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Stuttering and jerking during scrolling in different places of the system

Vlad Koon

Vlad Koon

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 10, 2021
52
12
Hello from Ukraine!
About two years ago I bought your Mac mini on an M1 chip with 16 gigabytes of RAM and a 256 GB SSD. This nettop came pre-installed with macOS 11.4, and on the first day I noticed stuttering and jerking while scrolling in different places in the system. Before that, I used the gaming barebone nettop Intel NUC Hades Canyon (the older model with the HVK index) based on Windows 10 and there were no such problems with scrolling, everything worked very smoothly. I have now updated to macOS 14.0 Sonoma (23A344), but the problem still persists! This is especially noticeable when scrolling through the list of widgets and in the system settings, in the sections for choosing wallpapers and screensavers. In Safari, everything also scrolls with noticeable jerks, especially on YouTube. At the same time, Firefox scrolls content as smoothly as possible, which is why I only use it. The funny thing is that Firefox is a cross-platform web browser, and Safari is created by Apple employees exclusively for macOS, so it should be the fastest and smoothest, but it is not.
I connect the Mac mini with an HDMI cable to an LG 27UP650-W monitor with a 4K resolution (3840 x 2160) and a screen refresh rate of 60 Hz. I've read that the M1 chip Mac mini supports the Apple Pro Display XDR at 6K (6016 x 3384) resolution, so my monitor should be easily supported and not have a major impact on GPU performance. I use a Logitech G903 Lightspeed mouse and also purchased Mac Mouse Fix (MMF) version 3.0.0 Beta 6 (21668). Before MMF, I used the free Chinese MOS utility, but with it the scrolling slows down even more. I installed only a few different browsers (Chrome and Firefox) and a few utilities on the system. I don’t use any garbage cleaners or optimizers. It has already reached the point that I even specifically bought your Apple Magic Mouse in the hope that everything would scroll smoothly with it. But no miracle happened - with the Magic Mouse, scrolling occurs with noticeable jerks, just like when using a regular mouse. There’s no talk of any of the buttery smooth scrolling that people so often like to talk about at WWDC presentations! I'm still in shock, especially considering the Mac mini is relatively modern, cost about $1,000, and has an 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU. WTF?! O___O
I read reviews on the Internet and see that everyone else has the same problem, especially those who bought computers based on the M1 and M2 chip. Moreover, even reinstalling the system completely does not help people.
Please tell me, are you at least trying to somehow fix this problem??? And if so, when can we expect this disgusting bug to be fixed? When can I expect the buttery smooth scrolling to appear in macOS that I have dreamed of for so long and that I so hoped to see when buying your expensive nettop?

I'm looking forward to your answer!

I have already filed a bug report using the built-in feedback assistant utility in macOS ,-)
 
Anyone who has a Mac mini with an M1 chip, please confirm or deny this scrolling issue 🙏
 
Vlad Koon said:
Anyone who has a Mac mini with an M1 chip, please confirm or deny this scrolling issue 🙏
Click to expand...
Sadly this has been an issue ever since "retina" displays became a thing on Mac OS.

Apple have never bothered to actually optimise Mac OS in the last 10 years. Why? Because those people who exclusively use Mac OS will likely never touch a Windows or Android device. Even Chrome OS is significantly smoother.

Because they have nothing to compare to, it is "buttery smooth" to them.

Same thing holds true for iOS. You'll notice on many 60fps YouTube reviews for the 15 Pro that they still stutter like crazy on a basic settings menu and even the home screen.

A lot of people simply don't notice or care. Apple certainly don't.

Your choice is to live with it, or move to Windows/Linux/ChromeOS/Android etc.

Apple always gloat about how powerful their chips are, but look at the embarrassment that is Apple Music/iTunes on the desktop. They don't optimise any of their software. Even Chrome on MacOS is significantly smoother to scroll compared to Safari.

Infact, go on any Windows PC and you'll notice the browser version of Apple Music also lags like crazy, just like the native app.

Like I said most people, especially those wearing the Apple-tinted specs, don't see or care about the stutters. The OS is generally fast enough and is above all else a tool, which is slightly ironic given how much emphasis Apple put on creating a beautiful UI.

