
UI Performance Decline – OS X Tiger to Yosemite [video] - blkhp19
https://vimeo.com/115309653
======
lucisferre
Yosemite has been a major regression in almost every respect, I actually
regret upgrading. Aside from the obvious and major performance and stability
issues the major features are just plain broken. For example, try answering
your phone from your computer. It takes way too long to actually pick up the
call from the phone and then when you try to answer it bugs up so that in the
end you can never actually answer the call. This is completely unacceptable
behavior and a feature like this should have never been released unless it was
exceptionally reliable and seamless.

It seems Apple is more concerned with showing off the concepts behind these
features than making sure they actually deliver a solid experience when their
released. Another case in point is the changes to AirPlay for the AppleTV. The
new approach to connecting a device should be a big improvement, instead it's
a buggy mess that makes it nearly impossible for us to use it anymore.

One of the most refreshing things about moving from primarily using
Windows/Linux to a Mac for me was the sensibility, stability and the fact that
things just worked the way you expected them to. Now that seems to be
completely lost.

~~~
city41
I'm at my wits end with Yosemite. I'm very seriously considering switching to
Linux or Windows. Of the numerous problems this OS has, my biggest problem is
waking my rMBP from sleep. About 20% of the time, it just doesn't wake up and
requires a hard shutdown. I never had that problem with Mountain Lion or
Mavericks.

~~~
w1ntermute
I recommend running Linux (any stable distro) with Xfce. It's worked/looked
exactly the same for years[0], and there won't be any sudden/unpleasant
changes in the future either.

0: [http://xfce.org/about/screenshots](http://xfce.org/about/screenshots)

~~~
blkhp19
While I'm (we're) critical of the regressions when it comes to UI performance,
switching to linux means giving up an entire ecosystem of apps, completely
changing workflows, and in some cases depending on the kind of development
that one does, making our jobs impossible.

~~~
joelthelion
That's why for me Linux is the only sensible choice of platforms. All the
other platforms means giving complete control over my tools to a single
company.

~~~
vivab0rg
So much this. I've settled on elementaryOS 0.2 (based off Ubuntu 12.04 LTS)
for all my development, staging, and production environments, being netbook,
notebook, All-in-One desktop, Mac mini and all my VPS servers. Software
package consistency is a invaluable, and you don't even have to give up on the
looks:

[https://github.com/vivaserver/MoonLion](https://github.com/vivaserver/MoonLion)

~~~
hubot
to me, Ubuntu 14.10 is still very rough. there are so many inconsistency
everywhere: shortcuts, software's ui, etc...

take a simple example: usually Ctrl Q (cmd q on os x) means quit. try doing on
os x will quit the app 9 out of 10 times. on ubuntu? not really.

------
lunixbochs
I feel like the entire compositor has a performance regression. This includes
dragging windows, and seems to have nothing to do with transparency.

When running OS X virtualized inside VMWare Fusion (which does not have
hardware accelerated video drivers for the guest), Mavericks was very usable.
Yosemite dropped to 2fps (measured using Quartz Debug tools).

I had to use Quartz Debug (available in the Graphics Debug Tools here [1]) to
disable beam sync to make it usable again. In VMWare, this takes me from 2fps
to around 50fps for basic operations like dragging a window around and
_typing_.

I've observed noticeable improvements disabling Beam Sync in a native
environment as well. Unfortunately, I've found no way to do it without leaving
Quartz Debug open. Quartz Debug also has an FPS meter in the menu bar under
"Window -> FrameMeter". My framerate when dragging a large window in Yosemite
with "Beam Sync: Automatic" is around 40fps. With "Beam Sync: Disable" it's
almost a steady 60fps.

A stable test in System Preferences for me is the Dock settings.

[1]
[https://developer.apple.com/downloads/](https://developer.apple.com/downloads/)

~~~
mahyarm
I think a big part of it is the glass blur effect that they put on everything
with yosemite.

I also feel that since iOS 7 that stability and quality has gone down a lot,
or they got too ambitious with the glass blur effect.

~~~
pmjordan
The glass blur effect is actually disabled in VMware and other unaccelerated
graphics devices. You can disable it on intel/AMD/nvidia too, the setting is
in the accessibility part of system preferences.

They've just removed the last remnants of pure 2D acceleration support in
Yosemite, it's HW-accelerated OpenGL or nothing now. They also changed the
timing of screen updates, which locks some drivers at 8FPS. Finally, the
rounded corners on windows seem to be broken in the software renderer.

Before you go blaming VMWare etc. for not offering an OpenGL driver: Apple
doesn't document those APIs at all, there aren't even headers files. They
don't even officially support writing a graphics device driver at all
(according to DTS), but they provide enough source code so you can figure out
how to do so, albeit not providing 3D acceleration.

~~~
lunixbochs
At some point I'm going to attempt shimming CoreGraphics or wherever it ends
up to fake 3D acceleration by proxying the OpenGL calls to the host without
using a real driver.

------
mrmondo
was heavily involved in the beta testing of 10.10, In my experience Yosemite
is by far not only the most buggy, but also slowest release of OSX.

I am saddened to report that only one of the many performance regressions I
reported was actually fixed (In that case within Mail.app).

A huge portion of the performance problems seem to be stemming from the
graphics subsystem. If you use Yosemite on dual Retina or even WQHD displays
you'll know what I'm talking about.

Add graphics glitches, immature theming and wireless problems to the over all
poor performance and were talking about major issues in areas that OSX has
been known as a leader in.

My biggest issue is that Apple seems to be ignoring most of the core
performance issues that are being reported - just look at the number of
unresolved posts on the Apple forums.

I do hope that Tim Cook is becoming aware of the drop in reputation that OSX
has received since Yosemite and is leading his teams to perform more in depth
performance soak testing before releases in the future.

