Slow on OSX, frequent short glimpses on beachball even if just scrolling

FF seems very unresponsive - for example when I clicked in this box to type this I got a brief beachball! FF can be showing up to 50% of my CPU use - whoops just got another look at the beachball - when I'm using some other application and not even in FF. I sometimes have 2 or 3 windows open but w/o any animation afaik.

Open Activity Monitor (AM) and watch CPU activity. Sort processes list by % CPU utilization. FF should come to the top. Open a web site that gives you a long page. Resize FF window so you can see AM at the same time and watch FF % while you scroll rapidly up and down the page. You can see that this sometimes pegs the CPU to 100%. When that happens you'll get a spinning beachball. The question is - why does it take so much CPU cycles to scroll a window in FF? I'm on version 3.6.17 and get the beachball almost every time I scroll. Do the same experiment with Safari and note the difference - Safari % hardly changes at all no matter how fast you scroll. Go figure.

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Jdeveloper very slow on OSX Snow Leopard

Hi:
I've installed jdev on ubuntu, windows and on osx snow leopard... the slowest one is the mac... very resource demanding compared to ubuntu for instance... and jdev runs faster on a virtual windows machine (virtualbox) under osx than in the osx itself... on ubuntu jdev run really slick... is this normal to be slow on osx ?
regards
Ricardo

I really don't understand why you're surprised. The idea that software makers somehow cripple existing apps to make users upgrade is common. It's also silly.
Let me give you a simple example. Today I paid €900 to repair the clutch on a Renault Espace that has 36k on the clock. Should I suppose this is a plan by Renault to get me to buy a new car? If it is, it's a remarkably stupid plan, because I can pretty much guarantee you that then next car I buy will not be a Renault. So too with Software. If you really think that Apple are trying to trick you or force you to upgrade, wouldn't you be stupid to do that? Wouldn't a sensible person instead by software by some other maker, rather than the one you think is cheating you? In fact, you'd really have to be very stupid to continue to use the software of a company that you believe is cheating you.
So, assuming you're not a stupid person, and assuming Apple are also not stupid, how would it make sense for Apple to trick you into upgrading?
Plus, of course, the fact that I ran 08 on 10.6 with no issues and so do most people.
And, you know, I am quite familiar with this forum, and yes I see the reports of performance issue. Of course, I actually read the posts and learn that there are many possible reasons for the issue. It's a symptom with several possible causes.
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Internet Really slow on OSX tiger

the past week or so internet has been really slow on OSX however since I have vista installed as well I checked it on vista and internet runs great under vista.
what could be slowing down the internet on OSX.
also tryed multiple browsers on OSX none of them run good now.

How much free space do you have on your HD?
Look at these links
52 Ways to Speed Up OS X
http://www.imafish.co.uk/articles/post/articles/130/52-ways-to-speed-up os-x/
Tuning Mac OS X Performance
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/performance.html
11 Ways to Optimize Your Mac's Performance
http://lowendmac.com/eubanks/07/0312.html
The Top 7 Free Utilities To Maintain A Mac.
http://mac360.com/index.php/mac360/comments/thetop_7_free_utilities_to_maintain_amac/
Mac OS X: System maintenance
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=607640
 Cheers, Tom

10.5 is slower than OSX 10.4

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When I'm on that same site with my Intel MacBook Pro running OSX 10.5.5 and Safari v3.1.2 the site runs too slowly to use. The browser times out prior to my getting to the page I need. Same problem with the latest versions of FireFox, OmniWeb and iCab browsers on the MacBook Pro.
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Welcome to Apple Discussions!
There are numerous things which can slow down internet connections. As a result, I recommend if you find the original poster of this thread is not able to resolve their issue, or their solution doesn't solve yours, to start a new topic thread here:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1225&start=0
You'll get a wider audience, and it won't confuse the original poster with solutions that don't apply to them.

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I refer you to the TM expert
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/14.html
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Always maintain TWO backups of your data at all times, since your messing with one, you need another until your back at two again.

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See this discussion...
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I have installed Yosemite and thereby Safari 8.0. The update 8.0.2 will not install. Nothing happens, just a short glimpse and I still have 8.0. Any ideas?

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Try resetting the App Store and Clearing Cookies.
Reset Learned from Old Toad
App Store support. There is troubleshooting and a contact link.
Support

Airport time capsule does not appear within wi-fi networks on my OSX neither on my IOS devices, even though the backup for my OSX is on progress. why it does not appear?

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Hmmm.. ok.. well you are kind of on your own.. purchasing from another country leads to problems.. especially as the TC itself is regional .. all the setup applies to the region it is sold in.
Make sure you are using ipv6 in the computers..
See
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4597
The 6.3 utility will not work without it.
Make sure all names are short, no spaces and pure alphanumeric.
Do a full reset and start over.
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== This happened ==
Every time Firefox opened
== About a month ago. It is getting worse.

Hmm... try downloading the [http://www.firefox.com latest] version... but if that doesn't work then try [http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode Safe Mode]. Not sure what could be causing it...

