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Why is my 3 weeks old Macbook Air lagging even when i'm typing on Firefox?

M

michellemixue

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 21, 2011
12
0
Hi, ever since i got my macbook air, i've only transferred photos and songs over, and installed the essential stuff like Dropbox, Adobe Acrobat, Razer Synapse for my mouse, coconut battery, transmission and photosync.

I have 362gb out of 499gb free space. this is a 8gb ram model. i7. early 2014 model.

I suspect my typing on firefox is getting retarded/laggy because i put my laptop to sleep quite often. However, i always shut down every 1-2 days.

Is that the case? Is there any way i can find out why this sudden slowness in my NEW MBA? omg.. This is pretty disappointing and i seriously hope i can put it back to its supposed speed which i was initially really impressed with.

Appreciate any help i can get. thanks!
 
michellemixue said:
Hi, ever since i got my macbook air, i've only transferred photos and songs over, and installed the essential stuff like Dropbox, Adobe Acrobat, Razer Synapse for my mouse, coconut battery, transmission and photosync.

I have 362gb out of 499gb free space. this is a 8gb ram model. i7. early 2014 model.

I suspect my typing on firefox is getting retarded/laggy because i put my laptop to sleep quite often. However, i always shut down every 1-2 days.

Is that the case? Is there any way i can find out why this sudden slowness in my NEW MBA? omg.. This is pretty disappointing and i seriously hope i can put it back to its supposed speed which i was initially really impressed with.

Appreciate any help i can get. thanks!
Click to expand...

Is it only on Firefox or with pretty much everything?

Putting it to sleep shouldn't have anything to do with it. Mine sleeps all the time but I hardly ever restart it(I totally should).

It sounds like a software related issue.
 
michellemixue said:
Hi, ever since i got my macbook air, i've only transferred photos and songs over, and installed the essential stuff like Dropbox, Adobe Acrobat, Razer Synapse for my mouse, coconut battery, transmission and photosync.

I have 362gb out of 499gb free space. this is a 8gb ram model. i7. early 2014 model.

I suspect my typing on firefox is getting retarded/laggy because i put my laptop to sleep quite often. However, i always shut down every 1-2 days.

Is that the case? Is there any way i can find out why this sudden slowness in my NEW MBA? omg.. This is pretty disappointing and i seriously hope i can put it back to its supposed speed which i was initially really impressed with.

Appreciate any help i can get. thanks!
Click to expand...

Post some screen shots of your activity monitor.
 

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try uninstalling flash and using firefox's (or safari's) HTML5 video player. Also you don't need Adobe Reader on OS X, preview will open and work with PDFs for you. Basically I think the process "Firefox Plugin Process (Shockwave Flash)" will be your problem on some websites.
 
Vanilla Face said:
he is using over 95% of his ram, that can certainly cause lag in the UI
Click to expand...

Just because the RAM has something in it, does not mean it's being used. Mavericks has fantastic memory management, and will treat unused ram as wasted. Whenever another app needs memory, it is quickly freed. Notice memory pressure is very low. Even if it had to swap to disk, the SSD is so fast you wouldn't likely notice.
 
Here's a solution (though you may not like it).
Don't use FireFox.

Use Safari. FireFox and Chrome are poorly written and don't perform well on OS X. Safari is optimized for OS X (duh) and therefore runs better.

Do you have to use FireFox? I don't get the point of using it when there's a superior browser already installed. Also, ya, don't need Adobe Acrobat when you already have a PDF handling app built-in.

With 5 tabs open and flash, I'm only using about 500MB. That's a lot better than more than 1GB for FF.
 
joshlalonde said:
Do you have to use FireFox? I don't get the point of using it when there's a superior browser already installed.
Click to expand...

Often times I'm forced to use Firefox or Opera because the "superior browser" doesn't display pages properly. Whereas Firefox or Opera do, invariably. I keep using the "superior browser" only because of my bookmarks, if not I would have chosen Opera a while ago. I hope you now get the point.
 
organic bond said:
Often times I'm forced to use Firefox or Opera because the "superior browser" doesn't display pages properly. Whereas Firefox or Opera do, invariably. I keep using the "superior browser" only because of my bookmarks, if not I would have chosen Opera a while ago. I hope you now get the point.
Click to expand...

wut. what pages? they must be really old... though, idk. I haven't had any problems with Safari yet.
 
Vanilla Face said:
he is using over 95% of his ram, that can certainly cause lag in the UI
Click to expand...

Since osx mavericks was released, the RAM is used in a very different way, where the RAM is cached in the background just incase you need it. That goes in to the "memory used" category. As others have mentioned, the memory pressure graph is much more informative. If it turns yellow then we can start talking, but even then that doesn't account for the lag the OP mentioned.

It may be a network issue, but it is most likely a drivers issue on firefox. I would uninstall it and install it again. I would recommend at least trying out safari, because it will run more smoothly than firefox. As your computer gets older, this will matter more. Firefox should still run fine though. It works great on my 4GB/128GB/i5 model, although I rarely use it. If you are only experiencing lag on Firefox, it is an issue with the program. If you are experiencing lag everywhere, it may be an issue with the computer. Putting the computer to sleep, restarting it, or shutting it down should not change anything. If the problem persists, take it in to an Apple store. They are generally very helpful.

Matt

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joshlalonde said:
wut. what pages? they must be really old... though, idk. I haven't had any problems with Safari yet.
Click to expand...

To be fair, I have actually experienced some issues on Safari, but not anything that would require me to change browsers. You can also transfer your bookmarks from safari btw. The issue I have had is when pages load, the image doesn't scroll but the links underneath do. A page refresh typically solves the issue, but it can be jarring.
 
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