~~~
kayoone
Its especially bad on the 13" rMBP which has a relatively weak GPU. When using
scaled resolutions the UI lag is very noticeable, i also get some redrawing
issues of icons. You can improve the situation by disabling transparency
effects, but that produces some graphical glitches.

In the end i disabled retina resolution and am running native 1680x1050 now.
Definitely not as crisp but i got used to it and system load is considerably
less (especially when playing back video and such) now and battery life
improved as well.

Current GPUs in the Macbooks are just not ready to handle the massive
resolutions used for scaling. Just try to run a 60fps youtube video in a
scaled resolution and you will see your system load go up to the point the
video might even stutter.

~~~
carlob
> In the end i disabled retina resolution and am running native 1680x1050 now.
> Definitely not as crisp but i got used to it and system load is considerably
> less (especially when playing back video and such) now and battery life
> improved as well.

I don't think that 1680x1050 is native or even half-native on the 13. IIRC the
Air is 1440x900 and the 13 rmbp is less than that (when you count the points).

This is why I keep telling people who want a 13' Mac to get the air, but sadly
very few listen…

~~~
coolnow
I used a 11" Macbook Air at uni before getting a rMBP. IT was buttery smooth,
nothing could make it stutter on Mavericks. Great experience although the
screen size was a tad on the small size. I eventually settled on a rMBP 13"
(2014 edition) and couldn't be happier. Sure, i sometimes get stutter swiping
through fullscreen apps or using Chrome on heavy pages but the retina and its
scaling makes it so much worth it. Seriously, couldn't be happier. Reading
text on this is phenomenal.

And it's not buyer's remorse or anything like that, i got it for free through
a university programme and could have got the Macbook Air if i wanted to.

------
fiatpandas
You would think with all the smart, detail oriented, outgoing people at apple,
SOMEONE would have pulled the person responsible for shifting to a yearly
cycle and tell them: "look, this accelerated release cycle, it's not resulting
in quality software. It's hurting our reputation. It's not performing on 2
year old hardware. People are losing faith in our ability to release stable
bug-free builds. Users shouldn't have to cross their fingers when upgrading.
This is Apple."

But no, that's probably not happening.

~~~
blkhp19
I don't even understand who they're competing with by doing yearly updates.
It's probably a big scramble to get features released and for what? To beat
Windows 8? To beat linux? They don't have any threats when it comes to desktop
operating systems, so they should slow down and make some quality updates.

~~~
grandalf
It keeps the size of each update much smaller and less error-prone. Each
update contains a few significant changes and lots of minor ones.

It's a good strategy for a variety of reasons:

    
    
      - it lets the OS theming feel fresh on a regular basis
    
      - it lets apple break/disable bad apps that have entered the ecosystem
      
      - it keeps all the OSS binaries more in sync with the fast-paced OSS world.
    
      - it lets the actual periodic security updates be used only for critical fixes.  Try loading Windows 8 and you immediately have over 200 critical hotfixes that take nearly a day to download and install on 2 year old hardware.
    
      - Apple's biggest strength is attention to UX details.  Each release contains the byproduct of massive amounts of research/data.
    

None of this excuses buggy releases, but overall it's significantly less buggy
than any similarly ambitious OS out there.

~~~
pervycreeper
>it lets the OS theming feel fresh on a regular basis

I doubt they will be making significant changes every year. 2014 was the
exception

>it keeps all the OSS binaries more in sync with the fast-paced OSS world

Too many key utilities are extremely outdated due to GPL3. Apple also seems to
be moving away from free software wherever it can

>Each release contains the byproduct of massive amounts of research/data.

They seem to be letting the consumers do a lot of the testing (with the open
beta for instance). Many features seem half baked, conceptually, and in
execution.

~~~
derefr
Away from Free Software™, yes. Away from open-source software? Not at all. The
MIT/BSD-licenced parts of OSX get updated all the time.

~~~
icebraining
MIT/BSD is free software too. What they're moving away from is copyleft.

------
kenferry
This particular issue is probably due to process isolation and sandboxing.

In Tiger, all of those pref panes were loaded into the System Preferences app,
and each pane could access all the same data as any other. 3rd party pref
panes are supported.

In Yosemite, each of those panes is its own process.

That doesn't excuse it, just saying something about what's going on.

------
mikhailt
I wish SL were still getting updates, it was the best OS release Apple ever
made. It went downhill the moment they went to annual release cycles.

I rather wait 2-3 years for a new OS update that is stable, fast, and
responsive than dealing with all weird glitches that's turning me off OS X for
good. Windows 10 in alpha builds feels better than Lion-Yosemite.

~~~
acomjean
I agree. I stuck with Snow Leopard as long as I could (enough software was no
longer compatible). No other mac OS in my experience was as stable (I've been
using system macos 7)

I'm always hoping Apple will release the next os with no new features and the
requisite performance and stability updates.

My work basically has issued a blanket, don't upgrade to yosemite, but the new
app update system seems to always strongly suggest it.

------
mergy
The decline started with Lion. Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of the OS. They
were able to offset or mask some of this with SSD drives. But, it has become
pretty sloppy for folks that really wanted to tune their systems for
performance. Couple that with the questionable changes on the UI over the last
couple major releases and I didn't see anything I wanted anymore.

~~~
seanalltogether
Adium still lists 14% of their users on Snow Leopard.

[https://www.adium.im/sparkle/#osVersion](https://www.adium.im/sparkle/#osVersion)

It's painful to support these days but I'm still trying keep my apps
compatible with it.

