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UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

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Re: UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

#11

Post by blkhp19 »

For those who haven't read the video description:

Here's a very quick, unscientific comparison of one tiny aspect of UI performance in OS X Yosemite vs. OS X Tiger. Although this is just one example, I personally see these kinds of hiccups throughout OS X constantly. The machine running OS X Tiger is actually an Intel Core 2 Duo PC (hackintosh) from 2007 with no hardware accelerated graphics support in OS X (it's an unsupported intel integrated graphics chipset that was never used in a real mac, hence the unsupported graphics). Therefore, the Tiger demo is running without QE and CI. The machine running OS X Yosemite is a late 2013 15 inch retina MBP. Automatic graphics switching is disabled for the demo, forcing the machine to use the much more powerful Nvidia graphics card. I also have the power adapter plugged in so that the system isn't in a low power state. I've been using OS X for 8 years now. From 2007 to 2013, I used hackintoshes (custom built with compatible hardware). Those machines ran Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks. I got my rMBP in 2013 and it's now my primary machine. It first ran Mavericks, then I upgraded it to Yosemite this year. It's been my experience that the performance of all of my machines has noticeably declined since the release of Lion. In terms of UI performance, my rMBP running Mavericks/Yosemite is nowhere near as responsive as any of my Snow Leopard machines were. Fingers crossed that WWDC 2014 focusses on major speed and stability improvements for OS X and iOS. New features are great, but not at the cost of performance.

Re: UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

#12

Post by tolmasky »

lucisferre wrote: post #9

Yosemite has been a major regression in almost every respect, I actually regret upgrading. Aside from the obvious and major performance and stability issues the major features are just plain broken. For example, try answering your phone from your computer. It takes way too long to actually pick up the call from the phone and then when you try to answer it bugs up so that in the end you can never actually answer the c…

The phone thing was infuriating. After upgrading all of a sudden every device I own would start ringing like crazy: phone, computer, Apple TV STOPS airplay because the iPad streaming to it was also buzzing like mad. I KNOW I KNOW, you can turn it off, but I hate the fact that upgrading my OS has now become "turn off the 10 gimmick features so you can get back to some level of sanity", especially because after I pick up the call I completely forget about it (I'm not going to not take the call and then start going through the prefs on my x devices). So the other day I finally gave in and just hit accept on my computer -- and ... call failed. Great. I felt like I was on candid camera or something, the employees at Apple viewing me through my iSight camera on my monitor laughing at the sucker who finally took the bait.

As far as the Apple TV is concerned, I've completely given up. Its incredible how a product can be ruined through software updates. Forgetting the lack of attention, that thing was good. AirPlay was a good feature. Hardly works anymore. I've more or less completely switched to Amazon Fire TV/Stick. The voice search on that thing is seriously impressive. And even without that, just scrolling through shows doesn't drive you up the wall. Its like someone actually considered how someone would use the device.

Re: UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

#13

Post by mrmondo »

was heavily involved in the beta testing of 10.10, In my experience Yosemite is by far not only the most buggy, but also slowest release of OSX.

I am saddened to report that only one of the many performance regressions I reported was actually fixed (In that case within Mail.app).

A huge portion of the performance problems seem to be stemming from the graphics subsystem. If you use Yosemite on dual Retina or even WQHD displays you'll know what I'm talking about.

Add graphics glitches, immature theming and wireless problems to the over all poor performance and were talking about major issues in areas that OSX has been known as a leader in.

My biggest issue is that Apple seems to be ignoring most of the core performance issues that are being reported - just look at the number of unresolved posts on the Apple forums.

I do hope that Tim Cook is becoming aware of the drop in reputation that OSX has received since Yosemite and is leading his teams to perform more in depth performance soak testing before releases in the future.

Re: UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

#14

Post by krakensden »

joshmn wrote: post #6

I don't know anything of desktop/native applications, but web. My question to the people on the other side of the isle: why aren't all the view panes preloaded, and pre-rendered? In this day and age, where 64mb of RAM is easy to come by, I don't see (as a web developer) why this approach isn't taken.

You're only counting the application you're looking at though. Multiply that by all the applications running, and pretty soon 512MB of VRAM is looking kinda skimpy.

And one of those applications is a browser, which is liable to have a huge amount of prerendered stuff it wants to blit.

Re: UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

#15

Post by hyperbovine »

hit8run wrote: post #2

That's also what I experienced. Yosemite UI Performance is super slow compared to Mavericks. Maybe by rewriting the UI Code they also got rid of speed optimizations from the Bertrand Serlet era :/

Turning off transparency in the Accessibility preferences fixed it for me.

Re: UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

#16

Post by imkevinxu »

conradev wrote: post #8

Even with "Reduce Transparency" enabled (blur disabled) I've had times when Mission Control operates at 2 frames per second on my 13" 2013 rMBP. This never happened using Mavericks. If you try full screen zoom on Yosemite with an external display attached, it's similarly unusable.

This. I love the full screen zoom but had to turn it off for my thunderbolt display. Also I had a hot corner for Mission Control that was similarly laggy, had to turn that off too :(

Re: UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

#17

Post by blkhp19 »

krakensden wrote: post #14
joshmn wrote: post #6

I don't know anything of desktop/native applications, but web. My question to the people on the other side of the isle: why aren't all the view panes preloaded, and pre-rendered? In this day and age, where 64mb of RAM is easy to come by, I don't see (as a web developer) why this approach isn't taken.

You're only counting the application you're looking at though. Multiply that by all the applications running, and pretty soon 512MB of VRAM is looking kinda skimpy. And one of those applications is a browser, which is liable to have a huge amount of prerendered stuff it wants to blit.

It's also worth noting that drawing UI elements is relatively inexpensive.

Re: UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

#18

Post by mrmondo »

lucisferre wrote: post #9

Yosemite has been a major regression in almost every respect, I actually regret upgrading. Aside from the obvious and major performance and stability issues the major features are just plain broken. For example, try answering your phone from your computer. It takes way too long to actually pick up the call from the phone and then when you try to answer it bugs up so that in the end you can never actually answer the c…

I could not agree more with your frustrations and observations luciferre, I do hope someone out there from Apple will spot the concerns raised here and take them more seriously than those reported as bugs.

Re: UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

#19

Post by blkhp19 »

lucisferre wrote: post #9

Yosemite has been a major regression in almost every respect, I actually regret upgrading. Aside from the obvious and major performance and stability issues the major features are just plain broken. For example, try answering your phone from your computer. It takes way too long to actually pick up the call from the phone and then when you try to answer it bugs up so that in the end you can never actually answer the c…

Answering calls on my Mac is one of my favorite new features. When it works, it works well. When it doesn't work, it fails upfront. You really have to play with your icloud and FaceTime settings to trick it into working. It's absurd how complicated the whole relationship between iCloud, FaceTime, iMessages, and my devices is. The settings need to be perfect for things to work correctly. I can't even imagine if it was someone who wasn't tech-savvy trying to use these features.

Re: UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video]

#20

Post by fiatpandas »

You would think with all the smart, detail oriented, outgoing people at apple, SOMEONE would have pulled the person responsible for shifting to a yearly cycle and tell them: "look, this accelerated release cycle, it's not resulting in quality software. It's hurting our reputation. It's not performing on 2 year old hardware. People are losing faith in our ability to release stable bug-free builds. Users shouldn't have to cross their fingers when upgrading. This is Apple."

But no, that's probably not happening.

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