Resolved Are Intel Apple computers being deliberately slowed?

[misterlwc]

I believe it's down to optimisations. Apple spend so much time optimising every OS release to run as efficiently as possible on each hardware variant/revision, since Apple Silicon I believe Apple is supplying so much more resource to optimisations for the ARM (Apple Silicon) platform and the Intel platform sort of feels like the bare minimum will do.

I have noticed this with small features in my Intel based MacBook Air, such as the dynamic moving Lock Screen landscapes, where when my Mac is locked, doing nothing and showing the Sonoma Horizon it can get quite hot to the touch, however as soon as the display final turns off, or I unlock to the desktop it returns to normal activity. Yet on my Apple Silicon MacBook, of course this has no abnormal behaviours at all while on the Lock Screen, due to higher specs as well of course. Safari feels slower for basic navigation. On my Intel based Mac even launching folder within the Launchpad is graphically much choppier compared to prior OS releases, as the optimisations for the Intel based components are just not there anymore, Sonoma isn't well polished for older x86 hardware.

Battery life from my Intel based Mac has taken quite a bit hit since Sonoma, where before I would get up to about 6-7 hours of usage, down to about 4 hours. I first thought this was perception based, due to a subconscious comparison of my new Apple Silicon MacBook, however then noticed I couldn't achieve the same tasks I normally perform without bring my power adapter which was a red flag. Activity Monitor could never identify anything abnormal within Energy Impact to correlate with this battery drain.

As I only use my Intel based Mac for web browsing, email and productivity tasks, all data is synced to iCloud therefore I performed an erase and install of Mac OS Sonoma 14.1.2 via Internet Recovery last week, yet all behaviours have persisted unfortunately. Therefore I created a bootable installer of Ventura, disabled T2 security measures via Recovery and installed a clean install of Ventura on Friday. I haven't had a lot of usage yet, however my battery has lasted a good bit longer with a greater forecast in Activity Monitor. Safari feels somewhat faster, still no where as quick as Mac releases prior to Apple Silicon and thing seem to run overall smoother compared to Mac OS Sonoma.

 

[h.gilbert]

You know just for that I should spite you and keep ranting on, pointing to this post as the reason I decided to keep up this argument.

I got my answer and as such I'll be more mature about it than you were. The only way I would have been 'defeated' is if I never learned anything and my problem never got solved.

I was just kidding, I thought it would coma across that way

 

[nmart1214]

I was just kidding, I thought it would coma across that way

You really can’t joke with someone that comes to such strong conclusions over such small things. Don’t waste your humor on the humorless.

 

[h.gilbert]

You really can’t joke with someone that comes to such strong conclusions over such small things. Don’t waste your humor on the humorless.

Wise words, but be warned OP might be on your case soon!

 

[HawkTheHusky1902]

I picked up a new 2022 MacBook Air last month.
Wifi and Safari is always locking up and running very slow.
Then it will suddenly work great for a bit- then starts freezing up.

The speed test shows the internet is barely present. 3.0Mbps!
My iPad is fine and gets 34-45Mbps test result.

I have run Mac cleaner- updated software 14.1.2
restarted, etc...

turns out I needed to re start my main wifi point and that seems to solve the issue.

ok...?

 

[FoxyKaye]

<shrug> I pretty much accepted that my brand new 2020 Macbook Air was on the path to early obsolescence once the M1s were announced at the end of that year. Same thing happened to my G5 tower during the Intel transition.

For me, the thing is, I'm used to Macs sticking around for 4-8 years, depending on the model I buy, before I finally start feeling like they need to be replaced. So, am I annoyed that I won't hit that benchmark with my 2020 MBA? Sure. Will I trade it in and get enough credit to pay for a year or more of associated Apple services like iCloud and AppleCare+ renewals? Absolutely. Am I already thrilled with my M3 Max MBP? Ayup. Do I also have a hobby 2012 Intel MBP running Ubuntu and Mac OS using OLP that I upgraded the RAM and added an SSD in a few years back? Uh-huh.

What do I really miss? The ability to open things up, add upgrades, and tinker with them like I could 15 years ago.

 

[goro123]

EDIT: In light of recent responses since I created this thread, I have since stopped with the conspiracy theories. The problem which prompted this has been identified and corrected. No further questions or solutions are needed with regard to this opening post. I realize the idea was silly now and regret framing it as such. I now know better.

Okay I've got an obsolete Intel MacBook Pro (2019) and have recently begun to notice some extreme delays in basic processes. While surfing Safari something as basic as stoping a video on YouTube with a curser click literally takes 4 or five seconds to respond. One would think the input wasn't good, but the video stops and restarts based on how many times one clicks.