~~~
zacwest
Adium has had a huge decline in users, though, since then, so the percentage
isn't as informative.

For example, if you look back to a couple years ago, we had ~180k stats pings
for the same week period[1] as we do now at ~20k[2].

I think what you're seeing/reporting here is that users who still use Adium
are not entirely upgrading. That's probably true, but has more to do with
Messages.app in newer versions supporting iMessage than anything else.

(I was one of the Adium developers for years. I don't even use it anymore
because of the prevalence of iMessage and the decline in general IM.)

[1]:
[https://www.adium.im/sparkle/?year=2012&week=01&graph=bar](https://www.adium.im/sparkle/?year=2012&week=01&graph=bar)
[2]:
[https://www.adium.im/sparkle/?year=2014&week=51&graph=bar](https://www.adium.im/sparkle/?year=2014&week=51&graph=bar)

~~~
seanalltogether
That's too bad Adium is in decline. I've always tried to not rely on Apples
built in messsaging and hoped a lot of other users still felt the same.

------
JohnBooty
I hadn't noticed any perceptible performance differences in Yosemite on my
2011 MBP.

After reading this article, I opened up System Preferences on an external WQHD
monitor and... yes, indeed. That transition is _not_ very smooth. Informally,
it doesn't seem slower ...it's just not as smooth as the old effect.

As another poster noted, in Yosemite those panels now use a cross-dissolve
effect instead the simpler slide and fade in earlier versions of OSX.

Thing is, I'm not sure I would have noticed this in a million years.

How much time do you guys spend clicking around in System Preferences every
day? This really affects you?

I don't know of any other apps with preference panes that use this effect. I
tried two other apps (iTunes and Pages) and neither one uses the cross
dissolve.

I understand that this small regression is merely emblematic of the issues
some of you are experiencing; none of you are claiming that System Preferences
itself has a huge impact on your daily lives. But this is such a ridiculous
regression to select as the poster child for Yosemite's perceived woes.

~~~
blkhp19
I totally agree the example I posted is ridiculous. Let me explain why I did
it.

I was a hackintosh user for years. I got an old lenovo from 2007 with an intel
core 2 duo and thought it would be fun to install OS X Tiger on it. Install
went smoothly except the intel integrated graphics wasn't supported.

I decided to check out System Preferences to see how much had changed in all
these years. I immediately noticed this perfectly smooth animation between
panels. I couldn't believe it was so slow - and with no graphics driver! So I
tried it on my rMBP and it was incredibly laggy. I just quickly recorded it
with my phone and thought I'd show just one small part of OS X that really
represents a much bigger picture of UI performance regressions.

~~~
kenferry
Hm, I don't think this is a good example if the point is to talk about general
graphics slowness, because the slowness here is not due to generic graphics
issues.

This is slow because each pane is running in its own process and it's doing
some complicated cross-process graphics stuff to get all the drawing into the
same window. This changed in… maybe Lion?

------
comex
Interesting. The flashing at least seems to be an isolated System Preferences
bug, as I don't remember seeing it in any other applications.

Would be better to compare a larger number of UI interactions - Finder,
Safari, Exposé/Mission Control, iTunes, etc., to more clearly establish a
pattern rather than just claiming it anecdotally. Not saying the pattern isn't
there, but proving it would be a breath of fresh in air in an area typically
so subjective and dominated by perceptual biases.

~~~
blkhp19
Tiger didn't have Mission Control, but I certainly think there are other tests
that could be done that really compare all aspects of the OS.

I can tell you that Mission Control is, at times (far too frequently)
extremely laggy for me on OS X Yosemite. Couple that with apps leaking memory,
leaving me with mere megabytes of free RAM, and my top of the line rMBP slows
to a crawl.

~~~
alexqgb
Dashboard has become virtually unusable in Yosemite. "Laggy" is an
understatement. If I'm activating it after a restart, it can take a full
minute for the widgets to become active. The same selection is available
instantly in Snow Leopard. Thank goodness I've got a partitioned drive, and
can switch back and forth between Y and SL as needed.

------
grandalf
Not sure what everyone is talking about, I loaded Yosemite on my 3 macbooks
(2010 11" air, 2011 13" air, and 2014 13" pro) and it works perfectly on all
with no glitching whatsoever.

~~~
coldtea
Could be a retina thing. I see it on my MBPr 15 2013.

~~~
qubitcoder
Same here with the MBPr 15" 2012.

I recommend a clean install of Yosemite. After upgrading from the beta
versions to the final release, I still had UI elements misplaced (e.g. the
address bar in Safari was 1/3 the width and stuck on the left edge).

A clean install fixed the UI alignment and some other minor quirks. I still
notice occasional black squares in Safari which cover a portion of the screen;
a page refresh seems to resolve the issue. But Firefox developer edition, on
the other hand, is snappy and responsive.

------
mayhaffs
While loitering in the local Apple store, I got on a new 5k iMac and started
launching a bunch of applications with multiple windows, alt-tabbing and
clicking around really fast, etc. Normal dev workflow stuff..

Discovering the glitchy flash in the system preferences pane was really
unsettling. Almost a uncanny valley type situation.

I'm still on Mavericks. I've been waiting for bug fixes from Apple and
application support for non-Apple apps before upgrading to Yosemite. But after
seeing the glitchy-ness on the 5k and reading these comments..

Both recent upgrades are pretty disappointing. When I first got an iPhone 4, I
was astonished by how there were practically zero bugs, especially compared to
my previous no-name OS, bug-infested phones.

Are there actually more bugs in Yosemite/iOS8? And if so, can we identify
potential factors?

Technical challenges shifting to Swift? Regular product life cycle growing
pains? Decreased focus on OSs from Apple Increased product-lines/technologies?
Pivot from price-skimming to market-capture business strategy?

