Mountain Lion way slower than SL?

Everything is slower. Opening windows, scrolling, expanding folders to show contents in list view, etc. I'm running a 2009 mbp, 4gb ram, 7200 RPM 500 GB HD (mostly empty), 3.06 ghz Duo 2 processor. Is my machine just not powerful enough to run it? I'm thinking of going back to SL and eating a loss of $19 plus my time spent upgrading..

I too am very disappointed with Mountain Lion on my new MacBook Pro. Everything runs so slowly compared to my previous MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard.
When I launch Mail for example, I wait as long as 2 minutes to see my income mail in the viewer window. Even when I can see the mail coming in (in the little pop-up), I cannot see that piece of mail in my viewer window, sometimes until 5-10 minutes later.
I work at a company that has purchased literally 100s of Macintoshes, and my IT department has never seen anything like this. It's crazy.
Terrible operating system. I hope someone has a solution. What a waste of money. Oh, yes, and it is always indexing, yet never finding anything.
I had my IT guy look over my shoulder as a witness: Even when I enter the exact file name into spotlight it cannot find the file. Sometimes even the Finder cannot.
I would not recommend this to anyone.

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I have a macbook, and have heard mountain lion will slow it way down

I have heard upgrading to Mountain Lion will slow my macbook down. True or false

I have the newest Mac Mini with 8GB memory and I'm still experiencing a considerable slow down in most processes since upgrading to Mountain Lion, especially when browsing. I feel like I'm back in the old PC days.
So at least in my case, memory is not the answer. 8GB should be plenty. Any other pointers to increase speed would be appreciated.

Any one else notice Mountain Lion very slow...feel like I am back on a PC !!!

Any one else notice Mountain Lion very slow...feel like I am back on a PC !!! Open files, programs, rebooting, even shutting down takes longer. Am I the only one?

Must have been bad hardware would be my guess. That's the problem with vendors though. Windows really isn't the issue if you have the right hardware. It's like a Mac, really.
The problem is that PC vendors have a tendency to rush their machines out with bad chipsets and a mish-mash of conflicting hardware. Take Vista for example. Besides the fact that it was a resource hog out of the box, there was really nothing wrong with it.
Vendors on the other hand, rushed their PCs out without the proper hardware to run it in order to sell, sell, sell, which is what gave it a bad name. So yeah, people had issues. It also suffered the same issues as Lion and ML right now due to the fact that it wouldn't run on older machines and there was an uproar in the online community--sounds familiar enough to me.
Oddly enough, even macs are running at the same specs as Windows today.
The majority of issues people tend to have is more with their PCs than with Windows and they have a tendency to blame Windows because of this without realising that MS develops software; not hardware (xbox aside). Whereas Apple develops both.
Millenium was terrible though--I won't deny that.
OSX may appear to work better, but that's because everything is designed to work together and we pay a premium for it because of the quality control on the machine. I can't help but feel that Apple takes a little more pride in their machines then PC Vendors do. In fact, Windows probably runs better on my Macbook Pro than it does on my PCs. I use it for very little these days though. I happen to like OSX and I'm addicted to the App Store.
Basically, my whole outlook on the two is that MS is a people pleaser, they try to appeal to everybody and a plethora of PC configurations. It suffers because of this. Apple is a little more arrogant (but in a good way). They stick to their own configurations and don't worry about being everybody's machine. They take pride in their designs and configurations and they succeed because of this. It also allows them to take bolder steps.
Neither is perfect and both have their strengths and weaknesses. Though I feel that Windows is often picked on for the wrong reasons, just as Mac users are often picked on by the PC community. It all boils down to a lack of understanding since Macs don't only appeal to the dumb and Windows does work quite well if you have the right configuration. No insult implied--it's just the common outlook from both communities and it irks me on both sides.

I have seen so much response about the Mountain Lion update slowing down computers. I am updating from Mac OS x 10.6.8. What can I do to ensure the upgrade will go fine? Do I unplug my external hard drive before installing, or keep it plugged in?

I have seen so much response about the Mountain Lion update slowing down computers. I am updating from Mac OS x 10.6.8. What can I do to ensure the upgrade will go fine? Do I unplug my external hard drive before installing, or keep it plugged in?
Also, I have the 08 version of iWork. Will this cause problems for the update? Can I update this AFTER I update the processor?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
There's no reason to think that Mountain Lion will slow down your Mac. Just make a backup of your data before upgrading with Time Machine > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
Also, check that your apps are compatible > http://www.roaringapps.com Upgrade them to a compatible version or delete them before upgrading.
The external drive won't make the OS X Mountain Lion installer fail, but it's better to unplug it during the upgrade.
iWork '08 is compatible with Mountain Lion. iWork '09 includes OS X Mountain Lion features and can be purchased at the Mac App Store.
To upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion, I recommend at least 4 GB of RAM. You can check how much memory you have in Apple menu > About this Mac

