Slowest POS of all time.

[jquest68]

I did a factory reset and took out every folder on my computer and it is still slow. I don't understand why is it this slow or it freezes up to a point where I can't close anything or open anything. If I open Safari or Chrome while that's having a conversation with all the apps on my computer on whether to open I can't view a document at the same time. This is really frustrating me. I thought by doing a factory reset and reloading Monterey my computer would run at least normal speed. Is it the OS? Should I go back to Big Sur?

I can open Chrome or Safari and go make coffee and my coffee would be done before the home page pops up.

 

[MandiMac]

Your machine seems to be from 2015. Any info about the hard drive? Maybe it's not a Fusion Drive, but a HDD and it shows signs of failing?

And if you did a factory reset, did you give your iMac time for indexing and the likes?

 

[maternidad]

Recent versions of macOS really dislike spinning disks, if your iMac has one. My old iMac with an HDD was just as unbearably slow as you describe.

 

[AlexMaximus]

The good thing about your model is a very easy upgradability. I'd recommend this kit here if I were in your shoes:

1TB Mercury Electra SSD and HDD Kit for 27-Inch iMac

Add an SSD to your hard drive equipped iMac to experience faster booting, near instant application launches and data transfer speeds up over 500 MB/s.

eshop.macsales.com

 

[jquest68]

The good thing about your model is a very easy upgradability. I'd recommend this kit here if I were in your shoes:

1TB Mercury Electra SSD and HDD Kit for 27-Inch iMac

Add an SSD to your hard drive equipped iMac to experience faster booting, near instant application launches and data transfer speeds up over 500 MB/s.

eshop.macsales.com

I don't want a laptop. I like desktop because I also use PS and Ai for designs and art.

 

[jquest68]

Your machine seems to be from 2015. Any info about the hard drive? Maybe it's not a Fusion Drive, but a HDD and it shows signs of failing?

And if you did a factory reset, did you give your iMac time for indexing and the likes?

Yeah, it's an old computer but Apple doesn't have a new 27-inch, and maybe a 24 is good enough but I can't afford it right now. Maybe after tax season. I just want a computer that doesn't take me back to those dial-up days. It takes forever to load a page and it freezes up or a drop-down sign saying that this page is using too much memory to load.

 

[jquest68]

Recent versions of macOS really dislike spinning disks, if your iMac has one. My old iMac with an HDD was just as unbearably slow as you describe.

Can I take my computer to a shop and have them load up more memory or something to speed up my computer? I'm not really acknowledged with computers.

 

[MRxROBOT]

You need an SSD. Using HDDs today is akin to being in the Stone Age in technology.

You don't need to open it up if you're not comfortable doing so. You can use an external SSD over USB and even that will be magnitudes better than what you have right now.

 

[MRxROBOT]

You also don't need any of the really fast SSDs out there as your USB BUS is limited to 5Gbps. Drives that say speeds up to 500-550 Mbps is plenty. Pretty much any external SSD by Sandisk, WD, Samsung, etc will be more than enough for your use case. I'd recommend either the Samsung T7 or Sandisk Extreme SSDs.

 

[MRxROBOT]

 

[ignatius345]

I don't want a laptop. I like desktop because I also use PS and Ai for designs and art.

The link you were responding to was for a kit to upgrade your spinning hard drive inside your iMac to an SSD (Solid State Drive), which will be massively faster for everything. You can pick a bigger one at that time, as well, to give you more space to store your AI and PSD files.

If you're not up to doing that upgrade yourself (and it is quite a bit of work), I bet you could find a computer shop who would do it for you. What you're asking for, is "replace the internal hard drive with an SSD" and any decent service place should understand what you mean. I'm gonna ballpark that at $300-500 max?

I'm a little puzzled by the "not enough memory to load" message you quoted earlier, though. 8GB of RAM (what you have) is not great but it should be a workable amount.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"Can I take my computer to a shop and have them load up more memory or something to speed up my computer?"