~~~
coldtea
> _Are there actually more bugs in Yosemite /iOS8? And if so, can we identify
> potential factors?_

No. There are some bugs and some glitches, like in every release.

Nothing to write home about, except from a small percentage of the population
with a Mac from a faulty production run (but that's hardware, not the OS), or
with some software that's hogging the cpu (but that's the software, not the
OS).

I have this flashing in System Prefs -- it's a small annoyance, but nothing
especially interesting or getting in the way. There are 2-3 more bugs. And
some things introduced

I was there from OS X 10.2. People have complained for every single OS X
release...

~~~
fleitz
Haha 10.2, yeah in 10.2 you were lucky if you could get something working
after 30 minutes in bash.

------
kossTKR
Earlier this year, around 3 months ago, when i bought my brand new Macbook Pro
15" Iris Pro (the one without discrete graphics card). I was i disappointed in
the performance of the UI, and i uploaded 3 videos to showcase the problems.

A 2000$ dollar machine stuttering when i drag windows around.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqUHfjD6qWc&index=1&list=UUE...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqUHfjD6qWc&index=1&list=UUEhez4TDTdadtDShVrCE1kA)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1xhpFRDNdQ&list=UUEhez4TDTd...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1xhpFRDNdQ&list=UUEhez4TDTdadtDShVrCE1kA&index=2)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNGYjFRQrSM&index=3&list=UUE...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNGYjFRQrSM&index=3&list=UUEhez4TDTdadtDShVrCE1kA)

------
hit8run
That's also what I experienced. Yosemite UI Performance is super slow compared
to Mavericks. Maybe by rewriting the UI Code they also got rid of speed
optimizations from the Bertrand Serlet era :/

~~~
hyperbovine
Turning off transparency in the Accessibility preferences fixed it for me.

~~~
unicornporn
And now you get the funny black corners in the hud when changing the volume...
Polish is needed.

------
x0054
I recently updated from Mavericks to Yosemite on my 2012 rMBP. Even with no
transparency on my battery life was down from 6+ hours to less than 3.5 hours!
And everything is so annoyingly slow. After 3 days with Yosemite I had to use
my wife's 2009 Air for something, it's running Mavericks, and wow, the speed!
That day I restored from a backup and now I am back to running 10.9. My
battery is back to 6+ hours, and my laptop is flying.

I also updated my iPad 3 from iOS 6 to iOS 8. Now it's unusable! So, so, so
slow. And that I can't even downgrade. If you are going to screw things up,
Apple, can you at least give me an option to downgrade.

I think the main problem is the monolithic aspect of the OSX and iOS. Why is
the Mail or Face Time app part of the OS?

~~~
coldtea
> _I recently updated from Mavericks to Yosemite on my 2012 rMBP. Even with no
> transparency on my battery life was down from 6+ hours to less than 3.5
> hours! And everything is so annoyingly slow._

Actually your memory usage should go down with Yosemite -- they have new
technologies just for that. Same for battery file, it should go up.

Since this is HN, do people do basic investigation, or assume that anything
that doesn't seem to work is a lost cause and just switch OSs, re-install, or
complain?

Your experience for example seems more like some rogue app with extensive
CPU/memory usage driving the battery down. Have you checked Activity Monitor
to try to spot if that was the case?

~~~
x0054
>Since this is HN, do people do basic investigation, or assume that anything
that doesn't seem to work is a lost cause and just switch OSs, re-install, or
complain? >Your experience for example seems more like some rogue app with
extensive CPU/memory usage driving the battery down. Have you checked Activity
Monitor to try to spot if that was the case?

Yes, I did perform basic investigation. I switched from Chrome to Safari,
because Chrome was eating battery like crazy. I shut down anything that I
wasn't using. Browsing the internet on Safari I was getting 3.5 hours on a
charge. I even timed it! And I am not the only one, read the Apple forums
complaining about this. I even reset the PRAM, as Apple recommends. It didn't
help. Now I am running a lot more apps, using Chrome, compiling stuff in the
background, and still getting my usual 5.5-6.5 hours of battery life
(depending on the load). So, yes, I did spent over 20 hours of my life trying
to make Yosemite work, and then gave up and switched back to Mavericks. I had
a CC backup, so it only took 20 minutes.

>Actually your memory usage should go down with Yosemite -- they have new
technologies just for that. Same for battery file, it should go up.

Also, I didn't not mention anything about memory usage, but you are right, the
memory footprint was lower. About 1.6gb on average, vs 2.6gb with Mavericks.
But I don't care about that, I have 16gb, so I have RAM to spare. On the other
hand, I can use all the battery life I can get.

Apple does some amazing things, and some really bad things. It's important to
give them due credit for the mazing things, and call them out on the crap that
they put out as well. Yosemite is very slick looking and a very pretty
operating system. But it is very buggy, and what Apple put out as a GM release
is beta quality at best.

------
mzaouar
The UI performance decline is more drastic in "System Preferences" than in the
rest of the system. It's because some of the pref panes (General, Security &
Privacy, etc..) are actually remote views and involve launching processes for
security (address space separation) reasons.

------
mproud
Yosemite uses a variation of a cross-dissolve transition when changing/showing
content after a mouse click, whereas older versions do not. Give it a try and
pay close attention to the window.

------
mrpippy
I've also had lots of problems with Yosemite, but I don't think this
comparison is useful at all. The Hackintosh looks like a fresh install with
nothing else running, whereas the rMBP has other apps running. When I don't
have 100+ Safari tabs open, Yosemite runs a lot better.

