M1 Pro Max - Slow 6 Months in?

[BigMcGuire]

My M1 Max, now older than 4 months old is still running instantly like the day I bought it. I often have 3 browsers opened up at the same time (Safari, Edge, and Brave) with many tabs on each.

Sometimes I'll notice some tabs complaining about resource hogging in safari and kill them but it's rare. At the end of the day I usually kill the browsers because like you I've noticed they just start leaking memory like crazy if I leave them open for too long especially on chromium browsers. So I'm not really surprised to see that.

What I've noticed is at the end of the day sometimes my bluetooth audio to my AirPods will be way lower than it should be, and I'll open Activity Monitor and see several dozen com.apple.audio.SandboxHelpers - if I kill all those then the audio levels go back to normal. Used to happen a lot more in the past, but still happens every now and then.

I CANNOT stand ads so I run 1Blocker. I donate to sites where I know I cost the owners resources - like here. But I'd rather go back to paper books than be force fed ads. I cancel any subscription that I have that forces ads on me. I get that it's the #1 way to make $ these days but ... I can't focus on reading text with flashing, moving, bright, animated ads that are not only a risk to my sanity but also a security risk to my computer.

 

[ipedro]

My M1 Max, now older than 4 months old is still running instantly like the day I bought it. I often have 3 browsers opened up at the same time (Safari, Edge, and Brave) with many tabs on each.

Sometimes I'll notice some tabs complaining about resource hogging in safari and kill them but it's rare. At the end of the day I usually kill the browsers because like you I've noticed they just start leaking memory like crazy if I leave them open for too long especially on chromium browsers. So I'm not really surprised to see that.

What I've noticed is at the end of the day sometimes my bluetooth audio to my AirPods will be way lower than it should be, and I'll open Activity Monitor and see several dozen com.apple.audio.SandboxHelpers - if I kill all those then the audio levels go back to normal. Used to happen a lot more in the past, but still happens every now and then.

I CANNOT stand ads so I run 1Blocker. I donate to sites where I know I cost the owners resources - like here. But I'd rather go back to paper books than be force fed ads. I cancel any subscription that I have that forces ads on me. I get that it's the #1 way to make $ these days but ... I can't focus on reading text with flashing, moving, bright, animated ads that are not only a risk to my sanity but also a security risk to my computer.

I don’t mind ads, I even like well designed ads, but it looks like MacRumors is running more than just ads. Benefit of the doubt, these things usually happen unbeknownst to the site owners. But now that they know, I would expect to see them take some action on investigating into the ad supplier they’re working with and if an alternative is available, switch over. The ads running here are clearly doing more than displaying ads and even more than collecting data on visitors to the site. Are they mining crypto?

 

[BigMcGuire]

I don’t mind ads, I even like well designed ads, but it looks like MacRumors is running more than just ads. Benefit of the doubt, these things usually happen unbeknownst to the site owners. But now that they know, I would expect to see them take some action on investigating into the ad supplier they’re working with and if an alternative is available, switch over. The ads running here are clearly doing more than displaying ads and even more than collecting data on visitors to the site. Are they mining crypto?

While I wouldn't put it past ad designers to allow such crap to happen, I can't imagine stealing 20-30% of CPU is all that rewarding money wise. I've always heard that to make good $ you have to rent a warehouse full of GPUs for that kind of stuff. But I'm nowhere near an expert on crypto currency mining.

Now, badly designed ads by the cheapest developers who have no concept of efficiency and security? You betchya. And you can definitely believe they're collecting all the data they can and selling it to the highest bidder. (They = ads/ad companies).

 

[Archproto1]

I was impressed with my nearly maxed out MacBookPro M1 Pro Max 32GB. It was the fastest computer I'd ever used and I felt like nothing I could throw at it could slow it down. Truly felt invincible. 6 months in, and I'm getting spinning beachballs everywhere and using my $5000 Mac feels like sludge sometimes.

Anyone else experiencing this? I'm a photographer and graphic designer so on any given day, I have Lightroom, Photoshop and Illustrator running along with a litany of Chrome tabs with Google Workspace apps. That's essentially it. If I want to run FinalCutPro, I usually close everything else. My 2TB SDD is only 25% full.

Yet, my 6 month old Mac feels like a geriatric PC that I'd been using for years.

Add to that the increasingly complained about pops and scratches which make the onboard speakers unusable, and I'm not sure this Mac lives up to early reviews, including my own.

Hoping for a new macOS to smooth things out soon.

I have the same issue with my M1 Max. 4T SSD and 64GB of ram. Almost nothing used to phase it for the first 2 years, almost as if to say, "Oh come on, give me something hard!" But 4 years later, it has slowed down dramatically. PhotoLab exports used to take a second or 2 and now take 20 seconds or so. Affinity Photo crashes from time to time when I'm working on something with a lot of layers. My screen saver, which uses photos from a file of mine, is often out of focus. I used to never see the beach ball and it frequently appears now. As well, since the processes take longer, the battery will run out after a few hours–I used to be able to go almost all day on battery alone.

I only use 1/4 of the SSD so far. I don't have Chrome installed. I don't normally have more than half a dozen tabs open in Safari, although I usually have at least a dozen Finder tabs going–but that would not have caused even a hiccup when the Mac was new.