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PDF Performance

H

hooldus

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 13, 2010
35
6
I bought some days ago the MacBook 12" base model. It has an excellent screen - in my opinion even better than rMBP’s screen. Absolutely no high pitch noise when SSD accessed. I love the keyboard and the touchpad. However, the performance… Even simple pdfs could not be scrolled smooth, e.g. this simple pdf http://store.storeimages.cdn-apple...._finance/terms/apple_consumer_finance_tcs.pdf - scrolling in Safari is sluggish and not smooth, even if the window is not in full screen mode.

Is it a problem with my MacBook or is it a general issue in Yosemite?
 
hooldus said:
I bought some days ago the MacBook 12" base model. It has an excellent screen - in my opinion even better than rMBP’s screen. Absolutely no high pitch noise when SSD accessed. I love the keyboard and the touchpad. However, the performance… Even simple pdfs could not be scrolled smooth, e.g. this simple pdf http://store.storeimages.cdn-apple...._finance/terms/apple_consumer_finance_tcs.pdf - scrolling in Safari is sluggish and not smooth, even if the window is not in full screen mode.

Is it a problem with my MacBook or is it a general issue in Yosemite?
Click to expand...

Have you tried other PDF's? Seems odd, that one works smoothly on my, in relative terms, anaemic iPad mini 3 with zero problems, it is a barely one page simple PDF with no pictures or graphical objects whatsoever. Are you noticing considerable lag/performance issues with anything else? What's running in the background besides Safari? Did you have a solid internet connection with a strong signal and high bandwidth?
 
i've opened that link side-by-side on my 12" 1.2 rMB and my 1.3" MBA 1.7 i7 from last year. only difference i see is an almost imperceptible jump as the bold title text goes off the top of the screen. not something i'd notice if i didn't have the two machines next to each other.
 
I'm pretty sure this is a software issue.

I've noticed it too, PDF's are sometimes very choppy, and it's the only thing that is. Ironically it's the Apple PDF's that are slow to load and read; I downloaded one from MS and it was just fine.

I imagine Apple is aware of it, since they must read their own PDFs.
 
I don't own a MacBook, but I went into a store to try one when they came out, opened one of the stock PDFs already loaded on the machine and was shocked at the lag. Decided there and then it was unusable for me as I use PDFs a lot.
It was weird, here is a brand new laptop of 2015, lagging badly with a simple pdf. My 2013 MBA loads all PDFs smoothly.
 
It is a Yosemite problem. Apple F..... up the pdf-engine in Yosemite. Quick view (space on file in finder) seems to use another pdf-engine and not have the problem.

You can find guides about copying in the old pdf-engine from Maverick.
 
Significant1 said:
It is a Yosemite problem. Apple F..... up the pdf-engine in Yosemite. Quick view (space on file in finder) seems to use another pdf-engine and not have the problem.
Click to expand...

Wow, you're absolutely right! In "Quick View", even at fullscreen and zoomed to the page-width, absolute no jumps! :eek:
Anyone tested the PDF-performance of the "Preview"-app on OS 10.10.4 BETA?
 
Dwayne82 said:
Wow, you're absolutely right! In "Quick View", even at fullscreen and zoomed to the page-width, absolute no jumps! :eek:
Anyone tested the PDF-performance of the "Preview"-app on OS 10.10.4 BETA?
Click to expand...

Yes, and it's exactly the same you mentioned. In Preview it's horrible, in Quick View it's quite smooth.
 
I scroll through PDFs daily for work and had the same issues with PDFs on my 13" 2015 retina MBP. It is not a hardware issue. I've tried several alternatives.

Go and download Skim, it is free. PDF scrolling bliss on my rMBP. You're welcome :)
 
lite426 said:
So the lag doesn't happen with say Adobe Reader, or when using Windows 10?
Click to expand...

No, in my experience (not on the MB, but with MBA's and MBP's of various generations since 2011) Adobe Acrobat Pro (or Reader) is 10x worse as far as rendering and scrolling smoothness is concerned. Horrible performance compared to Preview.
 
My guess is, that many third-party rely on Apple's PDFkit for rendering and therefore also is affected. As I wrote earlier, there are guides to replace the PDFkit engine with the one from Maverick. So if you feel adventurous and are not afraid of breaking something, then check this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1806654/
 
hooldus said:
I bought some days ago the MacBook 12" base model. It has an excellent screen - in my opinion even better than rMBP’s screen. Absolutely no high pitch noise when SSD accessed. I love the keyboard and the touchpad. However, the performance… Even simple pdfs could not be scrolled smooth, e.g. this simple pdf http://store.storeimages.cdn-apple...._finance/terms/apple_consumer_finance_tcs.pdf - scrolling in Safari is sluggish and not smooth, even if the window is not in full screen mode.

Is it a problem with my MacBook or is it a general issue in Yosemite?
Click to expand...

I have the 1.3 and it is very laggy in safari but i downloaded it and several other pdf's and in preview they are smooth as butter.
 
hooldus said:
That is disappointing :(

Have you tried downloading them and opening with the Preview program?
Click to expand...

I just tried now with Preview, the Microsoft document is notably smoother than on Safari but still stutters. The short Apple document is significantly smoother on Preview.
 
Last edited:
Queen6 said:
Open in "QuickView" or try "Skim" the PDF rendering engine has been broken in OS X for some time .

Q-6
Click to expand...

Skim is worse than Preview, and "QuickView" isn't so quick given how it stops scrolling at the end of each page, it takes ages if you want to quickly scroll through a document.
 
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