What's actually going on with tahoe bloat / lag?

[Snørrbjørg]

Tahoe enabled automatic graphics card switching, that i have disable before. Had to disable it again to always running the 5500M. Its snappy again.

 

[BeerDrinkerDan]

It seems to me there are some users who don't care or notice that their entire computer feels like it's being rendered through syrupy animations. Trying to move anything quickly or just fly through tasks in Tahoe is impossible thanks to the stuttering, gloopy animations and transitions everywhere. "Reduce" animation seems to barely make a difference, as the fades and replacement transitions are also slow as molasses.

I experience none of the syrupyness nor gloopyness when I fly through VS code, documentation/write-ups, PowerPoint creation/review/presentation, etc. And it's not because I don't care and it's not because I wouldn't notice.

M2 Air, 16GB, Tahoe 26.3, forced to update because of work security policies.

-bdd

 

[Allen_Wentz]

People keep saying it needs more RAM but please help me understand. How does RAM help with UI rendering performance?

Under Apple's excellent Unified Memory Architecture (UMA), RAM impacts pretty much everything. Reading up on UMA is strongly recommended.

Note also that OS/apps have increased RAM demands every year for ~40 years now. No one should be surprised when RAM demands increase like they always have, but many are. Go figure.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Well that's exactly it. If one think's back to the apple experience.. the last time the machines got "faster" was pretty much the first or second generation of solid state drives they used. So around 2012? Think about it carefully, ever since that point, when you walk into an apple store to play around with the current generation models, they... all... feel... the... same...

The same instant snappiness as it has been for over a decade.

So how apple do their planned obsolescence is genius and legal? Because they develop their own chips in house, they are keenly aware how much extra performance they have which is sold every year. So all they have to do is tell their os team to consume that new performance every year. (And of course, the os needs to know how to get out of the way when the chips are put under load, but thats just a setting).

So works out peachy for everyone, apple can say they are doing new bloat stuff and call it features. Critically, the shiny new machines are just as fast as people expect when going into an apple store to see a "new" machine.

The only problem is with people with last years processors. They hit the update button under the bogey man of security updates (and apples forced rolling support policies i suppose)... and suddenly are running an os which adds bloat up to next years processor and is slower on your machine.

Nasty, nasty cycle.

See the difference at least for windows 10 was, yes everything evil in fact evil, updates are forced, but they never slowed down your machine. For how many years? Clearly its not a requirement to slow down your machine with updates.

Claiming "planned obsolescence" is silly, absurd, etc. Every year computing has become more competent. Folks in the graphics world are well aware; but IDK, maybe folks doing undemanding Office-type tasks do not notice.

All that increasing annual competence also entails hardware/RAM demands.

 

[CMMChris]

Sure, 64GB RAM is not enough to render quick look or dialog animations smoothly. Could have figured that out myself. What an idiot I am.

 

[Basic75]

Every year computing has become more competent.

What does that mean? That software does more things and that's why it needs more resources?

 

[hieubui]

Under Apple's excellent Unified Memory Architecture (UMA), RAM impacts pretty much everything. Reading up on UMA is strongly recommended.

Note also that OS/apps have increased RAM demands every year for ~40 years now. No one should be surprised when RAM demands increase like they always have, but many are. Go figure.

So... Apple is still selling machines with 8/16GB of RAM standard. That's not good enough to run macOS smoothly? Because it's not smooth on my machine with 32GB of RAM.

 

[mackard]

Every year computing has become more competent.

Well, sure thats a polite way of describing bloat. The main function of an operating system is to provide a common interface for software to interface with hardware. Ie, be able to launch apps.

The point to you is, other mainstream, commercial ecosystems have also created "competence", but never gotten in the way of the core function of the os. Apple have been pushing this bloat infront of the core os since ios over a decade ago.

I thought the mac community accepted this, it was the apple tradeoff, planned obsolescence in exchange for the relative privacy apple grant you (go have a look at your console logs it still writes down every single spotlight search you make).

 

[stephram]

Tahoe makes everything worse. None of the audio applications I've used for years are stable on Tahoe. The Dante Audio Networking is almost unusable and constantly requires a reboot to get things working again. Meanwhile I run all of the same applications and services including Dante Networking on Windows machines and they work perfectly. I think it's because the MacOS UI is under the control of the iOS team who believe that iOS is the future of operating systems. After so many years of putting up with Apple arrogance of them thinking they know best. It's time to start looking for alternatives. I think MacOS is lacking in stabillity and usability and that it's run it's course and is unlikely to ever get better under the current leadership. There will be niche applications that work well on MacOS but as a mainstream workhorse computer the Mac seems dead.

 

[dan98]

I made another bootable installer, too--a different kind. Just for giggles. My MacBook Pro / M4 Pro was a replacement for a 2015 Intel MacBook Pro--a real trooper of a machine, for me. I've still got it. Just to see what's what, I threw System76's latest Pop_OS Debian Linux on it. I'm not a technical person. I don't know anything about anything. But making the bootable Linux installer was no more difficult than making the bootable MacOS installer. And You know what? The experience was enlightening. It works really well! SHOCKINGLY well. Installation was easy. Everything worked afterward. The computer's performative, too. Far snappier than it was under macOS Monterey, which was the last iteration it could take. Guys, that's an 11 year-old computer, running a free-open-source stack made by what amounts to a handful of volunteer software enthusiasts . . . and I could easily daily-drive it for work. Am I missing anything by using Libre Office instead of the new subscription version of "Numbers?" Um no. Would I be missing the latest tech? Hardly--its built-in web browser came out-of-the-box ready with agentic plugins and hooks for all the frontier AI services, which is more than you can say for macOS! Again, I was shocked. No, Pop_OS Linux isn't as finesseful as MacOS Sequoia. But MacOS Tahoe isn't as finesseful as MacOS Sequoia, either.

Off-topic but yeah on a similar vein, one of my machines is a Macbook 12 from 2017...with a fraction of the power you guys are used to.
Long ago did it stop making sense on any compatible Mac OS due to lag/stutters/frozen animations, but installing Windows 10 LTSC (the really light version, fully supported until 2032).. this thing is instant, full snap and basically perfect in the responsiveness department.

Make of that what you will.

 

[haruhiko]

I have serious keyboard lag with the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID on my M4 Mac mini. This is unacceptable.
Whenever I plug the keyboard in, it's buttery smooth, so it's the problem with Bluetooth. I tried forgetting and re-pairing the keyboard but the keyboard still lags every few letters. This is driving me insane. One of the worst release from Apple indeed. Tim Cook should use his products more.

Apple needs to find out who is responsible for this and fire them.

macOS was very good up until Sequoia. Even my iMac from 2017 is running Sequoia smoothly using OpenCore patcher.

 

[darkjungle]

Tim Cook should use his products more.

Apple needs to find out who is responsible for this and fire them.

I think these two people should be fired. They will lead Apple to collapse. The worst iPhone design and the worst OS.