Alberti Posted February 9, 2020 Share #1 Posted February 9, 2020 Advertisement (gone after registration) I moved to Catalina from Mojave, and my iMac now is ever so slow, non-responsive, with a telex-style keyboard lag. Jumping programs does not show the bar at times, giving an erratic result. Support gave several tips what to do but problems keep reoccurring. The only 'legacy' software is Lightroom 6.14 (perpetual) - that in itself works good. Catalogue loads quickly, images too - even from external disk. However the whole machine becomes sluggish after a while, even if LR is not active. LR is the only legacy software I spot. I would like to know if others also experience such behaviour? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted February 9, 2020 Posted February 9, 2020 Hi Alberti, Take a look here Catalina slow. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
M11 for me Posted February 9, 2020 Share #2 Posted February 9, 2020 I have terrible problems with Catalina and FusionDrive (FusionDrive had to be separated as Catalina did not know where to write to). At the moment things work quite fine but some applications (in my case mainly EXCEL) are very slow. Much slower than ever before and slower than in an earlier release of Catalina (10.15.1 and 10.15.2). I believe that we have just to wait a bit longer (next and after next Release). I do not think that the Apple Support can really help. They give their best but problems are so complex and they have normally just a standard solution that they propose. As I had many crashes in the beginning I had to look up the situation by googeling and then you see that there are so many problems with Catalina that Apple do not officially admit. I keep my fingers crossed. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeitz Posted February 9, 2020 Share #3 Posted February 9, 2020 I have had no problems at all with Catalina (10.15.2) on both a late 2018 MacMini and a 2017 MacBook Pro. I did skip both 10.15.0 and 10.15.1. I will install 10.15.3 in the coming week. It would help greatly if you would tell us what equipment you have. What model iMac, any updates to the iMac, how much RAM, the version of Catalina you installed, the version of Office, etc. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alberti Posted February 9, 2020 Author Share #4 Posted February 9, 2020 M10 4me, I have also the Fusion drive Retina machine, with 8Gb it should be perfect. But somehow the Fusion drive does not perform its caching service (preloading programs and calls to the software) and as I type this I needed to correct the spelling of a word, went there, added the letter , then the letter is added at the end of the sentence . In other word, Catalina not 4 me . . Word and Excel perform well, but sometimes all at once they stop. I opened the program several times and at a certain point it is blistering fast, and then all at once it falls apart. Does this give trust with the vendor where we rely upon? Compare it with the UV problems in the M8, Leica was darn smart to work on it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wellfleet Posted February 9, 2020 Share #5 Posted February 9, 2020 I've had no problems with my late 2012 iMac/16GB running any version of Catalina. It does not have a Fusion drive, and all software has been updated for Catalina. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
marchyman Posted February 9, 2020 Share #6 Posted February 9, 2020 (edited) 6 hours ago, Alberti said: with 8Gb it should be perfect I find that statement suspect. 8GB may be barely adequate depending upon the mix of applications you normally run. 16GB works, 32 or more is better. But don't believe me, ask your machine. Launch the terminal app. On the command line enter the command vm_stat and take a look at the last 4 lines of the output. You want to see this: Pageins: <some number> Pageouts: 0 Swapins: 0 Swapouts: 0 If Pageouts, Swapins, or Swapouts is other than 0 you do not have enough memory for your use and the machine will be slow. Edited February 9, 2020 by marchyman 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
M11 for me Posted February 9, 2020 Share #7 Posted February 9, 2020 (edited) Advertisement (gone after registration) Mine shows that: What does this tell you? And I have 32GB of memory and 4 TB internal storage (solid state) 🤢 Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Edited February 9, 2020 by M10 for me Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/306265-catalina-slow/?do=findComment&comment=3909650'>More sharing options...
