OS X :: Returning To Leopard Due To Unreliable Performance Of SL
Sep 1, 2009
It's with some trepidation that I've decided to return to Leopard. For all its great points, Snow Leopard is just too buggy right now for day-to-day use. Even after a clean install (several clean installs, actually) the Finder is still laggy, mouse performance is unreliable when FW800 drives are connected, setting '.mov' files to open with QuickTime Player 7 results in all their icons breaking - I could go on, but these few flaws are enough to disrupt me from my video editing work.
I'm sure the creases will be ironed out in time, but I can't live with an OS (no matter how technically refined) that doesn't behave correctly under the most BASIC circumstances. In fact, I can't think of a single thing I'll miss about SL, apart from maybe the new wallpapers and the fact that Mail now auto sets up MobileMe accounts correctly.
It seems to come and go with the wind. I've loaded, reloaded, clean loaded, tried everything to get it to work right. For awhile, embedded videos would redirect me to YouTube. Now that Apple has scrubbed Flash clean of insecurities, I can't get it to run at all. I have 10.6.5 on a Macbook Pro.
I have a 2009 MP and I hate the unreliability of bluetooth in OS X. I constantly get drops of my BT keyboard and/or mouse. The funny thing is they work well in the Windows 7 Boot Camp. 2 there may be 2 culprits: 1) Logitech MX 5500, which is not officially supported on Macs 2) Steermouse. What have other people's experience been?
I bought my Macbook Mid-2007, so it's the one with the Intel GMA945. Since purchase this Macbook has been nothing but trouble, in both hardware and software departments (at one point clicking the bluetooth icon would cause a kernel panic...). Luckily I bought Applecare. The full list of problems that were serviced by my Apple Service Center are as below.
- Cracking all along the oustide of the keyboard, but that's common. - On my second hard drive, the first died within a few months of purchase. - Second Superdrive, the first motor died and wouldn't eject discs, nor would it burn dual layer dvd's. - Motherboard died after a year of use, only time the motherboard was replaced just because of a motherboard problem. - Motherboard replaced again after the sound card crapped out. - Motherboard replaced AGAIN after ethernet jack failed. - Going on my third fan now, hopefully the fan I ordered will arrive tomorrow, the thing sounds like it's tearing apart my poor Macbook. I listen to metal music, and even on max volume the fan is clearly audible. Skype conversations for the other person using the Mac inbuilt microphone are basically unbearable.
With this plethora of problems, would this warrant a replacement by Apple before my Applecare runs out this August? The only problem is I live in China, so I only get 'licensed Apple Service Centers', not an official one. I do travel back to the States often, BUT I'm not sure how well documented these problems were by the Chinese centers.
I have an older cable modem running Comcast's service connected to the newest AirPort Extreme in my current setup. My computer is a 13.3" MacBook Pro with all of the latest software updates. With all of that said, I'm having problems with having webpages hang, dropped audio on streams and constant re-buffering of video. Strangely enough, my signal is always at full strength no matter how far away I am from the AirPort. Until a few days ago I was using a Linksys WRT54GL with DD-WRT firmware with absolutely no troubles at all, but things have gone to hell with this new router. I've rebooted my modem and AirPort and I've browsed through the settings without finding any solutions yet. I've tried 5Ghz mode, I've tried being inches away from the AirPort and I've tried going to 802.11g with no improvements. Does anyone have an idea about what is going on?
Machine is a 15" MacBook Pro, Early 2008 (last of the non-glossy variety). Router is latest Dual Band Apple Airport Extreme. Device manager lists the driver version as 4.170.25.12 and Service description is BCM43XX. Driver comes from a fresh install of Boot Camp drivers. The wireless card works just fine - very well, actually - on the Mac side, but the moment I switch to Vista, I lose any ability to connect at N speeds and get a maximum connection of 36 mbps, and usually closer to 11 or 14. Do newer drivers exist? I've been googling for quite some time and I can't find anything that seems to work on the mac.
I know one can turn the finder and OS to 64 bit, by holding down the 6 and 4 keys during boot up. But, how can one do it the other way around (I'd like to simply try it again, since I am getting HUGE memory usage on my 4GB MBP) I have tried holding down the 3 and 2 keys upon boot up, but that doesn't seem to work?
I had an X25-M in my hands yesterday but RMA'd it to newegg and got the Momentus XT (see my thread). Yes, performance is very good but it only remembers your most used apps. I want consistent speed across the board no matter which app it is. Also, the main reason I am returning is I did not think the vibration was too much until I threw my 5400 Hitachi stock drive back into the machine.It's night and day difference. So I'm going to Optibay+X25-M it. Sucks I have to deal with returns and bite the 15% restocking fee on the Momentus XT (and about $12 for cancelling the order for the optibay alternative+ SATA SuperDrive enclosure) in addition to returning the item, but now I know.
People are talking about the increased ZFS support in Snow Leopard and how this is great news for SSD's but so far I have not been able to find any figures as to what kind of performance increase we are likely to see.
Does anybody have any idea yet? Maybe through using Solaris or something. Also heard that it will not be possible to boot of a ZFS under OS X, is this true? If so, is there really much point in including it in Snow Leopard?
Anyone noticed extremely choppy flash performance? I use Safari as my browser, and in Leopard YouTube videos (for example) were smooth and fine. Now in Snow Leopard flash is very choppy indeed.
I installed Snow Leopard recently and have had some really annoying performance issues/ hang ups when running multiple applications.
I had no problems before and activity monitor isn't showing anything out of the ordinary.