~~~
lstamour
The graphical glitches that he notes however, happen even on a powerful,
plugged-in 15" retina model. I just tried it myself. Some parts of each
screen, including the blue (or grey) themed UI elements for tabs or dropdowns,
take longer to move to a selected state. It's unclear whether the delay is due
to the time it takes to load the preferences for the screen -- that it can't
do so before you click -- or if the graphics themselves take that long to draw
but already know what state they should be in. It's funny, I knew something
had changed, but I couldn't pin-point it until this video. Until the side-by-
side, I figured the glitches were a side-effect from it being "too fast" since
there's no transition animation. But it's obvious the animated version simply
felt smoother and more integrated as a UI.

------
alexggordon
It's sad really. I continually have incredibly high expectations for OS X and
it's new releases. However, they keep proving me wrong time and time again.

I used to be incredibly "gung ho" about upgrading to Apple beta's. Then, with
iOS 7, that all changed. I had to do something I've never had to. I took the
beta off my phone and put back on iOS 6. Same with iOS 8 -> iOS 7, despite the
nagging feeling at the back of my head that I shouldn't upgrade.

I think the real issue is, that ideals like Facebook's "move fast and break
things"[0] (important to note they've stopped using that technique) has become
the moral of big companies to fight the decreasing return on investment each
new developer brings. To compare, the impressive thing to me about Google is
that they ship so fast, with so few issues.

Despite Tim Cooks solid leadership, I think Apple is really in a grey area
right now. Yeah, their profits are at an all time high, but the reason the
profits exist is because they have the best hardware and software combination.
As soon as one side of that edge goes away, then it might be prime time for a
dedicated Microsoft to step back in.

[0] [https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-
engineering/reflecti...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-
engineering/reflecting-on-3-years-at-facebook/415679363919)

------
blkhp19
For those who haven't read the video description:

Here's a very quick, unscientific comparison of one tiny aspect of UI
performance in OS X Yosemite vs. OS X Tiger. Although this is just one
example, I personally see these kinds of hiccups throughout OS X constantly.
The machine running OS X Tiger is actually an Intel Core 2 Duo PC (hackintosh)
from 2007 with no hardware accelerated graphics support in OS X (it's an
unsupported intel integrated graphics chipset that was never used in a real
mac, hence the unsupported graphics). Therefore, the Tiger demo is running
without QE and CI. The machine running OS X Yosemite is a late 2013 15 inch
retina MBP. Automatic graphics switching is disabled for the demo, forcing the
machine to use the much more powerful Nvidia graphics card. I also have the
power adapter plugged in so that the system isn't in a low power state. I've
been using OS X for 8 years now. From 2007 to 2013, I used hackintoshes
(custom built with compatible hardware). Those machines ran Tiger, Leopard,
Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks. I got my rMBP in 2013 and
it's now my primary machine. It first ran Mavericks, then I upgraded it to
Yosemite this year. It's been my experience that the performance of all of my
machines has noticeably declined since the release of Lion. In terms of UI
performance, my rMBP running Mavericks/Yosemite is nowhere near as responsive
as any of my Snow Leopard machines were. Fingers crossed that WWDC 2014
focusses on major speed and stability improvements for OS X and iOS. New
features are great, but not at the cost of performance.

------
sesteel
I am currently working on an OpenGL based UI toolkit and recently purchased a
4K monitor and a EVGA GeForce GTX 750Ti to drive the display for testing
purposes. As you might expect, it appears taxing to push 4X the content over
the bus or have the card render content at a high resolution.

This may not be the effect seen here, but it is the first thing that came to
mind. I am not sure how well system hardware has kept up with display
technology.

~~~
pervycreeper
Not strictly resolution dependant. The same problem is present on current
model macbook airs and non-retina imacs.

------
tomvo
I noticed a lot of UI speed degradation as well, especially when using a dual
monitor setup and changing focus from one screen to the other. This was the
most visible when OSX tries to refresh the menubar icons. I did a fresh
install (instead of upgrade to the beta) and things seem to be a little better
but I guess this just has to do with the fresh install clearing my mac of all
the bloat that it acquired in the past years.

------
Yoshino
I do agree that Yosemite has had some performance regressions, but people seem
to remember the older operating systems with rose colored glasses. I used 10.3
to 10.5 on the 2005 PowerBook G4 (1.67 GHz) and it was _incredibly_ slow.
Spotlight was nearly useless. The fans would frequently spin up. And let's not
talk about Finder locking up when a network mount disappeared. Right now I use
10.10 on the original 2012 Retina MBP, and even though Yosemite is a bit
slower than Mavericks it is still leagues faster than (Mountain) Lion on the
same machine (which is what it shipped with). The biggest performance
regressions I've seen have been in Safari, but Chrome doesn't seem to have the
same problems.

I think they are paying attention, since 10.10 performance has improved
considerably since the first DP, but they need to do more. I wish they would
stop fucking with it on a yearly cycle and just release a stable, fast
operating system with no new features. The graphics system needs more
optimization and they need to kill HFS+ (but that's a whole different can of
worms).

(Edits: wording)

------
cmelbye
It's probably too much to hope for a stability and performance focus for iOS 9
and OS X 10.11, but damn if I don't try.

------
kenOfYugen
My first Apple Computer was a black MacBook 13" bought in 2007. The OS
installed was Leopard and I was extremely happy with it.

The experience contained quality, responsiveness, stability as well as
productivity enhancements. Hadn't missed Windows and Linux at all.

The experience remained perfect as the OS was gradually getting updates up to
10.6.8, the latest Snow Leopard version and the hard disk drive was changed to
a solid state drive.

At that time I bought a MacBook Pro 13" with an i5 processor, and was
introduced to Lion.

Believe it or not, I used my older MacBook more. It "felt" much more solid and
responsive. Well at some point I gave it away, and was stuck with the Pro
model.

As the OS updates where coming along, things were expected to get only better,
just like I had previously experienced. But no! I'm currently using the latest
Yosemite, and hate it when I notice tiny buggy things happening.. [ for
example, try to disable the transparency in accessibility features, and get
clunky black corner edges around the volume box as you adjust the volume
up/down ]

As I became a more experienced programmer, I realized that good software is
perfect software. Thus anything I notice that's not right (and doesn't get
fixed when it's a known issue) is a hint for a lot more bugs that I might
never get to experience. So essentially I feel like I've lost the stability
and security feelings that used to keep me close to the Mac OS.

I really miss Snow Leopard, and hate the path Apple is following. I could
bitch about their phones too but that would be more derailing.

PS: I wish there was an image out there of Mac OS 10.6.8 I haven't got a spare
Apple machine to boot 10.6.7, update it to 10.6.8 and create a bootable disk
for my MacBook Pro

Does anyone know if such an image exist, or perhaps can create it?

------
conradev
Even with "Reduce Transparency" enabled (blur disabled) I've had times when
Mission Control operates at 2 frames per second on my 13" 2013 rMBP. This
never happened using Mavericks.

If you try full screen zoom on Yosemite with an external display attached,
it's similarly unusable.