Not worth putting lots of money into this one.
Chances are the "speed problems" are more drive-related than they are RAM-related.

You could speed things up a good bit by:
- buying an external USB3 SSD like this:

SAMSUNG T7 Shield 1TB SSD, Blue

Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD delivers high performance on-the-go, not matter the terrain. It has an IP65 rating for water1 and dust2 resistance, with Dynamic Thermal Guard to manage heat control. Transfer huge files instantly. USB 3.2 Gen 2 and PCIe® NVMe achieve soaring sequential read/write ...

www.amazon.com

- then, setting it up to be the new, EXTERNAL boot drive (easiest way is to download SuperDuper, which is FREE to use for this purpose, and "clone" the contents of the internal drive to the SSD).

The above method is both cheap and easy. ANYONE can do it.

An external USB3 SSD will give read speeds in the 430MBps range.
What kind of read speeds are you getting NOW with the internal drive?
(use the free Blackmagic Speed Test to find out).

Final thoughts:
Your Mac is now 8 years old, going on 9.
"Slowing down" is what happens.
Might be time to start shopping for a replacement.

If the 24" is on the small side for your tastes, I recommend that you get a Mac Mini instead (base model m2pro is good).
Then, get a 27" 4k display to go with it.
Very nice combo, that will run well a long time.

 

[DeltaMac]

Can I take my computer to a shop and have them load up more memory or something to speed up my computer? I'm not really acknowledged with computers.

Yes, upgrading the memory (RAM) will help, but the biggest improvement will come from upgrading to a solid-state drive (SSD). If your existing hard drive is nearing failure, then that's where you need to focus. An external SSD boot drive is popular, and will certainly make a noticeable difference. Upgrading the RAM memory is also simple, just open the access door on the back of your iMac, and add/replace memory sticks. You have 8GB now, according to your screen shot, and the Late 2015 can be upgraded to as much as 64GB. I would suggest that replacing the internal hard drive with SSD will give the best results, along with upgrading the memory. That will also assure that a failing internal hard drive does not cause problems if you leave that failing hard drive connected. I would do both memory and internal SSD for that reason.

 

[gwhizkids]

Just a general comment: calling an 8 yr old Mac, of any type, the “slowest POS of all time” is really not a great way to get assistance on an Apple enthusiast site. I don’t respond to that kind of nonsense. You’re lucky others look past that.

It’s different if you were referring to a current product. But any computer that’s 8 years old now is going to have issues.

 

[MRxROBOT]

Just a general comment: calling an 8 yr old Mac, of any type, the “slowest POS of all time” is really not a great way to get assistance on an Apple enthusiast site. I don’t respond to that kind of nonsense. You’re lucky others look past that.

It’s different if you were referring to a current product. But any computer that’s 8 years old now is going to have issues.

Get off your high horse. The OP was just clearly frustrated and doesn't seem to have the same level of understanding of under the hood tech as vets on this site. YOU seem to be the only person with the issue here.

 

[AgeOfSpiracles]

Recent versions of macOS really dislike spinning disks, if your iMac has one. My old iMac with an HDD was just as unbearably slow as you describe.

I have to wonder, is it really recent OS versions? or just that's how it was back in those days? I remember back in the day on windows machines with HDD's, constantly pulling up the Resource Monitor to check the Disk Queue depth, just to see what the hell the hold up was. Got a small SSD in 2010 just for OS and never looked back.

 

[surfzen21]

I didn't even realize they were putting HHDs in macs in 2015 💀

I slapped a SSD in my 2010 MBP in 2017. It was a monumental upgrade. Boot times went from over one minute to under 20 seconds.

Everything opens very quickly. It is still a perfect machine for sitting on the couch and browsing the web.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I did a factory reset and took out every folder on my computer and it is still slow. I don't understand why is it this slow or it freezes up to a point where I can't close anything or open anything. If I open Safari or Chrome while that's having a conversation with all the apps on my computer on whether to open I can't view a document at the same time. This is really frustrating me. I thought by doing a factory reset and reloading Monterey my computer would run at least normal speed. Is it the OS? Should I go back to Big Sur?