Use all operating systems regularly, and Android is by far the smoothest and fastest out of them all. Windows 11 is 2nd probably followed by Pop OS a close 3rd. Despite what many sheeple and Apple themselves would have you believe, both Mac OS and iOS are at the bottom of the pile as far as fluidity is concerned. A crying shame considering how amazing some of the animations and transitions are.
 
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It’s just very, very strange, especially looking at cross-platform Firefox, which demonstrates truly buttery smooth scrolling even on very heavy sites, like YouTube 🤨 Among all the web browsers, Firefox is the only one that demonstrates miracles of performance – it is very fast (almost as fast as Chrome) and at the same time the smoothest 😮 👍

JuicyGoomba, are you experiencing the same problem? What kind of Mac do you have? 🤔

I noticed that from version 11.4, which came pre-installed on my Mac mini, to version 14.0, scrolling smoothness and overall system performance improved slightly, plus improved responsiveness. But damn, in ~3 years, I’m sure the system could have been optimized much better, making scrolling and all animations really buttery smooth 😠
 
As I understand it, we can only hope and wait for Apple to finally implement buttery smooth scrolling in one of its major system updates. I would really like to believe that this will happen in the next 15th version, but I have big doubts about this :rolleyes:
 
JuicyGoomba said:
Same thing holds true for iOS. You'll notice on many 60fps YouTube reviews for the 15 Pro that they still stutter like crazy on a basic settings menu and even the home screen.
Click to expand...
Can I see an example? 🙂 It would be interesting to take a look 🧐
 
Vlad Koon said:
In Safari, everything also scrolls with noticeable jerks, especially on YouTube.
Click to expand...
In order not to be unfounded, here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn2nfuATkZsQzaTPcar9B0vPVO2a59hf5

Follow the link above and scroll to the bottom of the page, repeatedly pressing the End key on your keyboard until all 774 previews have loaded. After this, we begin to scroll the page in any way convenient for us, for example, by grabbing the scroll bar. Only in Firefox does scrolling turn out perfectly smooth, no matter how I scroll this page. Even if you activate autoscroll by pressing MMB (this feature is only available in Firefox under macOS). In Safari and Chrome everything is very sad in this regard 😥
 
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I was introduced to macOS starting with version 11.4 (Big Sur), which came pre-installed on my Mac mini. I don’t know how it was before, in previous versions of macOS, when Intel processors were still used, but starting from version 11 and the use of Apple’s own processors on the M1 chip (Apple Silicon), I, unfortunately, do not observe any smooth scrolling 🥺 😢 😭 Moreover, either using a third-party mouse or using Apple’s Magic Mouse. That is, all four versions of macOS (Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura and Sonoma) noticeably slow down and stutter while scrolling. Moreover, this applies not only to the Safari web browser built into the operating system, but to the entire system as a whole 😱 🤯 🤬 The single smoothest app is Mozilla's cross-platform Firefox web browser, and that's just LOL!!! 🤣 But to be fair, it was the smoothest on both Windows and Linux, so I'm not at all surprised that it remains the smoothest on macOS.
 
Would love to hear more opinions on this from other M1/M2 chip Mac mini users. I would also like to hear the opinions of all those who have modern Mac computers on the M1 or M2 chip on this matter.

🤔
 
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JuicyGoomba said:
Sadly this has been an issue ever since "retina" displays became a thing on Mac OS.

Apple have never bothered to actually optimise Mac OS in the last 10 years. Why? Because those people who exclusively use Mac OS will likely never touch a Windows or Android device. Even Chrome OS is significantly smoother.

Because they have nothing to compare to, it is "buttery smooth" to them.

Same thing holds true for iOS. You'll notice on many 60fps YouTube reviews for the 15 Pro that they still stutter like crazy on a basic settings menu and even the home screen.

A lot of people simply don't notice or care. Apple certainly don't.

Your choice is to live with it, or move to Windows/Linux/ChromeOS/Android etc.

Apple always gloat about how powerful their chips are, but look at the embarrassment that is Apple Music/iTunes on the desktop. They don't optimise any of their software. Even Chrome on MacOS is significantly smoother to scroll compared to Safari.