Can I download OSX mountain Lion to more than on laptop

can i download OS X Mountain Lion to more than one laptop without paying again

Apple's US App Store Terms of use (Look Here) state:
Association of Associated Devices is subject to the following terms:
You may auto-download iTunes Auto-Delivery Content or download previously-purchased iTunes Eligible Content from an Account on up to 10 Associated Devices, provided no more than 5 are iTunes-authorized computers.
An Associated Device can be associated with only one Account at any given time.
You may switch an Associated Device to a different Account only once every 90 days.
You may download previously-purchased free content onto an unlimited number of devices while it is free on the iTunes Service, but on no more than 5 iTunes-authorized computers.
So, yes, as @GreatGold said above, you can download and use Mac OS X Mountain Lion on up to 5 computers provided the other computers are owned by you and they are associated with the same Apple ID through which you purchased Mountain Lion.

Why does Lion seem slower than Snow Leppard?

Why does Lion seem slower than Snow Leppard?

michaelfromrice lake wrote:
Why does Lion seem slower than Snow Leppard?
It's anyone's guess. Startup and shutdown as well as application launches take longer in Lion than they did in Snow Leopard on the three Macs that I "upgraded," and I also see the spinning beach ball more often than I used to. Add to that the HDMI-related crashes on my Mac mini...
Quite frankly, I have yet to see where I have gained any advantages after upgrading to Lion, and I definititely have problems that I didn't have under Snow Leopard. Of course, all of it must be my fault, as Apple would never ever relase an upgrade that was less than perfect.

Mountain Lion Very Slow on Mac Pro 3,1 (2008 model)

The Mac Pro 3,1 is supposed to support Mountain Lion, but when I run it, the GPU (ATI Radeon HD 2600 that came with it) makes a constant, loud fan noise as if it is working hard, and all of the graphics lag badly. I've installed all of the updates. Is there some driver problem between the Radeon HD 2600 and Mountain Lion? People on MacRumors said that it works fine on a Mac Pro 3,1 except for one guy who said it was really slow. Snow Leopard runs great on my machine.

First, back up all data immediately, as your boot drive might be failing.
There are a few other possible causes of generalized slow performance that you can rule out easily.
Reset the System Management Controller.
If you have many image or video files on the Desktop with preview icons, move them to another folder.
If applicable, uncheck all boxes in the iCloud preference pane.
Disconnect all non-essential wired peripherals and remove aftermarket expansion cards, if any.
Check your keychains in Keychain Access for excessively duplicated items.
Boot into Recovery mode, launch Disk Utility, and run Repair Disk.
Otherwise, take the steps below when you notice the problem.
Step 1
Launch the Activity Monitor application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Activity Monitor in the icon grid.
Select the CPU tab of the Activity Monitor window.
Select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected.
Click the heading of the % CPU column in the process table to sort the entries by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice to get the highest value at the top. What is it, and what is the process? Also post the values for % User, % System, and % Idle at the bottom of the window.
Select the System Memory tab. What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used?
Next, select the Disk Activity tab. Post the approximate values shown for Reads in/sec and Writes out/sec (not Reads in and Writes out.)
Step 2
If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out this step.
Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Activity Monitor. Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Select the 50 or so most recent entries in the log. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V). You're looking for entries at the end of the log, not at the beginning.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some personal information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting. That should be easy to do if your extract is not too long.

Mountain lion very slow

I just installed the mountain lion on my macbook pro, lion had before, the team made me very slow, when I play youtube or videos the videos are cut. The i7 processor and 4g memory I have. Believe it should work fine.

First, back up all data immediately, as your boot drive might be failing.
There are a few other possible causes of generalized slow performance that you can rule out easily.
If you have many image or video files on the Desktop with preview icons, move them to another folder.
If applicable, uncheck all boxes in the iCloud preference pane.
Disconnect all non-essential wired peripherals and remove aftermarket expansion cards, if any.
Otherwise, take the steps below when you notice the slowdown.
Step 1
Launch the Activity Monitor application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Activity Monitor in the icon grid.
Select the CPU tab of the Activity Monitor window.
Select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected.
Click the heading of the % CPU column in the process table to sort the entries by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice to get the highest value at the top. What is it, and what is the process? Also post the values for % User, % System, and % Idle at the bottom of the window.
Select the System Memory tab. What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used?
Next, select the Disk Activity tab. Post the approximate values shown for Reads in/sec and Writes out/sec (not Reads in and Writes out.)
Step 2
If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out this step.
Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Activity Monitor. Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Select the 50 or so most recent entries in the log. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V). You're looking for entries at the end of the log, not at the beginning.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some personal information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting. That should be easy to do if your extract is not too long.

Download of Mountain Lion too slow - why?