I'm not doing any high-end functions, my RAM isn't anywhere near its max of 16 GB, and yet I'm experiencing significant delays in basic inputs... making me wonder whether Apple is deliberately slowing such functions to compel me to buy one of their silicon notebooks. I do understand that Apple will likely stop supporting intel machines sooner than later, but the idea that they would sabotage those who bought their older generation products?!

(not sure if this was mentioned before) You may take it to Apple Store and get the fans cleaned. My Intel MacBook Pro was getting very slow and cleaning the fans helped a lot. The Apple Store cleaned my mac's fan at no charge.

 

[arobert3434]

EDIT: In light of recent responses since I created this thread, I have since stopped with the conspiracy theories. The problem which prompted this has been identified and corrected. No further questions or solutions are needed with regard to this opening post. I realize the idea was silly now and regret framing it as such. I now know better.

Okay I've got an obsolete Intel MacBook Pro (2019) and have recently begun to notice some extreme delays in basic processes. While surfing Safari something as basic as stoping a video on YouTube with a curser click literally takes 4 or five seconds to respond. One would think the input wasn't good, but the video stops and restarts based on how many times one clicks.

I'm not doing any high-end functions, my RAM isn't anywhere near its max of 16 GB, and yet I'm experiencing significant delays in basic inputs... making me wonder whether Apple is deliberately slowing such functions to compel me to buy one of their silicon notebooks. I do understand that Apple will likely stop supporting intel machines sooner than later, but the idea that they would sabotage those who bought their older generation products?!

Replying to your EDIT: If you could kindly link to the post(s) with the identification and fix that would be appreciated by those of us struggling with similar issues. Thanks!

 

[BellSystem]

I believe it's down to optimisations. Apple spend so much time optimising every OS release to run as efficiently as possible on each hardware variant/revision, since Apple Silicon I believe Apple is supplying so much more resource to optimisations for the ARM (Apple Silicon) platform and the Intel platform sort of feels like the bare minimum will do.

I have noticed this with small features in my Intel based MacBook Air, such as the dynamic moving Lock Screen landscapes, where when my Mac is locked, doing nothing and showing the Sonoma Horizon it can get quite hot to the touch, however as soon as the display final turns off, or I unlock to the desktop it returns to normal activity. Yet on my Apple Silicon MacBook, of course this has no abnormal behaviours at all while on the Lock Screen, due to higher specs as well of course. Safari feels slower for basic navigation. On my Intel based Mac even launching folder within the Launchpad is graphically much choppier compared to prior OS releases, as the optimisations for the Intel based components are just not there anymore, Sonoma isn't well polished for older x86 hardware.

Battery life from my Intel based Mac has taken quite a bit hit since Sonoma, where before I would get up to about 6-7 hours of usage, down to about 4 hours. I first thought this was perception based, due to a subconscious comparison of my new Apple Silicon MacBook, however then noticed I couldn't achieve the same tasks I normally perform without bring my power adapter which was a red flag. Activity Monitor could never identify anything abnormal within Energy Impact to correlate with this battery drain.

As I only use my Intel based Mac for web browsing, email and productivity tasks, all data is synced to iCloud therefore I performed an erase and install of Mac OS Sonoma 14.1.2 via Internet Recovery last week, yet all behaviours have persisted unfortunately. Therefore I created a bootable installer of Ventura, disabled T2 security measures via Recovery and installed a clean install of Ventura on Friday. I haven't had a lot of usage yet, however my battery has lasted a good bit longer with a greater forecast in Activity Monitor. Safari feels somewhat faster, still no where as quick as Mac releases prior to Apple Silicon and thing seem to run overall smoother compared to Mac OS Sonoma.

Exactly this. And the reason they don’t bother with optimizations? It sells new Macs. It’s kind of funny they allow the install on unoptimized Macs. The Mac fan base thinks it’s Apple being good and supporting them. In reality it’s to deliver yet another slow down experience to motivate you to buy a new one. This will be more apparent when the start doing the iOS style unsigning the versions so you can’t go back. Another tool to force you into a slower device with no option to go back. That practice is hidden under the veil of security.

 

[Agincourt]

Replying to your EDIT: If you could kindly link to the post(s) with the identification and fix that would be appreciated by those of us struggling with similar issues. Thanks!

Pretty much most of them indicate others didn't have the issue. Slow speeds in Safari and Parallels are down to the software and not the operating system.

