El Capitan painfully slow

[ben824]

Ok so I know before you start in on me, yes I know it is just a Beta and not perfect and expected the usual amount of slowness, lagging, and glitches, but this has been worse than any other Beta I have ever tried out.

I am currently running Public Beta 2 of El Capitan on my 2011 13" Macbook Pro. Initial installation of Public Beta 1 went smoothly and no major issues. But when Public Beta 2 and several recent updates went through he installation process and then it restarted, restart took forever, atleast an hour, and it kept getting hung up and I would have to power down and power up again. At one point it went through and popped up with a screen asking me to log in with my Apple ID and the background was changed to the new El Capitan. When it did this it again became hung up and I had to power down and power up again. When it came back, everything was back to normal and I was not prompted by a window asking for my Apple ID again.

Once I was seemingly back to normal it still was painfully slow and lagging throughout the OS and using applications.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Again I know its a Beta and I was not expecting perfection but this is rough.

 

[h9826790]

It doesn't sounds right. By considering you did force power down the machine during the installation process. I suggest you do another clean install rather than try to find out the reason and fix it.

 

[hojx]

Have you, just quickly on a basic level, looked at the Activity Monitor and checked out if there were any particular processes taking up your CPU & RAM?

In general, if you had a bad install it would be still good to just do a clean install. If you have the habit of making backups (please always do) then a clean install shouldn't be much of an issue.

 

[spaghettieater]

yeah ur running this on a very computer with low hardware very outdated stuff thats why its slow , people expect a modern os to run lighning fast on years old computer (yes 2011 is year old for the sort of hardware you have)

 

[srazz]

I have no idea why I decided to play with this beta but what a mistake. Especially this last update. My system is so slow and unstable. Like I said, not sure why I decided other than when I did Yosemite it was great. This beta, not so.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

yeah ur running this on a very computer with low hardware very outdated stuff thats why its slow , people expect a modern os to run lighning fast on years old computer (yes 2011 is year old for the sort of hardware you have)

What absolute rubbish, it's got absolutely nothing to do with the age of the computer but thanks for trying anyways.

 

[spaghettieater]

What absolute rubbish, it's got absolutely nothing to do with the age of the computer but thanks for trying anyways.

of course it has to do with the age of the computer stop emberassing urself already.

 

[hojx]

of course it has to do with the age of the computer stop emberassing urself already.

Unlike an iPhone which has a way shorter lifespan, there are many people who hold on to their Macs for five years or more.

Yes, it has to do with how old the computer is, but this hardware factor is barely significant compared to the software factors.

Why?

1. OS X El Capitan focuses on speed, efficiency and stability enhancements over Yosemite. So unlike typical OS upgrades it should not bog down the Mac, rather it should make it faster.
2. OP said that he was running Public Beta 1 with no issues, and the lag only happened in Public Beta 2. He also said that the installation process did not go smoothly. This points to a bad install.

 

[redheeler]

of course it has to do with the age of the computer stop emberassing urself already.

If there's anyone embarrassing themselves it's you. The OP is clearly having a problem with a messed-up install.

A 2011 MBP isn't even that old. On my late 2008 MacBook Air, 10.11 DP2 runs noticeably faster than Yosemite and surprisingly smooth.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

of course it has to do with the age of the computer stop emberassing urself already.

1. The user implied the slowness he is experiencing with El Capitan was not present until this latest beta
2. On all Macs I have tried, El Capitan is faster than Yosemite and the user had no issue with Yosemite speed.
3. I have the exact same Macbook Pro as him and have zero speed issues with El Capitan.

None of these points support your blanket comment that his issue with the latest El Capitan beta is due to the age of his Mac.

All this means you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[spaghettieater]

lmfao yes el capitan is the fastest os but needs to be run on modern hardware

2011 hardware is way old now, even for some pc hardware it would be

and lol u have 0 speed issue because ur slow at what u do and run one application at the time

if u ran many application it would be slow

 

[saudor]

lmfao yes el capitan is the fastest os but needs to be run on modern hardware

2011 hardware is way old now, even for some pc hardware it would be

and lol u have 0 speed issue because ur slow at what u do and run one application at the time

if u ran many application it would be slow

El Cap flies on my 2010 macbook pro. A friend uses a 2007 C2D mbp for graphic design too with no problems. The 2007 PC in the house with a q6600 also runs windows 7 perfectly and no lag with sites at all.