Infact, go on any Windows PC and you'll notice the browser version of Apple Music also lags like crazy, just like the native app.

Like I said most people, especially those wearing the Apple-tinted specs, don't see or care about the stutters. The OS is generally fast enough and is above all else a tool, which is slightly ironic given how much emphasis Apple put on creating a beautiful UI.

Use all operating systems regularly, and Android is by far the smoothest and fastest out of them all. Windows 11 is 2nd probably followed by Pop OS a close 3rd. Despite what many sheeple and Apple themselves would have you believe, both Mac OS and iOS are at the bottom of the pile as far as fluidity is concerned. A crying shame considering how amazing some of the animations and transitions are.
Click to expand...

Thank you for this. Although this will fall under deaf ears. A cursory google also shows tons of posts about this on apple's forums. This scrolling issue is one, even regular animations like minimizing, opening the widget pane etc are completely effed up. And these bots just say **** like "is promotion on?" or simply "no, never had that issue". Well I don't believe you, these people have obviously never seen a real 120hz monitor with win11.

I also read that this started with macos 12 I believe? That it was pretty much perfect before. I'm regretting big time tbh, might return this even though I love macos overall but it's completely unnaceptable for a $4k+ machine to not even draw a simple 60/120fps ui animation.

Here's my thread as well: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m3-max-ui-stuttering-choppy.2416356/#post-32854572
 
On my Mac mini on an M1 chip with 16 gigabytes of memory, scrolling in Safari is so slow and stuttering, especially on YouTube, that I have to use Firefox 🤣
 
Vlad Koon said:
I've seen this happen with macOS Big Sur 11.4, which came pre-installed on my Mac mini.
Click to expand...

Really? So it's been a long standing issue?

I just hopped on my 7800x3d desktop and there's no contest. Doesn't even hold a candle. Input lag from kb and mouse is instantaneous, all animations and window switching is fully smooth and at max framerate etc.

I swear apple was better at this than windows at one point? Maybe I'm romanticizing a broken memory or something.

I definitely didn't expect this to be the truth in 2023/2024 with these immensely powerful chips and the PRICE.

So there's no fix correct? Lol, we just have to live with a user experience akin to the 2000s
 
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your Mac Mini is fine,

This seems to me that something I weird with internet lately I can only assume is the privacy setting on Safari.
Most popular websites work okay on the MacMini M1 with a benQ2K hdmi monitor
my local websites that are used for news won't load clicked links as safari blocks them.
these sites are not local, but from a server LocaliQ that gathers info on every city in America.
Fox News won't open pages and other media streams won't as well.
meanwhile this site and other shopping ones do
or don't
the local shopping grocery store PUBLIX stutters if scrolled down while Fresh Market works like a charm.

we need to take into consideration that these media companies are not hiring qualified web designers anymore to save on costs a reputable design exec told me in 2019 while I was in NYC.

I can type more, but I hope this helped.
 
MBAir2010 said:
your Mac Mini is fine,

This seems to me that something I weird with internet lately I can only assume is the privacy setting on Safari.
Most popular websites work okay on the MacMini M1 with a benQ2K hdmi monitor
my local websites that are used for news won't load clicked links as safari blocks them.
these sites are not local, but from a server LocaliQ that gathers info on every city in America.
Fox News won't open pages and other media streams won't as well.
meanwhile this site and other shopping ones do
or don't
the local shopping grocery store PUBLIX stutters if scrolled down while Fresh Market works like a charm.

we need to take into consideration that these media companies are not hiring qualified web designers anymore to save on costs a reputable design exec told me in 2019 while I was in NYC.

I can type more, but I hope this helped.
Click to expand...

what?
 