From other posts it appears that Apple is in fact supporting its intel machines much more so than the Power PC generation after the intel transition. And I'm perfectly fine with the idea of them not including features of new operating systems, provided that they don't add needless overhead. I'm not expecting my 2019 machine to run as well with new operating systems, but I hope that my pro model may continue to serve as a capable 'net book' for many years to come. I bought it for being significantly discounted after the M1 came out, but I also wanted the 16 screen and didn't want to drop ~$700 USD more for a comparable M1 with features I didn't need.

 

[mrmister]

ahhh yes….Apple does no wrong and is faultless in all things. How dare you even theorize they might be a greedy corporation with broken software. iCloud Drive never syncs nothing for days. Applications never give me the pink screen of death. Apple is perfect in all things and thoroughly tests on old hardware. They have zero financial interest in you having to buy a new machine. Apple is the highest being. Praise Apple.

I know this is 'humor' or 'satire', but wtf is the pink screen of death?

 

[BellSystem]

I know this is 'humor' or 'satire', but wtf is the pink screen of death?

It’s when your Apple Studio Display shows a full screen of pink because of a VRAM or application issue. Happens all the time with certain 3rd party apps.

 

[thetechhimself]

I believe it's down to optimisations. Apple spend so much time optimising every OS release to run as efficiently as possible on each hardware variant/revision, since Apple Silicon I believe Apple is supplying so much more resource to optimisations for the ARM (Apple Silicon) platform and the Intel platform sort of feels like the bare minimum will do.

I have noticed this with small features in my Intel based MacBook Air, such as the dynamic moving Lock Screen landscapes, where when my Mac is locked, doing nothing and showing the Sonoma Horizon it can get quite hot to the touch, however as soon as the display final turns off, or I unlock to the desktop it returns to normal activity. Yet on my Apple Silicon MacBook, of course this has no abnormal behaviours at all while on the Lock Screen, due to higher specs as well of course. Safari feels slower for basic navigation. On my Intel based Mac even launching folder within the Launchpad is graphically much choppier compared to prior OS releases, as the optimisations for the Intel based components are just not there anymore, Sonoma isn't well polished for older x86 hardware.

Battery life from my Intel based Mac has taken quite a bit hit since Sonoma, where before I would get up to about 6-7 hours of usage, down to about 4 hours. I first thought this was perception based, due to a subconscious comparison of my new Apple Silicon MacBook, however then noticed I couldn't achieve the same tasks I normally perform without bring my power adapter which was a red flag. Activity Monitor could never identify anything abnormal within Energy Impact to correlate with this battery drain.

As I only use my Intel based Mac for web browsing, email and productivity tasks, all data is synced to iCloud therefore I performed an erase and install of Mac OS Sonoma 14.1.2 via Internet Recovery last week, yet all behaviours have persisted unfortunately. Therefore I created a bootable installer of Ventura, disabled T2 security measures via Recovery and installed a clean install of Ventura on Friday. I haven't had a lot of usage yet, however my battery has lasted a good bit longer with a greater forecast in Activity Monitor. Safari feels somewhat faster, still no where as quick as Mac releases prior to Apple Silicon and thing seem to run overall smoother compared to Mac OS Sonoma.

I downgraded to Ventura successfully after upgrading to Sonoma from Big Sur. Both my performance regression on all UIs, and especially browsing in Safari have been resolved. Battery life is significantly improved too.

Notably, Sonoma has a lot of cloud-sync activity going on per Activity Monitor when you sort by CPU time which gives you historical readout of used CPU by process. I should've gotten a screenshot before I nuked it, but I'll just say good riddance.

I did spend quite a bit of time both breaking down the process chain in activity monitor and cross checking websites performance prior to downgrading as well as checking to see if feature changes in Sonoma may be influencing things... In short, (in my opinion) it's poorly optimized code as both a formally certified Apple Certificated Mac Technician (ACMT) and a Systems Engineer in this lifetime. It's notable, I just replaced my own battery on my 2019 MacBook Pro 15" i9 via iFixit and swapped my thermal grease out with Liquid Metal just prior (which lead to drastic improvement in performance and battery life on Big Sur for the week I was on it post-battery replacement and Liquid Metal) so I cleaned the fans while I was at it (thus no performance throttling from hardware) only to see me give up those gains in performance and battery life to Sonoma the week after when I upgraded... Can't help but wonder if perhaps this is even deliberate to persuade folks to hardware refresh as my iPhones (latest SE3) perform poorly both in performance, and battery life, on iOS17 coming from iOS16... I can't downgrade those though. Apple has stopped producing signed iOS16 stream updates except for the iPhone 8's and X. That strikes me as deliberate as those devices are already old and no end-user stimulation is necessary to invoke hardware refresh. My next computer and smartphone may not be Apple. Bad business practices lead to unhappy consumers, clearly.

