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How is Yosemite running for those on 2010 MBA?

M

mellofello

Suspended
Original poster
Feb 1, 2011
1,259
556
Recently my machine has slowed to a absolute crawl. Anything more then 480p youtube videos are out of the question. I did a reformat/reinstall, and I am running it bare with only the minimal amount of stuff, on the HD. Still didn't help. In activity monitor the CPU doesn't seem stressed, but I get the beach ball constantly.

I'm wondering if anyone else is having the same issues, or if my MBA has a hardware problem.
 
Yeah it is strange I used to be able to watch 1080P, with no issues, and performance was snappy. Now it is freezing, and getting stuck on anything but the most basic tasks. My thought is that it may be bad ram or possibly ssd. I will take it down, and see.
 
I'm using Yosemite on a 2011 MBA (only one year younger than yours) and it's not a speed demon by any stretch of the imagination, but it does handle 1080p video fine.

Try a clean reinstall of OS X first. If that doesn't help, then it's most likely an hardware issue.

To test your RAM, follow this guide.
 
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Late 2010 (SSD) still runing absolutely smooth. My father's 2015 is probably booting up faster, but that's the only difference I realized when not forcing it into a heavy workload.
 
mellofello said:
Recently my machine has slowed to a absolute crawl. Anything more then 480p youtube videos are out of the question. I did a reformat/reinstall, and I am running it bare with only the minimal amount of stuff, on the HD. Still didn't help. In activity monitor the CPU doesn't seem stressed, but I get the beach ball constantly.

I'm wondering if anyone else is having the same issues, or if my MBA has a hardware problem.
Click to expand...

The 2010 MBA is equipped with a Geforce 320m. Apple hasn't invested too much on drivers for GPUs like 320m or 9400m. There is a topic in the Macbook Pro area which explains how to install nVidia-supplied drivers. This way I could enable CUDA support on my 9400m and 320m under Mavericks. Didn't test on Yosemite yet.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1748213/

Other hypothesis: make sure your Netflix is not using Silverlight. When updating from Mavericks to Yosemite your Safari cookies aren't updated and Netflix defaults to Silverlight. Try cleaning your cookies, so Netflix will use the HTML5 player.
 
My 2010 MBA runs fine on Yosemite. Of course it is not as fast at it used to be. It takes about 30 seconds to boot up and about 15 seconds to shut down. Both times are about double what it used to be when it was new. Applications take a bit longer to open, but once they are open, everything is snappy. I don't see much lag or stuttering. 720 and 1080p videos work fine both on Safari and Chrome. Netflix works fine also.

But the biggest issue with playing video is the fan invariably comes on loudly any time I play video - doesn't matter what kind of a video it is - HTML 5, Silverlight, YouTube, Flash etc. I have just accepted that it is because of the computer's age and have learned to live with it. But the fan does come on loudly and if I am on battery, it kills the battery life pretty fast.
 
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saintforlife said:
...
But the biggest issue with playing video is the fan invariably comes on loudly any time I play video - doesn't matter what kind of a video it is - HTML 5, Silverlight, YouTube, Flash etc. I have just accepted that it is because of the computer's age and have learned to live with it. But the fan does come on loudly and if I am on battery, it kills the battery life pretty fast.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's anything to do with the computer's age. I had a 2010 MBA which I used as an HTPC several years ago and it always ran hot and loud when playing almost any kind of streaming video.
 
My GF has a 2010 MBA 1.86 4GB. It became unusably slow and two different Mac specialists recommended a new logic board. I did a hardware test which turned up a code that seemed to relate to a thermal sensor.

After digging around on the web I came across this process (links don't seem to be allowed here):

"Fix MacBook Air kernel_task fix on Lion 10.7.3 (use these instructions as your own risk).
Before you do this, note that I recommend you max your fax using smcFanControl and if you've got an old system and if you are capable, open the bottom cover and clean the fan super-well using compressed air. I also run my MacBook Air on a Belkin USB-powered laptop lap desk with a built-in fan. You are about to unleash this CPU to its maximum, so keep everything as cool as you can or else you might burn up the CPU and/or mainboard.
I spent over 80 hours of my personal time figuring this out, so if my fix works for you, and if you feel like blessing me, send me a PayPal at chuck straughn at me dot com. No obligation, but anything you do helps me and my family. If these instructions are too technical for you, contact me and I'll do it for you for a small fee if you can afford that, otherwise I'm happy to help you for free and share the love.
1) Open System Information (under Apple icon in upper-left, click About This Mac, click More Info)
2) Click System Report button, under Hardware, find your "Model Identifier" -remember this for later use
3) Navigate to /System/Library/Extensions an right-click, Show Package Contents of IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext
4) Open Contents/PlugIns and Show Package Contents of ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext
5) Open Contents/Resources
6) Find your MacBookAir?_?.plist (? = your model identifier from step 2) and delete the file
7) Reboot! Remember, anytime you do a System Update, you may need to repeat this process"

After following the steps described by above, written by "Chuck Straughn" the MBA is massively improved. It's still not perfect as it slows down after a while and needs a reboot, but it's definitely usable and has been for around a year. The process is simple to follow and easy to reverse, so might be worth a try for you. Obviously you do so at your own risk. :)
 
Not having any of those problems on my 2010 (1.86GHz, 128GB, 4GB) I've actually been quite pleased at how well it's handled the updated OS's. Can't say the same about my older iOS devices.
 
mellofello said:
Recently my machine has slowed to a absolute crawl. Anything more then 480p youtube videos are out of the question. I did a reformat/reinstall, and I am running it bare with only the minimal amount of stuff, on the HD. Still didn't help. In activity monitor the CPU doesn't seem stressed, but I get the beach ball constantly.

I'm wondering if anyone else is having the same issues, or if my MBA has a hardware problem.
Click to expand...

If you're watching Netflix under the Silverlight plugin, this is the cause of your problems. Install Google Chrome 64, then go to chrome://components and update the built-in video driver.

P.S.: Playing Netflix in HTML5 mode on Safari only works on Yosemite and newer machines (SandyBridge and up). Otherwise, you need using Chrome. Any options are better than Silverlight.
 
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