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Mavericks slow on my MacBook '13
- Thread starter oaattia
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Judging from your Mac's symptoms, I assume that you bought the lowest-end cMBP without any upgrades.
I suggest you upgrade to an SSD and more RAM if you're constantly paging out RAM.
With an SSD, your Mac will just boot up in 11 seconds flat.
I knew that was coming. This guy doesn't stop.
OP - Clear your hard drive (erase) with disk utility and do a fresh install. I have installed Mavericks on many old 2009 C2D MacBooks and they fly (all without an SSD). There is no reason your Macbook should be slowing down.
Specs are needed, but so is some other information. How much free drive space do you have? Do you leave applications running when you shut down and do they automatically restart on boot? Is the performance problem constant, or only at boot? Do the problems only occur on some applications, or all of them?
I could probably think up a ton of others to ask.
I wouldn't go throwing new hardware at a unit until you fully understand what the problem is, especially if you're running out of disk space. Picture this: you're low on disk space, so you buy a smaller SSD because their costs are so high, and find out what you have won't fit on the the SSD. What did that solve? Nothing. But at least then you would know what the problem was...learned the hard way.
I could probably think up a ton of others to ask.
I wouldn't go throwing new hardware at a unit until you fully understand what the problem is, especially if you're running out of disk space. Picture this: you're low on disk space, so you buy a smaller SSD because their costs are so high, and find out what you have won't fit on the the SSD. What did that solve? Nothing. But at least then you would know what the problem was...learned the hard way.
That's the reason. Mavericks on regular HDDs is bloody hell slow. It took so goddamn long for it to boot on a 7200rpm drive of mine (4 minutes, would you believe it) not to mention the amount of lag when opening apps, even with 16GB of RAM and a 2.3GHz quad core i7.
It didn't take long for me to throw my 7200rpm out of my MBP when the Samsung 840 Pros came out (I got a 512GB variant and it absolutely flies, with boot times of just 11 seconds and instant opening of apps).
Horrible generalization. Mavericks does not run any slower on a traditional hard drive than Lion or Snow Leopard. Sure, an SSD would speed things up a bit but that doesn't mean he doesn't have other problems. I buy and sell Macbooks and even the 2009 13" dual cores don't lag and run slow with a fresh install of Mavericks.
I really really wish you would stop telling everyone on this forum who has problems that an SSD is the answer. How would you like it if we all told you your beloved 840 pro is now junk because PCIe flash exists and can be 1.5-2x faster. God forbid you ever have a problem with your computer because judging by the advice you give here, you are going to immediately blame your now outdated hard drive.
OP - as stated earlier, I would ERASE your hard drive with disk utility and perform a fresh install. After that, come back with the results and we can go from there.
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Try resetting the SMC by following the instructions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964
also, reset the PRAM by holding Command Option P R at start up until you hear the Mac startup chime a third time.
People fail to understand why some of us use hard drives. Do I have an SSD? Yes? Did my Mac run fine with Mavericks on a hard drive? Absolutely.
I am sick of the brain washing that goes around here that Apple's new upgrades for software can't possibly run on a wimpy Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM, and a 7200 RPM hard drive
Thank you for standing up about these things!"Speed things up a bit" *cough cough*
So are you saying 4 minutes vs 11 seconds is only "a bit"?
I do have PCIe-equipped Macs, but the difference between them and my 840 Pro-equipped MBP isn't much, so I'm not complaining. However, the difference between any SSD and regular HDD is significant. Have you used regular HDD drives before?
Mavericks slow on my MacBook '13
I have the exact same MBP and specs, and had the same problem after upgrading to mavericks last fall. Tons of beach balls and lag when switching apps or tabs after a short time, even when using just safari and mail. Beach balls would be seconds to over ten seconds long. Had to quit safari and use a memory freeing utility just to use iPhoto. And this was without Flash installed on my system; when "compressed memory" in Activity Monitor approached or went above 1GB the system would grind to a halt.
Decided to at least try and erase hard drive and reinstall before buying anything. Finally did the reinstall and things are much, much improved, even with a time machine reinstall instead of starting with a completely new user account. Compressed memory takes a lot longer to reach 1GB and even then it's responsive with only the occasional beach ball, even when switching quickly between safari, mail and iPhoto.
I also have a 2013 rMBP for work with 16 GB RAM and a PCIe flash drive so I know how responsive the Mavericks UI can be, and my personal MBP is now close enough that I don't mind the occasional hiccup.
I have the exact same MBP and specs, and had the same problem after upgrading to mavericks last fall. Tons of beach balls and lag when switching apps or tabs after a short time, even when using just safari and mail. Beach balls would be seconds to over ten seconds long. Had to quit safari and use a memory freeing utility just to use iPhoto. And this was without Flash installed on my system; when "compressed memory" in Activity Monitor approached or went above 1GB the system would grind to a halt.