~~~
imkevinxu
This. I love the full screen zoom but had to turn it off for my thunderbolt
display. Also I had a hot corner for Mission Control that was similarly laggy,
had to turn that off too :(

~~~
petarb
the zoom with a thunderbolt display attached is unbearable! I really hope they
fix the jankiness

------
aquanext
I'm hoping that 10.11 will perhaps be the release that refines things quite a
bit, concentrating on stability and generally cleaning up messes like this.

Let's remember that they did a fairly major overhaul of everything with
Yosemite. This is just how software works sometimes. But you're right, there
was a certain amount of UI stability during the Tiger through Snow Leopard era
that I wish that Apple would get back to.

Try switching between the tabs in the "About this Mac" dialog. The framerate
is truly shameful. Astonishing that it got approved at all. I had to try it on
a couple different Macs at the Apple Store to believe that it wasn't some
random problem I was seeing.

------
ghshephard
This isn't the first time that things have gone wrong with a new version of OS
X. The shift from 10.6.8 to 10.7 was an absolute catastrophe from both a
performance and a stability basis. 10.8/ML was slightly better, and, I've
stayed on 10.8.5 waiting for 10.9/Mavericks to stabilize.

From colleagues who use it, and the various KEXTs that I also have, it looks
like Mavericks, and KEXT support for it, actually hit a pretty good stability
plateau around June/July of this year - so I"m looking forward to upgrading to
it sometime early in the next year.

There is zero chance that I'm going to be considering 10.10/Yosemite as my
production platform (if at all) any earlier than 2016. I'm always slightly
bemused at how quickly people feel the need to rush into the next operating
system. Was the older one really all that bad? About the only thing I'm
missing right now is Omnifocus doesn't support 10.8 (10.9 or newer). Other
than that, I can live with the various warts on 10.8.5 (particularly now that
FTDI drivers don't kernel panic my system every time I pull out the USB cable)
- Kernel Panics are now a biweekly (instead of every couple days)event, and my
only real need to reboot the system is when my USB devices aren't recognized
(usually after a sleep) - but a 3 minute reboot and everything is fine again.

Still - I think it's good to call Apple on their crap - 10.6 was actually a
pretty decent release, and I don't think they've managed to get one that good
out since then.

~~~
echoless
> I'm always slightly bemused at how quickly people feel the need to rush into
> the next operating system.

The difference with this release is that it's a pretty big UI overhaul and
some developer features such as storyboards for Mac aren't available on older
versions. People who develop for the Mac or iOS have little choice but to
upgrade.

I've been running Yosemite since DP 1, and haven't had any major problems yet.
There are minor annoyances, but on the whole, Yosemite's feels like a step up
over Mavericks(after using it for a little while). Although I should mention
that I have a pretty beefy computer with 12Gigs of RAM and a decent graphics
card.

------
htilonom
It's that fucking applegraphicspowermanagement.kext !! I'm not even kidding
with that kext name. If you delete the kext, repair caches and reboot you'll
see 10x better and smoother animations.

More about kext itself; it contains the list of supported graphics cards (poor
one) and power states for them. Some states are badly done even with supported
graphics cards. I had a lot fun with this kext back in the ole' days after
Intel switch.

~~~
blkhp19
Can you provide a source / more information on this solution? Surely there are
drawbacks. And you mention using this solution back in the day - are you sure
it's still applicable?

~~~
htilonom
This is coming from Hackintosh scene, but I've had enourmous improvements on
real Macs as well, which includes Macbook Pro, Air and Mac Pro (not latest
gens).

Easiest way is to make backup of applegraphicspowermanagement.kext or just
rename it to applegraphicspowermanagement.kext.bak and then rebuild you cache
with app like Kext Utility.

Only drawback I see is that graphics card will now use native power management
and not Mac OS one. One thing I've noticed, applegraphicspowermanagement.kext
has list of graphics cards, so if your card is not identified it appears that
generic power / sleep states are being used thus producing glitches.

A bit more about power / sleep states. You've probably noticed that when you
have certain animation first time in OS X, it is choppy, but second and third
time it's animated perfectly. That's where applegraphicspowermanagement.kext
is messing up the states. You can try it on Launchpad or Mission Control
animations.

