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Waking up from sleep sucks

pgiguere1

pgiguere1

macrumors 68020
Original poster
May 28, 2009
2,172
1,247
Montreal, Canada
Not just in real life.

I remember Apple was touting "instant on" as one of the key feature of the MacBook Air last year when they made flash storage standard.

It literally was "instant on" with Snow Leopard back then. I remember trying it at the Apple store and the screen opened before I finished opening the lid, making it look like the screen was never closed to begin with.

Now, with Lion? It wakes up more slowly than my 2 year old MBP (with a 5400 RPM hard drive) on Snow Leopard.

The wake-up time itself is about the same (a couple of seconds) , but the trackpad is frozen for a couple extra seconds, so I have to wait longer in the end, and it's bugging me.

What's bugging me even more though is that it's inconsistant. Sometimes it wakes up pretty quickly, others it takes an eternity. Sometimes it wakes up by itself when I open the lid, others I will have to press a key for it to wake up. And it's buggy too. Sometimes it just won't wake up, no matter if I press the keyboard or even the power button, just like it's dead. Except it's not: I just have to close the lid, wait a couple of seconds, and open it again. Sometimes the screen opens and the whole computer gets running, except the trackpad stays frozen, until I close and re-open the lid again (this just happened to me before writing this post). Sometimes it doesn't connect automatically to my network once it has woken up. I have to manually connect, then it asks me for my password again. Pretty annoying too.

That's weird because I had none of these issues with my MBP. I thought the MBA would be better at waking up, but it's actually much worse in every aspect (except it doesn't make that quick buzz noise like my MBP). I'm a bit disappointed regarding that.

Is it the same for everybody else? Do you think it's an hardware issue? Software? Something that could be fixed through an OS update?

FYI: I have the 2011 ultimate 11" with Samsung SSD and 10.7.1.
 
Same...definitely Lion at fault, no question....I find myself now tearing my hair out a how damned, slow and unresponsive this machine is behaving compared to snow leopard.

I'm giving them the chance to fix it, then it's back to Snow Leopard.
 
My MBA is doing the exact same thing. It takes about 6-7 seconds for it to be usable.

To make matters worse, if I put it to sleep with an external monitor attached, it will not recognize the monitor again until I restart. It does not even realize anything when I unplugged the video cable. I have to hold down the power button and force a restart each time.
 
ro050408 said:
To make matters worse, if I put it to sleep with an external monitor attached, it will not recognize the monitor again until I restart. It does not even realize anything when I unplugged the video cable. I have to hold down the power button and force a restart each time.
Click to expand...

This happens to me too. You'd have to go to monitor settings and click "Detect monitors" but you don't even have a screen to look at if you already unplugged your external monitor before waking your computer up.

Typical scenario: I have to leave quickly in the morning, I unplug my MBA that slept during the night and put in my bag.

Once I want to use it: The keyboard lights up. The screen stays black no matter what I do. I have to force a restart with the power button to use my computer (something I had not done since I used PCs many years ago).

This is not acceptable at all.
 
I've posted this on other threads but in case you didn't see it, entering this into Terminal speeds up the Instant On:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

Then reboot the Mac
 
ZBoater said:
What does this command do?
Click to expand...

Without doing any research, I'd guess it disable hibernation. Maybe Lion has hibernation (a deeper level of sleep), where as Slow Leopard just had sleep?

Hibernation, like in PCs would of course take more time to wake from, but uses less power.
 
ZBoater said:
What does this command do?
Click to expand...

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode X

Where X is:
0 : NO hibernate - does not write RAM to disk and power off EVER
1 : QUICK hibernate - writes RAM to disk and powers off IMMEDIATELY
2 : LAST RESORT hibernate - keeps power to RAM until battery is low, then writes to disk as a last resort to save your data
3 : HYBRID hibernate - writes RAM to disk right away, then leaves RAM powered until battery is low

The "-a" in the pmset command means it will apply this setting to ALL power profiles. If you want to do it for battery only, use the "-b" option. Charger (wall power) only, use "-c". Or UPS is "-u".
Click to expand...

