level to my liking.

Wow - (presumably professional) video editing on the i9 iMac, don't envy you.

I've Pros, quite a few iMacs ranging from your i9 down to the '19 i5, and an iMac Pro. I have fundamentally the same abovementioned issues with all of them.

And on your tip, drag response in situations like ejection is one of the annoyances - I don't really have an issue with dragging the drive to the bin as an action, but it's way too slow to respond so it's always Cmd-E. Now I also realise I can get past a lot of the issues in the same manner - via keyboard shortcuts. But what I'm generally referring to aren't really things I'd consider needing to remember shortcuts for.

I usually turn off the whizbang animations.

Stop or reduce onscreen motion on Mac

On your Mac, stop or reduce the movement of elements on the screen.

support.apple.com

Without knowing the details of what you've done "outside the GUI", it's difficult to suggest anything specific.

Already turned off all animations, and tried tuning the dock delay, etc. I have *no* idea what to do about the mouse clicks. The problem is that everything has a delay as is in MacOS.

Taking as an example a comparison in just simple things like bringing up System Prefs on NLLV's i9 iMac (mine might even have more memory than NLLV's unit) with all animations turned off vs Windows Settings on a Surface Go with all standard animations on, they appear at almost the same time - and the Go is a *dreadful* experience in terms of stuff like this overall in Windows.