Mid 2014 MBP finally starting to slow down, Big Sur's fault?

[buckingham2015]

It seems like less than a year ago, I was thinking to myself that this MBP has been amazing. Still buttery smooth, works perfectly well for software development, and only struggles in games and when trying to work with large videos, which I do very little of.

Over the last 6-8 months, it's finally started to feel a little slow. Random websites in Safari have started lagging while scrolling. The new reddit design is really not smooth for me. Twitch videos have started stuttering. Trying to watch a 4k video on Chrome seems to take everything my computer is capable of.

Websites in general just seem to no longer be consistently buttery smooth.

I'm not sure if this is just me trying to start rationalizing buying the 16" M1 based MBP when it comes out (high probability), if Big Sur and maybe Safari especially is glitchy for everyone, or if the genuine system demands of modern web design and these basic use cases are starting to outstrip my computer's abilities.

So, people with newer macs, are you also experiencing these same issues in Big Sur? Or is my computer finally starting to get long in the tooth after 7 years?

 

[Ghokun]

I have 13" 2014, I regret upgrading to big sur. Catalina felt faster for me.

 

[biffuz]

Try Firefox with uBlock. Fixes 90% of the "slow" computers I see.

 

[Audit13]

I'm using 11.2.2 on a mid-2014 13" and it does not feel slow at all.

 

[pshufd]

My 2014 got updated to Big Sur by mistake. I restored from Time Machine back to Mojave and it's running just fine now.

 

[Fishrrman]

I've seen a lot of posts lately about folks complaining of "slowdowns" after upgrading to Big Sur.

I'm wondering if the "excessive drive writes" that involve the m1 Macs (and Big Sur), can also affect Intel Macs running BS as well...?

 

[pshufd]

I've seen a lot of posts lately about folks complaining of "slowdowns" after upgrading to Big Sur.

I'm wondering if the "excessive drive writes" that involve the m1 Macs (and Big Sur), can also affect Intel Macs running BS as well...?

This is why I normally wait one to two years before updating macOS. I do not really like Catalina either. Mojave is super stable and I like the performance.

 

[tis]

I have 13" 2014, I regret upgrading to big sur. Catalina felt faster for me.

You can very easily go back. The old operating systems can be downloaded right from Apple.

I still have a late 2013 MBP that seems to work tremendously. 2.3ghz/16gb/512gb model. Catalina might be a tad bit smoother, but Big Sur has been fine for me.

 

[opfor]

I am running Safari in a M1 MBA 16gb ram and it is not smooth either. I have a intel mbp from work still running Catalina and Safari 13.1 and scrolling is way smoother.

 

[pshufd]

I am running Safari in a M1 MBA 16gb ram and it is not smooth either. I have a intel mbp from work still running Catalina and Safari 13.1 and scrolling is way smoother.

I've used Firefox on the a Air/M1 16/1 and it runs just fine. I've never been a fan of Safari.

 

[ewu]

My iMac 2017 are using Mac os High Sierra.

I will update mac os only when development environment are too old to use.