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jacg

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2003
975
88
UK
I was getting a lot of spinning beach balls in Aperture and generally clunky transitions when moving between spaces. Switching between apps was unusually slow, even for a HDD MBP (8GB RAM). I kept an eye on Activity Monitor but no sign of major culprits, apart from 17 GB Pageins v 8 GB pageouts in 24 hours.

Anyway, I noticed a flash of a spinning blue beach ball so I went to Safari Prefs and disabled Java. No restart required, everything just seems smoother now.

Maybe there was just some back ground process that has by coincidence stopped now, but I present my experience here in the hope that it may help someone else sometime.
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,556
950
Anyway, I noticed a flash of a spinning blue beach ball so I went to Safari Prefs and disabled Java. No restart required, everything just seems smoother now.

Maybe there was just some back ground process that has by coincidence stopped now, but I present my experience here in the hope that it may help someone else sometime.
Disabling Java in Safari is highly recommended for safe computing, as well. You should enable it only when on a trusted site that requires it.
 

ghsDUDE

macrumors 68030
May 25, 2010
2,948
763
Disabling Java in Safari is highly recommended for safe computing, as well. You should enable it only when on a trusted site that requires it.

Which one do you recommend be disabled? Javascript or Java?

Does this look right?
 

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benwiggy

macrumors 68020
Jun 15, 2012
2,470
288
Maybe there was just some back ground process that has by coincidence stopped now, but I present my experience here in the hope that it may help someone else sometime.
In itself, there is is nothing about Java that should cause your machine to slow down.
It is possible that you had some app or process that did require Java, which went went mad and started eating up CPU and memory resources. Though conceivably a process that did not use Java could do that.

Merely killing the rogue process should be good enough.

Java has got some bad press recently -- deservedly so -- but there's is nothing wrong with having a Java installation on your Mac.
Disabling it in the browser is all you need to do.
 

jacg

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2003
975
88
UK
Scrolling quickly through RAW files in Aperture still eventually slows down my MBP, now with 16 GB RAM (go a bit slower and it seems to be fine). But nothing like the slow down I was getting when I had Java enabled. I guess a more scientific test would be to turn it back on...

I noticed that Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 has a blue spinning stall cursor, of a different design though. It behaves like the whole app is written in Java and looks like it is running on Windows 95. I guess that's why I avoid it at all costs.
 

MisterMe

macrumors G4
Jul 17, 2002
10,709
69
USA
Scrolling quickly through RAW files in Aperture still eventually slows down my MBP, now with 16 GB RAM (go a bit slower and it seems to be fine). But nothing like the slow down I was getting when I had Java enabled. I guess a more scientific test would be to turn it back on...

...
What is your hard drive capacity and how much of it is free?
 

MisterMe

macrumors G4
Jul 17, 2002
10,709
69
USA
750 GB capacity, 55 GB free.

...
This is your problem. You are way under the 10% free capacity threshold. Archive at least 25 GB of your files to raise your hard drive free capacity to at least 75 GB.
 

jacg

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 16, 2003
975
88
UK
This is your problem. You are way under the 10% free capacity threshold. Archive at least 25 GB of your files to raise your hard drive free capacity to at least 75 GB.

Thanks for the advice. I will get archiving!
 
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