This is clearly a case of a botched install and a clean one should help it. As others have said, it's not like iOS devices where the next generation is 100%/magnitudes faster

EDIT: I use my computer for graphics design and have large PS/Ai files open to the point where memory pressure occasionally goes yellow and im using 12gb ram (compressed memory) Pretty sure that counts as heavy use.

 

[bunnspecial]

I'm running PB on an early '08 MBP(one of the oldest computers officially capable of running it) and it flies. That's with 6gb RAM and an SSD. It also runs great on my mid-2012 classic, although admittedly I do feel some lag from the platter drive(that will be fixed soon).

Once I get some other issues ironed out and the official release comes out, I plan on installing it on my Mac Pro 1,1. Given that the previous owner had Yosemite running great on it, and I've since installed an SSD along with a LOT more RAM(I have it up to 12gb) I expect no issues.

Heck, I still use a computer from 2005 daily(although not with the latest OS). The right Wintel box of the same age could run Windows 10.

 

[ben824]

Thanks for all the comments! I do back ups regularly to my Time Capsule so no worries there. I was tempted to do a clean install but now it seems to be more stable, not sure if it just needed some time to get all the updates situated before I really started to use it. I also noticed all of the updates I did, my Dad's 2011 MBP 15" running Yosemite also experienced a few quirks when restarting so I think it might be more with the latest rounds of updates and not necessarily El Capitan but since El Capitan is a Beta and not exactly the most stable software, when combined with trying to do the updates it just made everything act a little more weird. But it seems to be ok now.

 

[Gamer9430]

Um... I have no clue what your issue is, but I have had my Late 2011 13in MBP partitioned in 2 and running OS X El Cap on a second partition (will all my files from the first partition) since beta 1. It FLIES on my MBP. Even though it's still beta software, I felt like it was so much smoother than Yosemite, Mavericks, or Mountain Lion (ML was by far the worst OS I put onto the MBP). And to everyone who says that a 2011 MBP is old, your feelings are comical. They are still fully capable of doing a lot of stuff. Unless you are a professional Photo editor or Movie editor, you don't need to have the most cutting edge Mac possible. As an owner of several PowerPC macs, they are even older, and anything I toss at my PowerMac G5, it can do fine.

Just because something is old doesn't mean it's useless.

 

[Gamer9430]

Oh and just to add, while it may not be a Mac, but I have a 2004 Dell Dimension 4700 with a 3GHz Pentium 4 running Windows 10. It runs better than XP ever did and if I maxed out the RAM (4GB), and added a supported GPU, I'm sure it would work fine on Win10.

 

[MagicBoy]

lmfao yes el capitan is the fastest os but needs to be run on modern hardware

2011 hardware is way old now, even for some pc hardware it would be

and lol u have 0 speed issue because ur slow at what u do and run one application at the time

if u ran many application it would be slow

El Cap needs to be run on supported hardware. If the supported hardware didn't run the OS well Apple would remove support. I'm running the latest DP on a 2009 Mac mini. It's running three or four apps concurrently along with XBMC for media PC duties without breaking sweat.

2011 hardware is not "way old" and your comments are just plain wrong. There's not a huge amount of difference between the performance of a 2011 MBP and a 2015 version, aside from the swap to an SSD, which is recommended as the best price/performance upgrade for any Mac running OS X 10.9 onwards.

OS X is designed for multitasking, hell even my 14 year old PowerBook does it fine. I'd suggest you think before keyboard warrioring an ill thought out opinion in future.

 

[poiihy]

I'm running El Capitan on my 2009 15" MBP and it's perfectly fine.

 

[bbfc]

Ok so I know before you start in on me, yes I know it is just a Beta and not perfect and expected the usual amount of slowness, lagging, and glitches, but this has been worse than any other Beta I have ever tried out.

I am currently running Public Beta 2 of El Capitan on my 2011 13" Macbook Pro. Initial installation of Public Beta 1 went smoothly and no major issues. But when Public Beta 2 and several recent updates went through he installation process and then it restarted, restart took forever, atleast an hour, and it kept getting hung up and I would have to power down and power up again. At one point it went through and popped up with a screen asking me to log in with my Apple ID and the background was changed to the new El Capitan. When it did this it again became hung up and I had to power down and power up again. When it came back, everything was back to normal and I was not prompted by a window asking for my Apple ID again.

Once I was seemingly back to normal it still was painfully slow and lagging throughout the OS and using applications.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Again I know its a Beta and I was not expecting perfection but this is rough.

I'm running El Capitan on an early 2011 MBP and it runs absolutely fine. I have made no changes to the hardware and have no SSD.