Just today web-sites I frequent like reddit, oregonlive and even FB started taking forever to load. I've made no changes from yesterday and today. Any thoughts?

Question
Just today web-sites I frequent like reddit, oregonlive and even FB started taking forever to load. I've made no changes from yesterday and today. Any thoughts? edit

asdfjava-er wrote:
The book that I'm using said it wasn't necessary for this because it's supposed to just make sure everything is working properly--which it's not.OK, if you want to ignore my advice, so be it, but please don't complain that it is not going to work without even trying it yourself.
asdfjava-er wrote:
Now this is the part I don't get. The book tells me to go to http://localhost:8080/ch1/Serv1 even though there are no files/folders that have the name Serv1.
Do you understand what the <servlet-mapping> declaration in the web.xml means? It is roughly just saying the appserver that it should port all requests on /Serv1 to the mentioned servlet.
a couple others like/ch1/WEB-INF/classes/Ch1Servlet.class and /ch1/WEB-INF/web.xml. The WEB-INF folder is not public accessible, so forget about that part.
"Resource not found" simply means that either the URL is wrong (case counts!) or that the resource is actually not there. I.e. not compiled, not deployed, not loaded, etcetera. Reading the appserver's startup logs might also help.

Since the upgrade to 4.0.1, both of my mac osx computers get multiple popups, despite being enable, and slow tracking and frequent freezing

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Honestly I would never run both Win 7 & XP at the same time in a VM. 7 needs at least 4GB to run properly and uses more resources then XP.
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Old MacBook Pro slow and hangs frequently, hard drive problems?

Hi,
I have an old Macbook Pro (one of the originals, from about 4 1/2 years ago). Recently I've been noticing that it runs really slow, especially when its been running for a while and there are multiple programs open. It will take a long time to switch between windows, opening a tab in Safari will usually cause a spinning beach ball for 10-15 seconds and Safari crashes frequently. Other programs have similar problems, but don't normally crash. It's running Snow Leopard and has 1GB of RAM. Obviously I expect it to be slower with lots of stuff open, but my usage patterns haven't changed and its performance certainly has. The harddrive always seems to be being accessed when I have these problems.
The hard drive S.M.A.R.T. status is "verified," and I ran the Apple Hardware Test and it came out fine. But I'm still really worried that something could be going wrong, especially with the hard drive and since I am going away in a few weeks to work on a project and will be away from my backup drive I really want to make sure any problem is taken care of beforehand.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be the the problem or about anything I should try?
Much Thanks.

With lots of concurrent processes and insufficient memory you will experience slow performance and beachballing. This is because the OS is forced to use the hard drive to replace the non-existent physical RAM. See the following:
About OS X Memory Management and Usage
Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Memory Management in Mac OS X
Performance Guidelines- Memory Management in Mac OS X
A detailed look at memory usage in OS X
Understanding top output in the Terminal
The amount of available RAM for applications is the sum of Free RAM and Inactive RAM. This will change as applications are opened and closed or change from active to inactive status. The Swap figure represents an estimate of the total amount of swap space required for VM if used, but does not necessarily indicate the actual size of the existing swap file. If you are really in need of more RAM that would be indicated by how frequently the system uses VM. If you open the Terminal and run the top command at the prompt you will find information reported on Pageins () and Pageouts (). Pageouts () is the important figure. If the value in the parentheses is 0 (zero) then OS X is not making instantaneous use of VM which means you have adequate physical RAM for the system with the applications you have loaded. If the figure in parentheses is running positive and your hard drive is constantly being used (thrashing) then you need more physical RAM.
Also, a small hard drive with too little free space and a system lacking in any regular maintenance can also lead to slow performance. See the following:
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.1 or higher are Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. Versions 1.5.1 or later are Intel Mac compatible.
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts had been significantly reduced in Tiger and Leopard. These utilities have limited or no functionality with Snow Leopard and should not be installed.
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I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc. Other utilities are also available such as Onyx, Leopard Cache Cleaner, CockTail, and Xupport, for example.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard. AppleJack 1.6 is compatible with Snow Leopard.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
Backuplist
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
iBackup
JaBack
Silver Keeper
MimMac
Retrospect
Super Flexible File Synchronizer
ynchronizer
SuperDuper!
Synchronize Pro! X
SyncTwoFolders
Synk Pro
Synk Standard
Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at CNet Downloads or MacUpdate.
This should give you a few things to start sorting things out and getting better performance from your computer within its limitations.
If you have a Core Duo model then 2 GBs is the maximum RAM you can install. If you have a Core 2 Duo model then you can install up to 4 GBs but they system will only make use of 3 GBs. As for the hard drive it can be replaced. Notebook drives in the 250 to 500 GB - 7200 RPM range are relatively inexpensive. Visit OWC for pricing on drives and RAM. Visit Data Mem for pricing on RAM.

