if MBP M1 Max is so fast, why is installing Xcode so slow?

[andrewj]

Have been using the 16" MBP M1 Max and love how it's more responsive, Lightroom funs faster, and how it's so much quieter, the fan rarely turn on, etc. But, if it's so much faster, why is installing Xcode so slow? Admittedly, I'm not a developer, so I'm out of my depth, but I installed Xcode because an application relies on it. Downloading it took ~10 minutes, but installing it took well over 1 hour maybe 2 hours. I lost track.

If this machine is so fast, why does installing Xcode take such a long time?

 

[metapunk2077fail]

What does processor speed have to do with installing software? It's not a heavy compute task so having a faster processor doesn't mean it installs faster. It installs a whole bunch of dependencies and command line tools.

 

[andrewj]

I would think that all things being equal, having a faster processor should make installations faster since isn't there some computing and compiling, etc., involved?

 

[Wando64]

I would think that all things being equal, having a faster processor should make installations faster since isn't there some computing and compiling, etc., involved?

Absolutely.
Besides, it is not only the CPU that is faster, but everything else is.
It does not take as long as that to install Xcode on my MBP 2015, so I’ve no idea what takes so long on yours.

EDIT: The Activity Monitor during installation would give you a good indication of where the time is lost. My guess is that it spent a long time waiting for something (perhaps from the web).

 

[metapunk2077fail]

I would think that all things being equal, having a faster processor should make installations faster since isn't there some computing and compiling, etc., involved?

I installed the latest on an i5, two i7s, M1 and Max. They all take about the same time. Look at the Activity Monitor during install. It doesn't use much CPU.

 

[andrewj]

I installed the latest on an i5, two i7s, M1 and Max. They all take about the same time. Look at the Activity Monitor during install. It doesn't use much CPU.

How long did it take? Did it take around two hours? This post on Stackoverflow about using Console was very helpful for monitoring the status of the installation, especially towards the end, when it seems like the progress bar was barely moving.

 

[metapunk2077fail]

How long did it take? Did it take around two hours? This post on Stackoverflow about using Console was very helpful for monitoring the status of the installation, especially towards the end, when it seems like the progress bar was barely moving.

Yes, sometimes it sits around doing what looks like nothing. It winds up one part of the install, sits around as it prepares for the next stage, starts the next stage of the install, etc.

For me it took around an hour on all machines after downloading. Two is very long. Perhaps you were multitasking at the time? I left the machines alone.

 

[LinkRS]

LOL, this thread's timing is uncanny! I literally just ordered a new 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, thinking that it would speed up some things like installing Xcode. Guess not. I was thinking that perhaps the installer is capped on how much system resources it can tap, and with the efficiency cores it could install faster. It is things like that, where I feel my i9 MacBook Pro falls short. I was also sort of hoping that it would improve the launch/load times of Unreal Engine, but this post does not give me hope for that :-(.

 

[Aroa]

Could it be that installer fetches something from the internet during that?
On my 2014 i7 macbook it took like 30-40 min I believe, so I’m a bit surprised how on newest M1 it can take 2 hours.

 

[metapunk2077fail]

LOL, this thread's timing is uncanny! I literally just ordered a new 16" MacBook Pro M1 MAX, thinking that it would speed up some things like installing Xcode. Guess not. I was thinking that perhaps the installer is capped on how much system resources it can tap, and with the efficiency cores it could install faster. It is things like that, where I feel my i9 MacBook Pro falls short. I was also sort of hoping that it would improve the launch/load times of Unreal Engine, but this post does not give me hope for that :-(.

UE takes ages no matter what system. It compiles a bunch of kernels on launch and builds a bunch of stuff. Maybe a 10 ghz processor in 10 years will speed it up, but by then apps like that will be bigger and more complex than today so they'll still take ages to launch.

 

[white7561]

I've heard it uses more of the efficiency cores rather than the performance cores that's why it's slow. I forgot but I think I heard that if you download it from the website it's faster or something

 

[matthewadams]

It's probably decompressing on a single thread instead of multicore. Haven't seen a lot of speed improvements for that one either.

 

[hmorneau]

When I installed Xcode it only used the 2 efficiency cores. I guess it's something they will optimize.

 

[metapunk2077fail]

In retrospect who cares? Once it is installed it doesn't matter. Losing an hour (or two in his case) means nothing if you were doing something else at the time.

 

[hmorneau]

In retrospect who cares? Once it is installed it doesn't matter. Losing an hour (or two in his case) means nothing if you were doing something else at the time.