M11 for me Posted February 9, 2020 Share #8 Posted February 9, 2020 I rebooted and see now 3 times a zero. So it depend maybe when you measure. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alberti Posted February 10, 2020 Author Share #9 Posted February 10, 2020 My measures in using the command vm_stat with only mail and safari running and after just reboot and sending it to sleep for the night: Pageins: 3741618. Pageouts: 6010. Swapins: 301777. Swapouts: 399648. And yes after a reboot it is zero, but then let the machine sleep for some time, leave the Leica forum hibernating too, on and the next morning you see a safari message: 'the page was reloaded because it took too much memory.' And I see the lag again. Maybe I should switch from safari to firefox. In Mojave I often had LR and C1 active. Not these problems. I think all should actively report this on a daily basis. https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wellfleet Posted February 10, 2020 Share #10 Posted February 10, 2020 (edited) 7 hours ago, Alberti said: I think all should actively report this on a daily basis. https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html I've had no problem with Safari under Catalina nor any other problem running Catalina. Should I report that to Apple? Have you run EtreCheck to see what it shows? https://etrecheck.com And maybe run a hardware test, too. EDIT: This might be of interest - https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=_xSMk1KoXH8&feature=emb_logo Edited February 10, 2020 by wellfleet 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
M11 for me Posted February 10, 2020 Share #11 Posted February 10, 2020 What would be a Hardware Test? Do you have an advice/recommendation? I can say that even with my 32GB RAM in the Development Module it takes me sometimes up to 5 seconds to get the next picture when I press the "arrow to the right" key on the keyboard. And sometimes it is no problem at all. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wellfleet Posted February 10, 2020 Share #12 Posted February 10, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, M10 for me said: What would be a Hardware Test? Do you have an advice/recommendation? I can say that even with my 32GB RAM in the Development Module it takes me sometimes up to 5 seconds to get the next picture when I press the "arrow to the right" key on the keyboard. And sometimes it is no problem at all. It's called a diagnostic test or hardware test depending upon the age of your Mac - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731 I don't use Lightroom, but I'd check your activity monitor to monitor its memory usage especially if LR has been opened for awhile. I suspect that what Marchyman has stated above, as he is a LR user, is correct. Edit: Have you asked at the Adobe forums, as it seems there have been lots of "problems" with LR and Catalina. Edited February 10, 2020 by wellfleet Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
marchyman Posted February 10, 2020 Share #13 Posted February 10, 2020 Swapouts are done whenever your computer does not have enough memory to bring the needed parts of the programs off of disk. The operating system will look at programs that are not currently active and copy the program state to to disk to make room. That takes time as disk writes are slow. Then there is another time hit when the program that was swapped out needs to run again. The OS needs to bring it back into memory, first. If you are still low on memory that can trigger another swap out. In a worst case situation your computer can spend all of its time swapping, trying to make room. Paging is the normal way that a computer brings parts of the program being run into memory. If your machine is swapping in normal use the addition of memory will make your machine faster. If your machine never swaps or only swaps when under extreme loads the addition of memory won't make much of a difference. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ELAN Posted February 10, 2020 Share #14 Posted February 10, 2020 12 hours ago, Alberti said: And yes after a reboot it is zero, but then let the machine sleep for some time, leave the Leica forum hibernating too, on and the next morning you see a safari message: 'the page was reloaded because it took too much memory.' And I see the lag again. Maybe I should switch from safari to firefox. The Leica Forum consumes significant resources on my 13” MBP with 16GB running Firefox on Catalina. Activity monitor often shows the Firefox process at 90% utilization and the machine gets hot even when sleeping. Close the Leica Forum tab and the machine soon returns to normal. I now do that on a regular basis. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andyturk Posted February 14, 2020 Share #15 Posted February 14, 2020 Catalina runs just fine on my machines, but they're both SSD based (i.e., no fusion drives). Earlier versions of the new APFS filesystem didn't work well with spinning disks and if they haven't fixed that, it may explain some of the slowness on your hardware. 8GB is not a lot of RAM these days. My 2013 laptop has twice that and my desktop (iMac Pro) has 128GB. Maybe time for a new machine? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
105012 Posted February 14, 2020 Share #16 Posted February 14, 2020 No problems on any of our 8 Mac's, some with Fusion drives. Min RAM is 16GB. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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