I have just bought Mountain Lion from the App Store and for some reason it is taking a very long time to download to my Macbook Pro 10.6.8. It has been more than an hour an it is still at less than approx 1/4 of the way! How long does it usually take? my internet connection is fast and working just fine.
I need to leave to work in a couple of hours max and take my computer with me and i am afraid it will not be finished by then and I'll have to interrupt the download, is this possible? can I re-start it when i get to work and have an internet connection?
Pls help!!!!

Thanks mackack,
My hard drive crashed on me and I got APPLE to replace it (2T) . I decided since Mountain Lion was available, why not? I moved from Snow Lep. My IMAC is mid 2010. Reinstalling my programs has been a chore but the only real problem so far is missing serial numbers for my roxio toast pro add ons. Where did I put those??? Anyway, I am just noticing as are others in my family, that this is really slowed things down a lot. And there is the nusence of having to put in passwords and permission requests because half the world is blocked by Mountain Lion for some reason. Hopefully apple works to make this better instead of me having to junk it to go back to snow lep.
I've been struggling for a year trying to appreciate my imac more than my PC. and so far, I keep turning to my PC in crunch time. I do a lot of music production and I was expecting more. I have apple logic, but find adobe audition 1.5 more functional on my old PC.... go figure.

Mountain lion super slow

I sooo frustrated... really don't know what to do.. Since I upgraded to Mountain Lion my system is a total mess.. everything has gotten super slow. I mean super slow!!
Help please!!

First, back up all data immediately, as your boot drive might be failing.
One possible cause of a slow user interface is a large number of image or video files on the Desktop with preview icons. If you have more than a dozen or so such files, move them to another folder.
Otherwise, take these steps when you notice the slowdown.
Step 1
Launch the Activity Monitor application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Activity Monitor in the icon grid.
Select the CPU tab of the Activity Monitor window.
Select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected.
Click the heading of the % CPU column in the process table to sort the entries by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice to get the highest value at the top. What is it, and what is the process? Also post the values for % User, % System, and % Idle at the bottom of the window.
Select the System Memory tab. What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used?
Next, select the Disk Activity tab. Post the approximate values shown for Reads in/sec and Writes out/sec (not Reads in and Writes out.)
Step 2
If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out this step.
Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Activity Monitor. Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Select the 50 or so most recent messages in the log. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some personal information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Mountain Lion OSX slow response after upgrade from Lion

I have issues now to open Microsift Outlook Mail application as it is very slow in opening and all this is after install OSX ML only, frustrating time again

Nilhan, I believe I found my problem which affected two machines running ML 10.8. I found two Outlook preferences files - identical but for date - that I believe were causing a conflict.
It was intuition that led me to search for this. I noticed the splash screen text was mentioning that Outlook was looking for identities on startup. I'd never before noticed this, or it happened so quickly that I've never seen it. In any event, I did a search for all files name "outlook" using the program EasyFind. When the search completed, I sorted the found files by type. I was looking for duplicate preferences - and I found them.
There were two folders named "Office 2011." One was in (user) > Library > Preferences > Microsoft. The other was in (user) > Library > Application Support > Microsoft > Office > Preferences. These two identically named folders each had similar items enclosed, including a file named "Outlook Preferences." The dates on the "Outlook Preferences" files were not the same, although they were the same size. The date on the older file corresponds to a Microsoft Office update which was supposed to move things to locations required by Mountain Lion. The older files (some of the file dates were current - yet duplicates in name of others) were in the location: (user) > Library > Preferences > Microsoft.
I moved the "Office 2011" folder located in (user) > Library > Preferences > Microsoft to the trash. I did not empty the trash just out of caution, although I probably will ...or even archive them via a zip file, etc. Next, I restarted my machine. After logging in, I rebuilt the Outlook database using Microsoft Database Utility (hold the Option key and start Outlook to start it). I then backed up my Main Identity to a separate disk as another caution. Next, I once again restarted.
After giving the machine a little time to settle down, I opened Outlook 2011. Outlook now opened many times faster then before. I would venture to say that it is now opening as quickly as before the 10.8 ML install. All functions within Outlook also seem to be at normal speed.
This process was repeated on another Mac with a new install of 10.8 ML and Office 2011. I had tested Outlook on that machine, and it was slow. After the deletion of the duplicate preference files, Outlook was fast as ever - noticeably very fast. It was a vast difference on that machine. The Main Identity database is much smaller on that machine than the previous machine, so it should be quicker. Still, it was a tremendous difference in speed after I dumped the older preferences on it.
I am no expert on the workings of 10.8 ML compared to earlier versions of OS X, but I do understand that certain preference files are now required to be in a certain place ...different than earlier versions, or perhaps just mandating that all preference files be in a universal spot. Something like that... In any event, 10.8 ML was not the problem, but seems to have brought a problem to light. If I am going to point a finger, I will point it at a Microsoft Office update that didn't quite do its job correctly. There was trouble with an Office update not long ago, and I suspect I was a victim of that.
Maybe you are, too. Hope this helps.