If they do an update in the background, fine. But if I click on it to install or update it, it should use all the performance core. That time I was waiting for it to do something.

 

[rezwits]

Xcode is about a 10GB ZIPped (over) app and about 40GBs of data, i.e. 4:1 compression and not to mention probably half a million to a million+ files? AND every time Xcode is released EVERYONE wants it DAY ZERO... not to mention the App Store way is EVEN SLOWER!!

 

[titan4]

I was also wondering this when I first installed Xcode on M1 Mac Mini and looking at the logs made it look like there is some Rosetta translation happening during installation. That would explain why installing Xcode requires Rosetta even though it is Universal. Anyway I think that's the reason why it takes longer time to install on M1 Macs.

 

[hayesk]

What does processor speed have to do with installing software? It's not a heavy compute task so having a faster processor doesn't mean it installs faster. It installs a whole bunch of dependencies and command line tools.

Installing Xcode includes code signature checking on a gigantic archive (~11GB) so it is quite CPU-intensive. Notice when you download Xcode directly from developer.apple.com it comes as a xip, not a zip archive, and takes a while to unpack.

Integrity is something you really want in your development toolchain, so while it's a pain to wait for the check to happen during installation, it's ultimately a good thing. That said, it seems to be a bit faster downloading from developer.apple.com rather than installing from Mac App Store, (I haven't timed it though), so there might be optimizations Apple could still do to speed it up.

Regarding the M1 Max - it probably is faster, but it may depend on how parallelizable it is, and how it takes advantage of the cores in the CPU - and it may not be fully optimized yet.

 

[hmorneau]

Installing Xcode includes code signature checking on a gigantic archive (~11GB) so it is quite CPU-intensive. Notice when you download Xcode directly from developer.apple.com it comes as a xip, not a zip archive, and takes a while to unpack.

Integrity is something you really want in your development toolchain, so while it's a pain to wait for the check to happen during installation, it's ultimately a good thing. That said, it seems to be a bit faster downloading from developer.apple.com rather than installing from Mac App Store, (I haven't timed it though), so there might be optimizations Apple could still do to speed it up.

Regarding the M1 Max - it probably is faster, but it may depend on how parallelizable it is, and how it takes advantage of the cores in the CPU - and it may not be fully optimized yet.

It's not optimized, it uses the efficiency core only. So all 8 performance cores idle while installing Xcode and the 2 efficiency cores are in use at 100%. There is not much more to it.

 

[DoctorFluuut]

It's not optimized, it uses the efficiency core only. So all 8 performance cores idle while installing Xcode and the 2 efficiency cores are in use at 100%. There is not much more to it.

LOL. That's actually true. Like, What. The. F.

 

[darngooddesign]

The install speed is irrelevant to the application speed.

 

[synicalx1]

FWIW I've found Xcode to be slow installing on everything - even a 24-core Xeon in a Mac Pro. I have no idea what they've done to their installer but its outrageously slow and its a massive pain each time there's an update.

Steam seems to have the right idea, that'll slam a 50GB game onto your disk and unpack it using every shred of disk and CPU it can get a hold of and have the whole thing done in a few minutes.

 

[Serenis]

I'm sorry if I sound a little frustrated, but I am waiting now for 4 hours on my Studio Max and it's delaying my setup process like installation of os upgrades etc....

People mentioned that this is decompressing, building and compiling that takes so long, so you cannot rush these.
(My internet connection is somewhere above 100 mbps.)

But isn't that just work done by mainly CPU and SSD and maybe somewhat RAM which should all be considerably faster than on my macMini from 2014? the opposite seems to be the case.
Installation seems to be running on both "efficency" cores (what the hell was apple thinking?) - Is there maybe a way I can transfer a process away from the efficient cores so things get done, like a linux "renice" command?

 

[pshufd]

Could it be that installer fetches something from the internet during that?
On my 2014 i7 macbook it took like 30-40 min I believe, so I’m a bit surprised how on newest M1 it can take 2 hours.

Is it possible that an Intel installation is different from an AS installation?

 

[Tagbert]

As @rezwits mentioned, Xcode is a massive, highly compressed package with an enormous number of files. It is not uncommon for compression/decompress algorithms to not be optimized for multithreading. As @DoctorFluuut showed, the installation only uses 2 efficiency cores. They probably target those cores to let front end processes continue with less impact. Finally, most of an installation process is about file I/O and even with fast storage, moving so many files takes a lot of time.