2.4gz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2gb 667 mhz ddrs sdram Late 2008 macbook
Like I said, I've never had any performance issues before this and now I'm getting frequent hang ups when multi-tasking. By hang ups I mean the little spinning wheel pops up and I can't do anything.
I'm thinking of buy a refurb 27" i7 but I'm worried about what the deal is with returns. What If I get one that has a huge scratch on the back or something, can I still return it seeing as they do say there might be some cosmetic damage?
Or if the yellow screen issue is still in play, can I return a refurb with no problems?
Also, how do return work? I live nearly 80miles from the nearest Apple store, so would I send it to Apple or would they pick it up?
I getting my copy of SL next from Macmall next week. I am reading some reviews that thou SL is snappier than Leopard, but it seems the application performance is slow compared to Leopard .
I am using applications like MS office 2007, firefox 3.x and parallels with linux & windows. Anybody there who has already installed SL can tell us what do they think about application performance in SL.
I just noticed that playing YouTube Video in Safari or Google Chrome the CPU usage is not less than 70-75 % on both cores ( MacBook 2.4ghz unibody with SL 10A432 32bit kernel ).
On Firefox the CPU usage on the same YouTube video is no more than 40-45% on both cores.
Anyone else notice this ?
I guess it may happen because flash plugin is 32 bit and used in some sort of sandbox in Safari now because Safari is 64bit and flash plugin is 32 bit ( in Chrome everything run in sanbox and I got the same CPU usage on Leopard ).
Firefox is 32 bit application as Flash is and I'm guessing thats why it uses less CPU.
Not sure why, but when I run my SL in 64 bit it runs significantly slow when compared to 32-bit on my umbp late 2008 2.4 ghz, 4gb ram and 500gb hdd. when running on 32-bit, my umbp boots in less than 15 sec and loading the native apps are very snappy and responsive (safari/finder/preview, etc). But when I boot in 64-bit. It takes like 45 sec to boot (it keeps spinning the white circle during the boot up) and even loading safari and rendering the default page will take like couple of secs which is noticeably slow and opening pdf in preview is slow and scrolling the pdf is noticeably slow and sometimes hangs and which does not happen in 32-bit mode.
If I click on application folder on the doc, it opens the folder before I release the mouse button in 32-bit mode, but in 64-bit, it takes upto 5 sec to open the folder. I tried this couple of times including rebooting the umbp. It is not crashing in 64 bit, but it is noticeably slow. Which is making me depressed because I was thinking to upgrade this laptop to 6gb ram. Now I am not sure if i want to upgrade.
I have a fairly old imac (it's about three years old) and although I've upgraded the ram, it's feeling a bit sluggish now. Do you think I would experience any performance benefit from upgrading to snow leopard? It still seems like a great machine so can't really justify upgrading to the new imacs.
I bought a 13" MBP for $1099 along with the iPod Touch 8GB and Canon printer. I am having second thoughts about my purchase and would just prefer the Air for basic college needs and, of course, portability. If I do return/exchange at the apple store, can I do this by just exchanging my MBP for a MBA without my free iPod and printer promo being taken away? I have already given the iPod as a gift, but still have the printer on me. Also, I am heavily considering just getting a refurb off Apple.com but I think that will just make the process harder with the free iPod and printer.
I am having a problem with Mail on my iMac. I am using Mail as my email reader. I have an email account with sbcglobal and for some reason today when I delete a message it keeps returning to the in-box. It just started this morning.
Since I've heard snow leopard incorporates 64-bit features, does this mean iLife '09 itself will encode movies faster, idvd encode faster etc.? I'm not familiar with 64-bit advantages.
Has anyone ran some tests with the new Snow Leopard Graphics Update Apple just released. I am primarily interested in the performance increases it offers SC2. I am at work and will not be able to install it until late tonight, after which I will post before and after FPS and settings for SC2.
I recently had to upgrade my OS to 10.6 (then to 10.6.8 via update). After the upgrade fro 10.5 though my computer had been running slow, especially safari. I haven't do anything different besides running the update. The only new program(s) I have is Diablo 3 which I know tkes up a lot of processing power, but that wouldn't explain the overall, extreme drop in speed when I'm not playing it.
New to mac with Macbook pro os x leopard - tried to send too many pics on email and it bounced back. now the my mac recovery area in mail continuously tries to recover it, slowing the system to a (pc like) crawl. How can I eliminate this recovery effort?
So I had decided to bite the bullet a week and a half ago and order an iMac i7 refurb for $1900 from the Canadian Apple Store...
So here's this refresh that has a new graphics card (and minor speed enhancements?)
I am thinking of buying SC2 (and other games in the future) and I'm wondering if its worth returning my current i7 model to get a new i5 refresh with a new graphics card?
I mainly will be using my computer for online video marketing (creating promo videos for businesses) and keynote/screenflow videos...so I know my i7 will deliver in that aspect...
I just would hate to know that I bought a "new computer" that isn't as "future proof" as this new refresh (I plan to keep my computer for 3-4 years)
I opened a new Finder window to find out that all the icons in the sidebar are gone, and going to finder --> preferences doesn't help. They're still ticked, but don't show up. I tried unticking them all, closing preferences, then opening preferences and ticking them again. No luck. I tried restarting the computer, no luck. I've heard that dragging the file com.apple.finder.plist onto the desktop and restarting helps, but I can't find it. It's not in Library/Preferences and a search doesn't show it. I can see a veriety of other com.apple.----- files but not the finder one.
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), Just upgraded