Decided to at least try and erase hard drive and reinstall before buying anything. Finally did the reinstall and things are much, much improved, even with a time machine reinstall instead of starting with a completely new user account. Compressed memory takes a lot longer to reach 1GB and even then it's responsive with only the occasional beach ball, even when switching quickly between safari, mail and iPhoto.
I also have a 2013 rMBP for work with 16 GB RAM and a PCIe flash drive so I know how responsive the Mavericks UI can be, and my personal MBP is now close enough that I don't mind the occasional hiccup.
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4 minutes is not normal, nor representative of the boot time of a MBP with a platter hard drive. Yours most likely had a problem.
And honestly, who the heck judges a computer's power by boot times? That probably the most useless metric there is.
Thank you!
....and, usually, the guys who use boot time as a metric are the same guys who rave about never shutting their computer down which makes boot time a moot issue.
A full erase and fresh install can work wonders for a computer.
The point is you seek no information from the OP yet come out with a specific answer that in many cases is totally irrelevant.
If under questioning the OP reveals that they actually mean video lag while connected on WiFi your previous assurance that an SSD will speed things up is totally WRONG and the OP may have spent money totally unnecessarily based on your low-quality advice.
I almost never (need to), restart my machine so even your assessment of how my experience would change (don't worry I have an SSD and believe me boot time is the most irrelevant aspect of the change it has made), would be frankly tosh.
Your machine clearly had issues if it needed 4mins to boot from the HDD. You didn't fix those issues so likely you still have them, your 11secs boot from SSD could be faster still...but your approach is not to optimize what you have, just smash in an SSD....you must literally have more money than sense.
That's like saying you are going to use thicker oil to stop an engine from knocking. Rather than fixing the issue, people simply come up with an alternative solution. I have a PowerMac here with a hard drive on a SATA I connection. It runs great!
So guys you think that installing a fresh install would with the problem, as i don't think that the problem with the OS , the OS it pre installed on my system ( i mean that i came with my macbook preinstalled on it ) .
or what do you think to grab a lion DMG file from somewhere and install it on my system .
or what do you think to grab a lion DMG file from somewhere and install it on my system .
So are you saying that all the permissions repair, PRAM + SMC resets, fresh installs and even changing to another HDD before going SSD still means my machine had issues?
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Are you sure it's video lag? I don't see any mention of video lag while being connected to wifi. Were you hallucinating or did you just come home after a few rounds of drinking?
The OP's original post is here:
so i was wondering why my macbook is slow and sometime when i open applications i become so laggy
You could download Mavericks free from the App Store, create a bootable installer with it, boot from that installer and do a fresh install.
That was <just> an example where upgrading to an SSD wold make no difference, you need to ask more and speak less. No drinking here, thats why I can consider there to be more than one global source of mac issues.
Re your comment about your machine - well mine has never taken 4mins to boot from an HDD so yes I'd says it had issues. Your fix was to throw $$$ at it in the form of an SSD, that isn't feasible (or necessary), for lots of people so if you want to give quality advice on here you have to think beyond that.
Well, I did buy a second HDD for it, which took more or less the same time as the first.
I also tested both HDDs on another cMBP of mine, which yielded the same results. So that sort of rules out a problematic machine I guess.
Besides, I did run permissions repair (I still do that once every two days in routine maintenance) and PRAM+SMC resets.
So if all these didn't fix it...I dunno, but I just spent some $ to buy an SSD for it.
Just so you know, I get beach balls all the time with an 840 Evo. It isn't the cure all. The fact that people believe SSDs are a requirement means the OS is not optimized. Why is it that Snow Leopard is snappy on a Core 2 Duo, 2 GB of RAM, and a 5400 RPM. There is no sloppy code in it!
Wow - do you need to run permissions repair every 2 days??? If that is even remotely necessary you have a serious problem somewhere...
I suspect something in your boot sequence was just loading a load of unecessary crap, or it was hanging on something, either way you likely copied it to the second HDD and moved it to the other MBP when you moved either HDD. That is the problem with attacking a problem before you understand it.
The second HDD was a completely clean one and tests were done on both immediately after reformatting them.
I also verified the startup disk section.
Basically here's how I tested, with disk 1 and disk 2 (both 7200rpm. Disk 2 was purchased because I suspected something could be wrong with disk 1).
1. Reformat both drives.
2. Clean-install OS X to both drives.
3. Disk 1 was tested in both my cMBP 15" and cMBP 13". Both took around 3-4 mins to boot up with no login items enabled.
4. Disk 2 was tested the same way. It clocked in 3.5 minutes.
Note that 3-4 minutes means from the moment the Apple logo showed up until the desktop became a useable state. I did not stop measuring the time the moment it reached the desktop because I still had to wait a full minute before it became useable.