My Macbook Pro is downloading Mountain Lion really slow.

So, I have a MacBook Pro that's just one year old as of last month, and lately everything I download is taking way too long, (even for the super small apps). I still have over 250GB of storage left and all that's on my computer is basically all college work and maybe a few apps. My Mountain Lion update has been downloading for the last 6 hours and it still has 1GB of downloading left to do. Is there anyway to speed up my computer? I tried downloading a update to Adobe that was only 11MB and it said 13 minutes, which is kind of ridiculous. I have AT&T high speed WIFI, so I know it's not my internet.

More then likely its slow on the server side due to the high volume of downloads that are probably going on right now. It was that way on launch day for Lion as well for me.

Mountain Lion extremly slow on Macbook Pro

Upgraded from Snow Leopard to OS X Mountain Lion yesterday and Having god awful performance issues. the wheel of death is always running.
After Upgrading everything runs so slow. every app is very slow. I have deleted apps I dont need, Ran a disk Utility verify and repair, turned off all notifications.
reset memory by holding down apple, function p and r keys.
what else can i do.

Look at Thomas A Reed's Understanding Upgrade Nightmares article http://www.reedcorner.net/understanding-upgrade-nightmares/ and make sure all apps are compatible with Mountain Lion by using www.roaringapps.com. Using both of these you should be able to diagnose your individual problem and get i fixed.

Mountain lion update slowed down my macbook pro

hey guys,
I just updated to mountain lion
however, after the installation, my macbook pro has been noticably slow.
slow booting, slow when operating installed programs, chrome/safari got slowed down as well.
Also it freezes for couple of seconds and i was wondering why.
If any of u r experiencing same problems or know how to fix it please kindly let me know!
Thank you!

Have tried everything possible, repairing permissions etc to no avail.
You haven't tried everything possible or you would have a solution. If you tried the most extreme possible solution (erasing the hard drive, then reinstalling the system and nothing else) and still had the same problems, you would have discovered that you almost certainly have a hardware problem. For some solutions that you haven't tried yet, I'll refer you to the same two links I referred sylee48 to.
As for that article, that's an extremely unprofessional piece of writing. They publish - as if they were fact - the conclusions of untrained, non-technical users who do not have the necessary expertise to make such conclusions. And they concluded that these were bugs that Apple should be working on.
In fact, this may be one of the smoothest upgrades I've seen in a while. (Boy-oh-boy, you should have seen the screaming here for the Snow Leopard and Lion upgrades! It's positively peaceful in this forum compared to that.)

Why is mountain lion so slow compared to snow leopard?

Just installed Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard (skipped Lion).   I like the features of Mountain Lion but it is incredibly slow in overal start-up and general system responsiveness compared to Snow Leopard.
Running iMac and Macbook Pro and both are the same in really slow performance.

OK, been a busy week but I've installed RAM.
Had iMac 2007 model (iMac7,1) with 2GB of RAM (two 1GB modules).   Upgraded recently to 6GB of RAM (one 2GB and one 4GB module), yes, I know this is above the original specs of 4GB, but this model does indeed support 6GB with Snow Leopard or newer.   This now works fine under Mountain Lion with no spinning multi-colored ball.   With a couple of applications like Safari and Mail open, it has (using Activity Monitor) just under 2GB free memory.   Page Outs are now a very small (close to zero) fraction of Page Ins.   So, it works well.     If you are not upgrading memory then stick to Snow Leopard as it is a much lower memory footprint.
Had Macbook Pro 2008 model (MacBookPro5,1) with 4GB of RAM (two 2GB modules).   This wasn't performing as bad as the iMac with Mountain Lion but was still slow.   Anyway, upgraded to 8GB of RAM (two 4GB modules).   This is also now working fine with no major issues observed.
If running VMWare fusion, then a lot of the memory will be used up.   The free memory is very slim on on an iMac when running VMware Fusion with MS Win XP (ugh!), which I only do for a couple of scientific antenna analysis programs that I like to use that just aren't available on the Mac, but it is workable. Occasional memory address messages appear from the guest OS but othrwise fine.
So, in summary, if you have older machines (with low RAM) or have a multitude of apps open then Mountain Lion requires careful consideration as it needs just over 4GB when a couple of memory hungry apps open. Do anything exciting andmemory usage will increase causing tons of Page Ins compared to Page Outs and you'll be running in slow virtual memory.   So, for machines that you won't upgrade in RAM stick to Snow Leopard.   For modern Macs with 8GB, 16GB or more, then all will work well.
I still wish they could make the memory footprint leaner though.

Mountain Lion way slower than SL?

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