I've just taken the plunge and updated my iMac 8,1 2.8 Core 2 Duo 4GB RAM, 1TB HD from 10.6.8 to El Capitan. I think I've just made the world's biggest mistake!! It. Is. Crawling!! Apps are taking an absolute age to open - even the Apple ones like Maps and Safari - and it's Beachball City. The machine was SO fast under Snow Leopard. Also, Screen Sharing appears to be broken - neither Screen Sharing nor Remote Management when ticked in the settings, will allow any sort of outbound connection. I can screen share into it from other Macs. I booted into recovery mode and ran Disk Utility and that hasn't done anything. If worse comes to worst, if I boot into Recovery and select 'Restore from Time Machine Backup', which I did just before I upgraded, will that completely restore the Mac back to how it was - ie, running Snow Leopard? There's 400GB of free space on the drive so hopefully any scratch-disk required whilst doing that should be sufficient. Help...
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My Mac is on its knees!!!
- Thread starter dazzer21-2
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What you're experiencing is what I would call "expected behavior" when you "upgrade" an older Mac (yours is 2008-vintage, right?) to one of Apple's newer OS's.
Why is that, you're wondering?
Since the release of Mavericks (10.9), Apple has re-engineered the way memory is loaded and I sense that their "new paradigm" puts much more stress on the internal drive. More "page ins" and "page outs", so to speak. This works well enough on Macs with SSDs and fusion drives, but it really "puts the brakes" on Macs with platter-based hard drives.
This isn't to say an older Mac with an HDD can run El Cap, Low Sierra, or High Sierra.
However, from the viewpoint of the user, the experience is going to be more like the OS is "walking" instead of "running". I'm sure you get the point.
The solution?
The only one I can offer is, go back to, say, OS 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and "be happy there".
Or.. just get used to the slower running.
What I might try in your situation:
1. Disable spotlight (can be done in terminal)
2. Bump up the RAM as far as it can go, then try disabling VM swapping (again, in terminal).
I would only try #2 if you can get to 6gb of RAM or more.
You haven't told us what your financial situation is, but it might be time to start shopping around for a new (or perhaps a 2015 Apple-refurbished) Mac...
Why is that, you're wondering?
Since the release of Mavericks (10.9), Apple has re-engineered the way memory is loaded and I sense that their "new paradigm" puts much more stress on the internal drive. More "page ins" and "page outs", so to speak. This works well enough on Macs with SSDs and fusion drives, but it really "puts the brakes" on Macs with platter-based hard drives.
This isn't to say an older Mac with an HDD can run El Cap, Low Sierra, or High Sierra.
However, from the viewpoint of the user, the experience is going to be more like the OS is "walking" instead of "running". I'm sure you get the point.
The solution?
The only one I can offer is, go back to, say, OS 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and "be happy there".
Or.. just get used to the slower running.
What I might try in your situation:
1. Disable spotlight (can be done in terminal)
2. Bump up the RAM as far as it can go, then try disabling VM swapping (again, in terminal).
I would only try #2 if you can get to 6gb of RAM or more.
You haven't told us what your financial situation is, but it might be time to start shopping around for a new (or perhaps a 2015 Apple-refurbished) Mac...
Thanks. My main Mac is a year old Retina iMac, but I've got the older iMac sitting here for various jobs - using Adobe CS5.5, Office and a few other bits as a backup for when the other machine is off or busy - it gets used quite a lot. Running 10.6 - as it has from out of the box - it has run faultlessly from new, even though it rarely gets switched off. I fancied a bit of an upgrade to allow newer software to run and looking at the specs, the machine fits into the minimum system requirements. But I've given up on it now - currently re-installing the old system from my Time Machine backup.
OP wrote:
"it has run faultlessly from new, even though it rarely gets switched off. I fancied a bit of an upgrade to allow newer software to run and looking at the specs, the machine fits into the minimum system requirements. But I've given up on it now - currently re-installing the old system from my Time Machine backup."
As the old saying goes, "if it ain't broke..."
I'd put 10.6.8 back onto it and run it happily until the day it dies...
"it has run faultlessly from new, even though it rarely gets switched off. I fancied a bit of an upgrade to allow newer software to run and looking at the specs, the machine fits into the minimum system requirements. But I've given up on it now - currently re-installing the old system from my Time Machine backup."
As the old saying goes, "if it ain't broke..."
I'd put 10.6.8 back onto it and run it happily until the day it dies...
I have an iMac 7,1 (mid 2007) 2.8, I upgraded ram to 6 GB and installed a Samsung EVO 500 GB ssd, cold start to logg in is 25 sec. Running EL Capitan all programs running better than new!! mostly I use Photoshop/Lightroom. In addition I have external firewire 800 enclosure from OWC with ssd work very well.
I did change the internal battery and reset the nvram, the internal battery must have been discharged before battery change the start time was 90 sec. after 25 sec.
I was thinking of upgrading but this system works great!!
I did change the internal battery and reset the nvram, the internal battery must have been discharged before battery change the start time was 90 sec. after 25 sec.
I was thinking of upgrading but this system works great!!