Here's more info on the issue, it's for nvidias but it applies to every
graphics cards although ATI is generally more supported on OS X.

[http://www.rampagedev.com/?page_id=311](http://www.rampagedev.com/?page_id=311)

[http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/266036-guide-edit-
app...](http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/266036-guide-edit-
applegraphicspowermanagementkext-to-unleash-nvidias-gtx-570580-full-power-and-
save-energy-at-the-same-time/)

------
kaffeinecoma
I read so many reports of Yosemite being faster that I was beginning to think
I was the only one who was disappointed.

I have an older machine (2010 Mac Pro tower), but it's been upgraded to 16GB
RAM and an SSD over the years. I experienced an initial degradation in UI
performance with Mavericks, but after the first OS update it was as fast as
ever. Yosemite comes out, and now it takes over second to switch between
Safari tabs on an otherwise idle machine. I had hoped that like Mavericks,
this would be resolved in the first OS update, but no such luck. I enabled the
"reduce transparency" option (this was recommended to speed up the UI) but it
didn't help.

My mid-2012 MBr doesn't seem to suffer from this. I wonder if Apple just
didn't consider video cards in older hardware. Not an unreasonable thing to
do, but I'd have preferred a "sorry, this machine can't run the latest OS"
message instead.

------
jokoon
I have a mid 2009 13" mbp, and for me, it has been very slow since mavericks,
probably bceause it only has 2GB of RAM and no SSD, since recent version of
mac os have been optimized to use SSDs. The superdrive is busted, and there's
no USB boot possible with this version. Linux or windows-bootcamp are not good
options since they both seem to make the laptop ventilate like crazy.

I intent to buy a 80 euros 8GB RAM upgrade, but still, it's quite sad to see
such solid hardware with such crappy OS. No official way to downgrade. The
processor has 3MB of L2 cache and honestly I'm sure a C++ IDE would run better
on a linux-running, 300 euros, celeron laptop.

I feel like I fell for the apple hype.

I really feel apple is now worse than microsoft regarding screwing users. Now
you can run windows 7 without a product key, and it won't really bother you
too much.

------
lwh
Don't worry, in a few years when iOS gets a major 3D-look visual upgrade it
will trickle down to the desktop and things will be back to normal. In the
meantime I've switched my macbook to dualboot Linux and only boot up MacOS
when I have to use one of the programs not available for Linux.

------
tolmasky
Animation in general is just plain broken in Yosemite (and iOS 8). I'm not up
to date with the latest frameworks, but I believe there's been a fundamental
API change, because its basically possible to break any animation by just
causing an event to happen before its finished. This happens all the time in
iOS, you can get it to break mid-rotation and end up in a half and half state:
[https://twitter.com/tolmasky/status/532578692804124672](https://twitter.com/tolmasky/status/532578692804124672)

On OS X, its the same thing. Here's me easily repro-ing in Safari:
[http://tolmasky.com/letmeshowyou/Yosemite/Safari%20Animation...](http://tolmasky.com/letmeshowyou/Yosemite/Safari%20Animation.mov)

------
serve_yay
I don't know what it is exactly, these things are very subjective, but the UI
does seem to have lost some feeling of smoothness. Transitions are starker
than they used to be, strange blinks as you see in this video, and more.

I am not sure what to think of our current era of Apple products. The software
seems to be more slapdash now, as if they are trying to do too many things at
once.

On the other hand, this was the first time I upgraded the OS and all my
development tools worked without my wasting time on silly problems. They do
seem to be more developer-friendly now, but I mean that purely in a technical
sense. In terms of developer relations they are perhaps worse than ever.

------
bluthru
Just checked on my 2007 MBP--I'm also getting flashes. (Translucency is turned
off.)

------
rmetzler
Not really sure what causes this, but I learned that Apple changed the
layouting algorithm to Cassowary a few years ago [1]. Because languages have
different word length (eg. German words tend to be much longer than English
words) and UIs should be readable in every language. Apple now uses
constraints to layout the UI and the algorithm tries to find a good solution
through iteration and has to reiterate for every size change. Visual effect
might also trigger this.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary_%28software%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary_%28software%29)

~~~
zw
As someone who has used it extensively, Auto Layout is not a cause for
performance UI regressions. Not by a long shot.

------
mholt
Interesting that this was the UI aspect that was chosen for a video. In my
experience, Yosemite performed very poorly when clicking on a folder from the
dock (very low framerate). My problems were worse than bad UI though, I was
losing data. Yosemite frequently (every other day) crashed hard-core and the
only option was to power cycle. Though I save frequently, sometimes I just
hadn't hit Cmd+S yet, and in some running processes, it corrupted data. (On a
Late 2013 MBP.)

Reverting to Mavericks made everything silky smooth again. Not a single crash
or performance hiccup. I think I'll stay here for a while.

------
wodenokoto
Since we all have anecdotal evidence about the merits and perils of any OS
update, I find this video of another anecdote extremely counter productive to
the discussion.

Two systems, with different specs, different resolution and different apps
running yielding different UI performance is really useless.

If anyone have a spare mac and a few hours doing nothing, please re-do this
experiment using fresh OSX installs on same hardware and then we actually have
SOMETHING to talk about.

------
naoru
Yeah. Just look at this menu bar when switching focus from internal Retina
display to external non-Retina ATD.
[http://cl.ly/2W172H0l3s0z](http://cl.ly/2W172H0l3s0z) This bugs the hell out
of me.

Not so long ago I grabbed myself a G4 MDD with 768M of RAM — it was much more
responsible in terms of UI. 3-4 browser tabs slowed it down though, while my
current rMBP13" from 2012 works ok with a lot more.

