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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]

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One major drawback for me is a constant flickering in Intellij Idea and Emacs. I'm not sure who is responsible for this, but user experience is just terrible. I'll definitely downgrade to 10.9 when I'll have enough spare time. I didn't see much problems besides it. I like new design, animations are smooth enough for me and everything works well enough.

I noticed the same in IntelliJ 12. Tried 14 and still had issues. I noticed the flickering goes away once I've turned off Flux (or, at least it doesn't flicker as often). Not saying it is Flux's fault but I'm curious if you're running Flux and get the same result when exiting.

No, I don't use Flux.

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try a PROM reset? (I think that's how it's called)

Isn't it PRAM? Or is that a different thing?

Ah that's it

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14222?viewlocale=en_US

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

#113
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with me. Before upgrading I always used to close the lid to make my macbook to sleep. The wake-up experience was good. But after upgrading, after waking up the system becomes too slow to use. I have to restart. So stopped putting my mac book pro to sleep. Now I always have to shut down when not using. Apart from sleep-wakeup problem, in general this has become much slower compared to mavericks Probably this coul…

That's no problem, just upgrade your ram! Oh wait...

You can upgrade the RAM on the MacBook Pro

Source: using 16GB here

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

#114
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend running Linux (any stable distro) with Xfce. It's worked/looked exactly the same for years[0], and there won't be any sudden/unpleasant changes in the future either. 0: http://xfce.org/about/screenshots

While I'm (we're) critical of the regressions when it comes to UI performance, switching to linux means giving up an entire ecosystem of apps, completely changing workflows, and in some cases depending on the kind of development that one does, making our jobs impossible.

That's ironic, considering the major wave of OSX adoption was due to linux-oriented developers who found it easier to keep working with their linux ecosystem on OSX than on Windows.

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

#116
Ah, yes, the flicker and delayed drawing. I noticed that also a few years ago with Windows applications. They used to be written with the Win32 API or MFC or even VCL, but when WinForms became popular it introduced a lot of ugly flickering, especially when resizing windows with many controls on them.

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

#117
post #13

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…

I don't understand why they insist on the fixed yearly release cycle. I'm convinced that's the real source of most of these problems; Yosemite might have been awesome with a few extra months of testing and polishing, it was a major release in many respects and 12 months is very little time for projects of this magnitude.

Is it just because iOS is forced to release in sync with hardware, and hence OSX has to follow suit in order to support new iOS features as fast as possible? What is the point, if the experience is then sub-par?

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

#118
I'm hoping that 10.11 will perhaps be the release that refines things quite a bit, concentrating on stability and generally cleaning up messes like this.

Let's remember that they did a fairly major overhaul of everything with Yosemite. This is just how software works sometimes. But you're right, there was a certain amount of UI stability during the Tiger through Snow Leopard era that I wish that Apple would get back to.

Try switching between the tabs in the "About this Mac" dialog. The framerate is truly shameful. Astonishing that it got approved at all. I had to try it on a couple different Macs at the Apple Store to believe that it wasn't some random problem I was seeing.

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

#119

It's that fucking applegraphicspowermanagement.kext !! I'm not even kidding with that kext name. If you delete the kext, repair caches and reboot you'll see 10x better and smoother animations. More about kext itself; it contains the list of supported graphics cards (poor one) and power states for them. Some states are badly done even with supported graphics cards. I had a lot fun with this kext back in the ole' days…

Can you provide a source / more information on this solution? Surely there are drawbacks. And you mention using this solution back in the day - are you sure it's still applicable?

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

#120
post #91
post #57

I recently updated from Mavericks to Yosemite on my 2012 rMBP. Even with no transparency on my battery life was down from 6+ hours to less than 3.5 hours! And everything is so annoyingly slow. After 3 days with Yosemite I had to use my wife's 2009 Air for something, it's running Mavericks, and wow, the speed! That day I restored from a backup and now I am back to running 10.9. My battery is back to 6+ hours, and my l…

> I recently updated from Mavericks to Yosemite on my 2012 rMBP. Even with no transparency on my battery life was down from 6+ hours to less than 3.5 hours! And everything is so annoyingly slow. Actually your memory usage should go down with Yosemite -- they have new technologies just for that. Same for battery file, it should go up. Since this is HN, do people do basic investigation, or assume that anything that doe…

>Since this is HN, do people do basic investigation, or assume that anything that doesn't seem to work is a lost cause and just switch OSs, re-install, or complain? >Your experience for example seems more like some rogue app with extensive CPU/memory usage driving the battery down. Have you checked Activity Monitor to try to spot if that was the case?

Yes, I did perform basic investigation. I switched from Chrome to Safari, because Chrome was eating battery like crazy. I shut down anything that I wasn't using. Browsing the internet on Safari I was getting 3.5 hours on a charge. I even timed it! And I am not the only one, read the Apple forums complaining about this. I even reset the PRAM, as Apple recommends. It didn't help. Now I am running a lot more apps, using Chrome, compiling stuff in the background, and still getting my usual 5.5-6.5 hours of battery life (depending on the load). So, yes, I did spent over 20 hours of my life trying to make Yosemite work, and then gave up and switched back to Mavericks. I had a CC backup, so it only took 20 minutes.

>Actually your memory usage should go down with Yosemite -- they have new technologies just for that. Same for battery file, it should go up.

Also, I didn't not mention anything about memory usage, but you are right, the memory footprint was lower. About 1.6gb on average, vs 2.6gb with Mavericks. But I don't care about that, I have 16gb, so I have RAM to spare. On the other hand, I can use all the battery life I can get.

Apple does some amazing things, and some really bad things. It's important to give them due credit for the mazing things, and call them out on the crap that they put out as well. Yosemite is very slick looking and a very pretty operating system. But it is very buggy, and what Apple put out as a GM release is beta quality at best.

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