Macbook pro running annoyingly slow on OSX Lion

hi,
i'm having a bit of trouble running osx Lion, ever since i've installed my macbook pro (2.8 Ghz Core i7 with 8 Gb of ram) has started stuttering. running absolutly nothing but one single application (being lightroom, quicktime, itunes or any other app) every few seconds my mac tends to stop for up to a minute to do ...something... it shows the beachball icon and the resumes normal duty just to continue on it's annoying course several seconds later.
i have tried resseting my SMC, i have reinstalled lion with a complete clean install (with and without installing snow leopard bfore installing) and manually replacing all backups from time machine instead of restoring. a reboot doesnt seem to do anything except for take several minutes more than i'm used to.
i have tried booting in safe mode using the shift key.
so. looking at my activity monitor, the cpu usage doesn't seem to jump up at all when a "stutter" occurs. i have however noticed a VM size of near 200 GB after reboot (windows are not reopened on boot) wich seems ...excessive
so i'm at a loss.. lion has some pretty nice features, but at this rate i will be reinstalling my previous version of OSX.
is there anyone that might be able to help me out here?
thanks in advance,
sincerly
Paul Thijssen

Hi,
I also have this problem. My MacBook pro was brand new in august, but i bought it just a few days before the release of lion so i installed lion after i bought it. Only used it 1 day with whatever was on it before and seemed to work fine.
Ive been too busy to do anything about it but im very annoyed by how slow it is so i have to do something now, what can I do? can someone help with some specific steps? someone posted something about changing the network settings but I wasnt sure if that applied in europe (spain)... any guideance in non-technical terms please?
THANK YOUUU

Since upgrade to 10.5.8, frequent temporary hangs (spinning beachball)

Good day!
Since updating to 10.8.5 on my MacBook Pro (15" unibody design), I'm encountering frequent visits (every 5 to 10 minutes) by the spinning beachball which last for 30 seconds or so.
At first I thought something might be slurping up all the processor power, but Activity Monitor isn't showing anything. The one thing I haven't checked yet is whether it still happens if I'm not connected via AirPort. The incidents do not appear to be limited to apps using the Internet.
Any great ideas? Thanks!

Been having the same issues happening on the same machine as you. I did this yesterday, and so far so good.
1. Restart in safe mode (Hold down shift key when you hear the chime)
2. Under Applications > Utilities > Disk Utilities, select your hard drive on the left column, and click "Repair Permissions"
3. Once done, restart
It's been a day since I've done this, and no beachballs yet (fingers crossed)

Here's a fix for slow iPhoto 5.0.4 (burst the beachball!)

Hi all,
I've been scanning my back catalogue of photos from about the end of last year. I've never really used iPhoto before, so have no previous with earlier versions. Without a digital camera, I'm forced to use an HP scanner. Owing to the fact that the Cube only has USB 1, this is already not the fastest job in the world, but patience is on my side.
Despite the fact that I've chosen to put the iPhoto library on my ext HDD, I'm faced with one of the infuriating aspects of the HP scanning application, which is its need to put all scanned input into a folder within /home/documents on my Cube HDD. I only discovered this when I poked around after a system warning that my startup drive was nearly full.
I think this critical point caused a few permissions conflicts, because ever since, iPhoto has been screwing (that's less harsh here in the UK) my Mac. I got all the symptoms others have been complaining about with regard to slow system performance after having used iPhoto at all. This was true when switching between applications, as well as using applications after having used iPhoto, not to mention during the use of iPhoto itself. The only way to correct this degradation was with a restart, which itself would take forever, because of the slow system performance.
I had a fairly small library.iPhoto file, so was not assured that the bloat was the same as others had with certain cameras. In looking through the posts, however, I found one which suggested trashing iPhoto 5.0.4 and reinstalling version 5.0. The respondent stated that he/she was at the point of trying something 'as drastic as that'.
So I got to thinking: if the application iPhoto has caused system-wide damage, then that's the damage to treat. I did an archive and reinstall of OSX and the difference is phenomenal. So many have reported massive amounts of RAM in use, as well as GIGABYTES of swap memory. Have we forgotten the background of the Mac as a graphic artist's tool of choice?
I'm here to tell you that a properly seated operating system will run iPhoto quite happily with a gig of RAM, and whilst a 450Mhz processor won't put the fear of god into many in this day and age, it's perfectly adequate for image manipulation in iPhoto.
If you'd asked me this a week ago, I would have concurred that I obviously needed to upgrade to a G5 twin 1.8 or some such animal, but having noticed colleagues in these forums with systems that should eat this kind of workload, I'm at the conclusion (like I'm an expert) that a system reinstall should be at the beginning of the troubleshooting with such huge differences between expected and actual performance.
Go on, give it a try. What's to lose, apart from half an hour installing OSX?
Best of luck,
Matt
G4 Cube 1GB RAM/G3 iBook 640MB RAM; AirPort Express/G3 iMac Rev B 640MB RAM/iPod Mac OS X (10.4.4) iMac OSX 10.2.8

Never should have been a question - sorry.

Slow on OSX, frequent short glimpses on beachball even if just scrolling

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