I can open Chrome or Safari and go make coffee and my coffee would be done before the home page pops up.

Monterey is an excellent OS for that Mac. Apparently you chose a lame computer with a slow hard drive and limiting 8 GB RAM. Expect lame performance, but as others have mentioned give the new setup time to index.

The good news is you can add RAM and an SSD. Call OWC for guidance.
OWC Mac Sales

Some immediate easy things to do are:
1) Make sure the boot drive stays less than 50% full.
2) Only run one app at a time to help cope with the limiting 8 GB RAM.
3) Do not open a zillion tabs in the one browser you have open.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I have to wonder, is it really recent OS versions? or just that's how it was back in those days? I remember back in the day on windows machines with HDD's, constantly pulling up the Resource Monitor to check the Disk Queue depth, just to see what the hell the hold up was. Got a small SSD in 2010 just for OS and never looked back.

You are correct. It is not the OS versions, it is the fact that HDDs are intrinsically slow and get slower with age and as they get overfilled. No one should be booting from HDD, for at least 15 years now.

 

[Timpetus]

An external SSD boot drive and maxing the RAM will get you the best possible performance without having to open up the machine or spend big money. Should be doable for <$250 depending on how much SSD space you want. Even just adding 16GB RAM (always do 2x equal sized RAM sticks in the correct slots for dual channel memory) to the stock 8GB will help quite a bit, but its really the spinning HD that makes those older iMacs crawl. We had a 2014 5K iMac with 64GB RAM and the 1TB Fusion Drive before upgrading to the 2020 model. It was still purring along once we upgraded to an external Sandisk SSD as the boot drive until it had some unrelated power supply issue. I still have it but haven't figured out what to do with it since it's not really worth much to me now that it's been replaced with a newer machine.

 

[picpicmac]

YOU seem to be the only person with the issue here.

Hardly. I read the headline and thought that this might just be another one of those Mac haters that populate the comments of Youtube videos.

Angst and anxiety are real, for sure, but in a public space there are ways to catch more flies than with vinegar.

 

[picpicmac]

If I did not have an SSD off of which to boot I could not use my much older iMac. MacOS (fka OSX) has a great many files and likes to use secondary memory. An SSD is a must for any Mac.

 

[MRxROBOT]

Hardly. I read the headline and thought that this might just be another one of those Mac haters that populate the comments of Youtube videos.

Angst and anxiety are real, for sure, but in a public space there are ways to catch more flies than with vinegar.

The OP was clearly frustrated, nothing more. Not a Mac hater and we're not YouTube. Reading his post, I picked up on what was going on right away. We're not perfect and entitled to our emotions and opinions. If you don't like the headline, fine, but people getting so emotional over wording is hilarious to me. Im a Mac fan and have been for a long time, but im not going to get my feathers ruffled over someone clearly just being frustrated. Anyways, aside from a couple posts, seems the OP got the help he needed, so the banter about the title was fruitless and telling of the posters more than anything else.

 

[innominato5090]

You were recommended 3 months ago to look into replacing your hard drive with an SSD.

In fact, you received the same recommendation 18 months ago.

Folks have tried to help on this site; if you ask again, you'll get the same recommendation. Why not giving it a try?

 

[MRxROBOT]

You were recommended 3 months ago to look into replacing your hard drive with an SSD.

In fact, you received the same recommendation 18 months ago.

Folks have tried to help on this site; if you ask again, you'll get the same recommendation. Why not giving it a try?

I have to agree. Solid advice has been given. You have your fix OP, no need to create any more threads as you wont get a different answer. The HDD is the problem, simple as that. Grab an external SSD for under $100 and call it day. It's a cheap, fast and effective solution.