Producing performance-regressions in latest software builds to stimulate hardware refresh cycles is not the (right) answer to Apple's corundum of slowing sales of late, just my 2 cents.

 

[thetechhimself]

Okay I was under the impression my Apple was up to date with the OS because I was never prompted about it. I had to specifically search for it to know there was a 13.6.3 update. Now that I have it's highlighted on my 'system report' menu bar. I checked my settings and apparently my computer WAS supposed to automatically check for updates, but didn't.


View attachment 2325997

I suppose with a glaring problem such as this, I'm going to update to the latest version of 13.

OP,

Please run the following in terminal and paste the results...

ioreg -l | grep -i 'AppleRawCurrentCapacity\|AppleRawMaxCapacity\|MaxCapacity\DesignCapacity'

Also, if you'd like to see your thermal throttling (or lack therof) download the MacOS flavor of Intel Power Gadget here https://www.techspot.com/downloads/7172-intel-power-gadget.html and slap a screenshot down here while running load.

I found replacing my battery and swapping out my concrete-hardened paste with Liquid Metal produced significant gains in performance as over time the computer will dial back peak performance to prevent premature voltage shortfall from worn batteries, and, thermal throttling gets progressively worse with hardened paste. Just cleaning your fans though is "safe and sane" if you don't want to go to such extremes, and consider sending in your laptop for battery replacement. It's about $250, but, depending on how bad yours is? May be worth it.

Also, if your free hard drive space on your boot drive is below 20%, consider cleaning it up to make some free space. That can potentially help performance.

If you think you may have caught a "bug", run this to check your system for persistent players...

Objective-See: KnockKnock

objective-see.org

It's typical to see Google Chrome in there, or Intel Power Gadget if you've installed it as I've suggested.

If you really think you may have a fatal error on a process? Consider running a fault trace...

How to Use the Console on macOS to Check Log and Activities

Here be dragons.

www.howtogeek.com

You're probably better off checking your Activity Monitor and sorting by CPU to see if you have a performance leak though.

Oh, and don't upgrade to Sonoma I'd advise holding unto Ventura till it's no longer supported given the circumstances as it's possible Apple is pulling a fast one here whether deliberately or by poor software development practices.

 

[neuropsychguy]

All computers "slow" with age. This is because of software updates. The slowing is rarely (never?) intentional. It's because features are added and optimizations typically happen first/primarily for newer hardware.

"Slowing" also occurs because of bloat. You have more applications. You have more files. You have more everything. That all adds up.

 

[thetechhimself]

All computers "slow" with age. This is because of software updates. The slowing is rarely (never?) intentional. It's because features are added and optimizations typically happen first/primarily for newer hardware.

"Slowing" also occurs because of bloat. You have more applications. You have more files. You have more everything. That all adds up.

I just reverted to a backup with identical apps, from a month prior and bumped to Ventura instead of Sonoma. My battery life has tripled and my performance doubled. Sonoma is different…

 

[headlessmike]

I just reverted to a backup with identical apps, from a month prior and bumped to Ventura instead of Sonoma. My battery life has tripled and my performance doubled. Sonoma is different…

I trust in what you are saying. But my experience with Ventura and Sonoma is the opposite. Safari in particular is smoother on my old Intel MacBook than it was with Ventura or Big Sur. Many of the performance differences people experience with different systems and hardware seem pretty random.

 

[mrmister]

It’s when your Apple Studio Display shows a full screen of pink because of a VRAM or application issue. Happens all the time with certain 3rd party apps.

I live and breathe Apple stuff, and haven't heard of this...just googled for five minutes, and this sounds exactly like a kernal panic, as we called it in the old days.

Would love to know which 3rd party apps make this happen "all the time".

Suffice it to say, have never experienced anything like this—have had one kernal panic on AS, nothing turned 'pink'.

 

[thetechhimself]

I live and breathe Apple stuff, and haven't heard of this...just googled for five minutes, and this sounds exactly like a kernal panic, as we called it in the old days.

Would love to know which 3rd party apps make this happen "all the time".

Suffice it to say, have never experienced anything like this—have had one kernal panic on AS, nothing turned 'pink'.

Sounds like an overheating video card to me. Probably Adobe. Clean your fans is my 2 cents.
Which GPU do you have? Not one of the recalled motherboard due to NVIDIA? That’s a thing. That’s in fact why Apple went AMD couple years ago.

 

[thetechhimself]

I trust in what you are saying. But my experience with Ventura and Sonoma is the opposite. Safari in particular is smoother on my old Intel MacBook than it was with Ventura or Big Sur. Many of the performance differences people experience with different systems and hardware seem pretty random.