~~~
danbee
I see this ALL THE TIME. Makes me think that Apple did no testing with dual
displays. I've noticed times where it's taken 2-3 seconds to settle down.

------
tdicola
Have been holding off on upgrading to Yosemite until the dust settles. I find
it funny that I'm not even getting nagged at all to upgrade (unlike on iOS
where I was getting nagged constantly to upgrade to iOS 8). It's almost like
Apple themselves aren't even confident enough in Yosemite to be usable right
now.

------
joshmn
I don't know anything of desktop/native applications, but web. My question to
the people on the other side of the isle: why aren't all the view panes
preloaded, and pre-rendered? In this day and age, where 64mb of RAM is easy to
come by, I don't see (as a web developer) why this approach isn't taken.

~~~
krakensden
You're only counting the application you're looking at though. Multiply that
by all the applications running, and pretty soon 512MB of VRAM is looking
kinda skimpy.

And one of those applications is a browser, which is liable to have a _huge_
amount of prerendered stuff it wants to blit.

~~~
blkhp19
It's also worth noting that drawing UI elements is relatively inexpensive.

------
Luyt
Ah, yes, the flicker and delayed drawing. I noticed that also a few years ago
with Windows applications. They used to be written with the Win32 API or MFC
or even VCL, but when WinForms became popular it introduced a lot of ugly
flickering, especially when resizing windows with many controls on them.

------
jorisw
Might help to disable all those animations/transitions they keep adding. I
have entered these defaults settings on all my Macs and they have sped up my
experience a lot:

[http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/63477/70074](http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/63477/70074)

------
x0054
Also, this is part of the final build?

[https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*EdAxsHqdZmZ7...](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*EdAxsHqdZmZ7o6JO6e_TWQ.png)

Really, this bug was reported in the original beta, 6 months ago!

~~~
unfunco
I think that only happens when UI transparency is disabled. I don't have the
same issue[0]. I find Yosemite to be fine with a few exceptions, Safari is not
as fast as I'd like it to be, and I've had issues when attempting to answer
the phone on my laptop. I think Apple needs a Snow Yosemite, where they focus
on fixes and performance with minimal new features.

[0]: [http://imgur.com/KIIbsfr](http://imgur.com/KIIbsfr)

~~~
x0054
Yes, it only appears in "reduced transparency" mode, but that's no excuse.
Again, this is a well reported bug that many people have noticed 6 months ago
and it would take an Apple intern 20 minutes (maybe an hour if they were very
inapt) to locate and fix the issue. It's just not a priority to them. I really
wish that they would switch to a 2 year OS release cycle, and work harder on
stability of the core OS. They can pull Messenger, Mail, Facetime, and all the
other apps out of the OS package, and add features to those all they want, but
I want the core OS to be stable.

------
batuhanicoz
I did have many of the issues commented here but recent beta releases fixed
many of them for me. Wifi seems stable, I can answer phone calls if the phone
is nearby, it certainly become faster over time.

I'm on a previous generation rMBP 13".

------
oldspiceman
After Mavericks I swore I would wait to upgrade until the second patch of the
next os. So I'm sitting here on Mavericks waiting for 10.10.2 to drop.

If you slightly shift your upgrade schedule you're only 3 or 4 months behind.
No big deal.

------
gsands
2012 MBP retina with 8gb ram here.. Major performance issues with Chrome --
when videos are playing in tabs, 10+ tabs open, etc. Systems Preferences are
the least of the problems I've came across.

------
rado
My biggest OS X problem of 10 years – switching keyboard language – got worse
in 10.10, because now it doesn't work at all in the "Share" dialog.

------
nuwin_tim
The only application holding me back from using Linux on all my machines is
xcode.. only if there was a wine for mac apps that could run xcode.

------
MrBuddyCasino
Also, compare this with the "about this mac" dialog, the transitions are slow
as hell. This would never, ever have shipped under Jobs.

------
srpoder
This is simply sad. I downgraded to Mavericks after a week of pain with
Yosemite, I won't upgrade again, I don't trust it anymore.

------
htor
This video is pretty useless. Randomly clicking on settings icons on one
computer with Tiger and then another with Yosemite is a poor method for
comparing UI performance. Does the two computers even have the same hardware
and configuration?

Many people don't like the look of the new Yosemite UI. That's fine. It's a
radical change. But don't make ungrounded statements about the perfomance
until you have done some proper testing.

------
ps4fanboy
I wonder if this was done on the latest apple hardware. Apple always appears
to regress older hardware without fail.

~~~
fleitz
Yes, generally people want OSs to do more, not operate faster.

Therefore most of the time the performance benefits are eaten by additional
software.

It's most apparent on older hardware that was already running close to max
capacity.

------
mukundmr
Performance has degraded with Yosemite. Stability is not an issue. I use it on
both older and newer machines.

------
msie
Wow, the day I finally upgrade to Yosemite this story and its comments arrive.
Hours too late. :-(

------
general_failure
For me the installation bombed. Just locked up forever in 1 min remaining.

~~~
axotty
This has happened to me during every OS X upgrade/reinstallation I can
remember. The first time, I also assumed that it just wasn't working. I've
since learned that the 99% is deceiving in terms of the expectations it might
give you. You just have to be patient and it'll eventually work.

------
hubot
The performance is ok for me (Air 2011).A bit slower but stable so far.

------
gcb0
jobs died in the middle of his plan of covering osx and ios and forever owning
apple consumers. now crook is executing it without the reality distortion
powers that jobs had.