Sptzz said:
I definitely didn't expect this to be the truth in 2023/2024 with these immensely powerful chips and the PRICE.
Click to expand...
I'm still in shock too!!! 😱 🤯 And for the third year in a row 😂 I continue to wait and hope that in one of the next updates Apple will finally fix this misunderstanding. I even wrote a bug report to them about this through the built-in utility (Feedback Assistant). Bug report number: FB13210192
 
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MBAir2010 said:
your Mac Mini is fine
Click to expand...
I don't think so. The optimization of the operating system is simply terrible, even compared to wretched Windows, which I can’t stand! 🤦‍♂️
And yes, I understand perfectly well that there is, apparently, nothing ideal in this world. But when such simple and obvious things work so poorly, I begin to think that this cannot be and that I am just dreaming all this. Am I having some kind of nightmare? 👀 Someone please wake me up! 🙏 It can not be true! I can’t and don’t want to believe it!!!
And yes, in the current most recent version of macOS Sonoma (14.2.1 (23C71)), nothing has improved in this regard 😕
 
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Vlad Koon said:
I don't think so. The optimization of the operating system is simply terrible, even compared to wretched Windows, which I can’t stand! 🤦‍♂️
And yes, I understand perfectly well that there is, apparently, nothing ideal in this world. But when such simple and obvious things work so poorly, I begin to think that this cannot be and that I am just dreaming all this. Am I having some kind of nightmare? 👀 Someone please wake me up! 🙏 It can not be true! I can’t and don’t want to believe it!!!
And yes, in the current most recent version of macOS Sonoma (14.2.1 (23C71)), nothing has improved in this regard 😕
Click to expand...
me. too,
Im not happy with Sonoma compared to Monterey and colpliened about this is several threads here.
 
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I didn't read through the earlier posts.

Are you using a mouse that connects via bluetooth?

If so, THAT's probably the source of the "stuttering". Electromagnetic interference between bt and other signals (such as wifi, USB3, etc.)

Get a WIRED mouse, or a Logitech mouse that uses its own "unifying receiver" instead of bluetooth. Try that and get back to us.

Bluetooth is "a problem that will never be fixed" on the Mini (and possibly Mac Studio as well)...
 
I use the Logitech G903 Lightspeed gaming mouse 😉 And of course I tried connecting it via wire. And yes, I have a similar problem with the Apple Magic Mouse. LOL! 😅
 
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For me, the fastest, most responsive and smooth operating system remains Windows 8. In general, all versions of Windows that I have used for more than a decade (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and 11) have been faster, smoother, and more responsive than the versions of macOS that I used on the Mac mini (which is on the M1 chip): 11 (Big Sur), 12 (Monterey), 13 (Ventura) and 14 (Sonoma). Using a relatively modern and fast Mac mini on the M1 chip, I often have the feeling as if I were using some old PC based on the 1st Intel processor 🤣 I’m still shocked at how long it takes to open System Settings, TextEdit, Activity Monitor and other programs built into the system 😱 In Windows, we had to wait so long for the launch of some large and multifunctional applications like Photoshop 😅 And on macOS, some text editor (TextEdit) or System Settings take an unforgivably long time to launch ⏳ What the hell?! 🤨 Apple urgently needs to do something about this before it's too late.
 
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Fishrrman said:
Bluetooth is "a problem that will never be fixed" on the Mini (and possibly Mac Studio as well)...
Click to expand...
I have been using the Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad with a Mac mini (M1) for several years now, and I have not experienced any problems with it. I also used the Apple Magic Mouse for some time and also did not experience any problems with Bluetooth.

Bluetooth version is 21.1.527.3719.
 
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Vlad Koon said:
For me, the fastest, most responsive and smooth operating system remains Windows 8. In general, all versions of Windows that I have used for more than a decade (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and 11) have been faster, smoother, and more responsive than the versions of macOS that I used on the Mac mini (which is on the M1 chip): 11 (Big Sur), 12 (Monterey), 13 (Ventura) and 14 (Sonoma). Using a relatively modern and fast Mac mini on the M1 chip, I often have the feeling as if I were using some old PC based on the 1st Intel processor 🤣 I’m still shocked at how long it takes to open System Settings, TextEdit, Activity Monitor and other programs built into the system 😱 In Windows, we had to wait so long for the launch of some large and multifunctional applications like Photoshop 😅 And on macOS, some text editor (TextEdit) or System Settings take an unforgivably long time to launch ⏳ What the hell?! 🤨 Apple urgently needs to do something about this before it's too late.
Click to expand...

the amount of time activity monitor takes to show up any processes is absolutely shocking.
 
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