So I have a Vega 20; are you iGPU only? Dollars to donuts some of this may be (graphics) driver support which is directly attributable to the kernel support. I do run with dedicated graphics on (auto switch off). I suspect folks running Intel Iris graphics may see better results on newer kernels… This has been historically true. Too bad Intel didn’t do a more beefy iGPU back then. Safari in particular was much better performing on 2D acceleration on say an Intel HD5200 then the 650M or 750M nvidias at the time even though they’re much stronger from raw compute capabilities… those pesky drivers…

Update:

I think the updated kernel is a plausible explanation for my performance grievances; writing old fashioned C is hard. Python developers are plentiful, but kernel development itself is “hard”. Things like AMD dedicated video cards probably missed their QA for the kernel or were written off as acceptable performance regression. Ventura runs Darwin 22.x vs Sonoma runs Darwin 23.x; matters particularly for driver calls. I can see orphaned vendor support (AMD) where collaboration efforts have presumably ended becoming problematic in newer kernels.

Translation to English; YMMV depending on what hardware configuration you’re running on newer OSes. This is very, very probable where Apples focus is on M1-3 performance when tuning the kernel.

 

[BellSystem]

I live and breathe Apple stuff, and haven't heard of this...just googled for five minutes, and this sounds exactly like a kernal panic, as we called it in the old days.

Would love to know which 3rd party apps make this happen "all the time".

Suffice it to say, have never experienced anything like this—have had one kernal panic on AS, nothing turned 'pink'.

There you go. Pixelmator Pro does this if you leave it open for an extended period of time. If I look at the logs it says there was an issue of VRAM being maxed out. Sometimes it will recover enough to quit the application and everything goes back to normal. It seems to be only applications working with images. This pink screen thing only happens when the studio display is connected. If I use another monitor I can leave Pixelmator maxed out with open files and everything is fine. Use this display and I can almost always recreate it. It’s not a kernel panic. If you Google the right keywords you’ll find pink or purple screen issues, that’s where I confirmed I wasn’t the only one. None of the updates have helped to either the display or OS.

 

[thetechhimself]

View attachment 2327232
There you go. Pixelmator Pro does this if you leave it open for an extended period of time. If I look at the logs it says there was an issue of VRAM being maxed out. Sometimes it will recover enough to quit the application and everything goes back to normal. It seems to be only applications working with images. This pink screen thing only happens when the studio display is connected. If I use another monitor I can leave Pixelmator maxed out with open files and everything is fine. Use this display and I can almost always recreate it. It’s not a kernel panic. If you Google the right keywords you’ll find pink or purple screen issues, that’s where I confirmed I wasn’t the only one. None of the updates have helped to either the display or OS.

HWMonitorSMC2 is my go to for low level resource usage; it can print vram usage on my Intel MacBook Pro; don’t know about Apple Silicon though, but it’s worth a shot to see what kind of footprint you have at any given time and if perhaps there a video memory leak.

That looks like a Mac Studio though. Those use unified RAM. A memory leak can lead to a VRAM overcommit. That’s an interesting predicament.

What version of Metal are you on?

Try the following in Terminal to print it…

system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType

This sounds more like a problem with the app itself not setting hard limits on caching or itself or some other process on you Mac, assuming it’s a studio, has a memory leak. A good reboot is a good defense. Reinstall of the OS is another if you think you’ve got bloatware; that’s less common on Macs though. Not impossible though. Check your activity monitor while running Pixelmator; make sure something else isn’t spinning up with large memory footprint too (photoanalsysd for example)

If it turns out to be pixelmator itself that’s the leak/culprit? File a bug report with them. Sounds dumb, it’s not. They may be able to provide you with a workaround until resolved on their end which is plausible. Developers don’t hand out workarounds like candy, sometimes you have to ask.

I use freeware photo editing btw. Canon DPP4 and Rawtherapee. I hate subscription based licensing.

 

[mrmister]

View attachment 2327232
There you go. Pixelmator Pro does this if you leave it open for an extended period of time. If I look at the logs it says there was an issue of VRAM being maxed out. Sometimes it will recover enough to quit the application and everything goes back to normal. It seems to be only applications working with images. This pink screen thing only happens when the studio display is connected. If I use another monitor I can leave Pixelmator maxed out with open files and everything is fine. Use this display and I can almost always recreate it. It’s not a kernel panic. If you Google the right keywords you’ll find pink or purple screen issues, that’s where I confirmed I wasn’t the only one. None of the updates have helped to either the display or OS.

Wow! That sucks.

I use Pixelmator Pro with a Studio Display all the time, but I never tax it in any significant way. How extended do i need to leave it open to see this? I might try to recreate it.