The next command deletes your hibernate file which is equal in size to the amount of RAM you have.

Also the inconsistency is not so inconsistent but part one of the Air's features. If you close the lid and let it sleep for a long time like an hour then it writes the state of the RAM to the hard drive. That way it can cut off power and then offer you up to a month of standby time on one charge. The above command disables that function so it never writes your RAM state to the hard drive. Therefore you will lose the 30 day standby time. Also your computer will lose battery power while asleep for a long period. The trade off is that you should almost always have a more instant on effect with mouse control and such. This is because it doesn't have to read the RAM state from the hard drive.
 
Oppressed said:
The next command deletes your hibernate file which is equal in size to the amount of RAM you have.

Also the inconsistency is not so inconsistent but part one of the Air's features. If you close the lid and let it sleep for a long time like an hour then it writes the state of the RAM to the hard drive. That way it can cut off power and then offer you up to a month of standby time on one charge. The above command disables that function so it never writes your RAM state to the hard drive. Therefore you will lose the 30 day standby time. Also your computer will lose battery power while asleep for a long period. The trade off is that you should almost always have a more instant on effect with mouse control and such. This is because it doesn't have to read the RAM state from the hard drive.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, given this I'd rather wait 3 seconds for it to wake up from sleep. :D
 
Constantine1337 said:
Did you guys turn off "Set HD to sleep when possible" under energy prefs?
Click to expand...

I read this in another thread and will see if my MBA wakes any faster after being closed all night. I'm hoping this is the missing answer to our problems.
Really, it's a terrible issue that should be fixed asap. Apple can't advertise Instant On when their new MBAs with Lion don't actually do it. As of now, it wakes from sleep slower than my old white Macbook.
 
maclook said:
I read this in another thread and will see if my MBA wakes any faster after being closed all night. I'm hoping this is the missing answer to our problems.
Really, it's a terrible issue that should be fixed asap. Apple can't advertise Instant On when their new MBAs with Lion don't actually do it. As of now, it wakes from sleep slower than my old white Macbook.
Click to expand...

this option doesn't matter. It's an SSD
 
Oppressed said:
The next command deletes your hibernate file which is equal in size to the amount of RAM you have.

Also the inconsistency is not so inconsistent but part one of the Air's features. If you close the lid and let it sleep for a long time like an hour then it writes the state of the RAM to the hard drive. That way it can cut off power and then offer you up to a month of standby time on one charge. The above command disables that function so it never writes your RAM state to the hard drive. Therefore you will lose the 30 day standby time. Also your computer will lose battery power while asleep for a long period. The trade off is that you should almost always have a more instant on effect with mouse control and such. This is because it doesn't have to read the RAM state from the hard drive.
Click to expand...

Or you could go back to SL and have the best of both worlds.. lol
 
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4392?viewlocale=en_US

The new standby mode activates after just over an hour of "regular" sleep.

The state of the computer is saved to the flash storage drive, then the power to the hardware subsystems turns off to increase the length of the standby. For example, RAM memory and the USB bus are powered off during the standby.
Click to expand...

That's the point. But it's a cool feature, and there is no need to turn it off with that command line "fix" someone posted above. Apple just needs to improve it. That's all. Seems like SL didn't have that.
 
I'm not just talking about hibernation. While it does make it worse, a regular wake up after closing the lid for 30 seconds is a lot longer than on Snow Leopard. And like I said, there's a lot of bugs around waking up.

If it's all Lion's fault, then I can say that the MBA is an absolutely perfect computer, while Lion is pretty bad OS (for now).


So far, my Lion experience is:

- Slower wake up time

- Buggy wake up

- External display issues

- Can't set natural scrolling with my trackpad but regular one with my mouse, so I have to change settings every time I switch (multiple times a day)

- Can't use Exposé with my third-party mouse like I used to. I configured side buttons to do that with USB Overdrive but it doesn't work anymore with Lion, so Mission Control/Exposé is useless when I use my mouse (aka most of the time)

- Around 400MB more RAM used by the OS (why?)

- I never use Launchpad

- I never use Resume

- I never use Auto-save / Versions (already have Time Machine to do that)

- I never use AirDrop (but it may be useful in the future)

- Full screen apps is pretty cool, mostly for browsers, but Chrome doesn't support it yet so I don't really use Full screen either

- Chrome crashes constantly, usually multiple times a day.

- Sometimes the scroll bar doesn't display properly on web pages, I have multiple small scroll bars (instead of a single large one) on the side (sometimes on the left side even)

- The UI looks a bit better, but since the disappearing scroll bars and full screen are not supported by all apps, it's not very consistent UI-wise. Same goes for scrolling. Some apps have this iOS-like scrolling where when you scroll outside of the document's limits, it will keep scrolling over a blank area but then repel you back automatically to fit the boundaries of the document in you screen. Other apps have the regular scrolling where it just stops when you hit a boundary.

- The only game I play is Starcraft 2 (probably one the most played games on Mac), and a lot of the colors in the game are inverted because of Lion. While this make the game look weird, it also affects the gameplay as in multiplayer the players' colors are inverted, so if someone in your team says "let's attack red", you have to attack blue. Pretty confusing and impractical sometimes. Starcraft 2 also starts without sound sometimes and I have to reboot my computer to make the sound come back.


I thought Lion looked like a pretty decent OS when it was showcased. Especially for 30 bucks. Now I would pay 30$ to not have it. Ouch.
 
pgiguere1 said:
FYI: I have the 2011 ultimate 11" with Samsung SSD and 10.7.1.
Click to expand...

I have the same system, waking up after an hour takes 2-3 seconds, not bad IMHO, regular waking costs a second before I can key in my password.

Air Drop thing doesn't work that well, but I have been used to copying with the regular system and login in on the computer with the username as that works much easier for me. That way i can drop files right onto the desktop or where ever I need them.
Games, COD4 works quite well actually!

One thing that annoys me almost unlimited is the fact that I can get the dashboard any longer with a swipe. I now need to go through 3 or 4 desktops before I'm at the calculator.
 
pgiguere1 said:
- Can't set natural scrolling with my trackpad but regular one with my mouse, so I have to change settings every time I switch (multiple times a day)
Click to expand...

There was a link to a third party application on a message here yesterday that let you do just that.
 
KPOM said:
There was a link to a third party application on a message here yesterday that let you do just that.
Click to expand...

USB Overdrive? It worked for me at first, but suddenly it stopped working. That was before 10.7.1, no idea what broke it. It doesn't officially support Lion yet. Like I said, I wish it could let me map Mission Control commands to my mouse side buttons. I did that with Snow Leopard and Exposé. I'm much less productive since I can't use Exposé, I was using it all the time. And since I have a pre-Lion Apple external keyboard, I can't trigger neither Exposé or Mission Control from it anymore either. I'm stuck to moving my windows around manually, which is often hard to manage once you have lots of stuff open.

And USB Overdrive costs. If you don't pay your licence, an annoying popup wanting you to buy it will appear every time you boot your computer or access your preferences.

People shouldn't have to rely on third-party (almost amateur) system pref applications like that. What happened to the "Out of the box experience" and "It just works" philosophy?

Apple should have made it two separate settings. Oddly, it is two different checkboxes in System Preferences, but both are linked. That doesn't make sense. I could understand that an inverted swiping on a trackpad is natural, since it's like swiping a piece of paper as you read it. But a scroll wheel? It doesn't remind me of anything natural, and there is nothing "iOS-like" in inverting the scroll-wheel. And I don't want to get used to it on the mouse either. After that every time I'll use a PC (school/work), I'll scroll in the wrong direction.
 
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It honestly sounds as though your OS is not functioning as it should and I would highly recommend a reinstall. The problems you are listing are not simply preferences or the system.
 
I wouldn't disable anything. They sort of improved the whole thing with Snow leopard. It's just that Lion is no king of beasts.

They will come up with a patch I would imagine......some day ;)
 
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