{"id":23511,"date":"2018-11-27T16:50:06","date_gmt":"2018-11-27T21:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=23511"},"modified":"2020-11-13T11:26:07","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T16:26:07","slug":"poor-mac-performance-without-a-ssd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/27\/poor-mac-performance-without-a-ssd\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor Mac Performance Without an SSD"},"content":{"rendered":"

cocobandicoot<\/a> (via Meek Geek<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

I took a screen recording<\/a> of how long it takes to open Safari on a brand new 5400 RPM iMac. Apple, this is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

My workplace purchased a fleet of 5400 RPM computers for some basic typing and Web browsing needs. Every single one of them is this way. Opening Microsoft Word literally took over a minute before the icon stopped bouncing in the Dock.<\/p>\n

Listen: I get it — I understand that some people don’t need top of the line computers. But regardless of who uses this computer, this is a poor user experience.<\/p>\n

I used to be able to tell friends that even a low-end Mac would be a good experience. That they could get a base model and it would still be decent. That Apple doesn’t sell a “bad” computer; rather, they have “good, better, best” tiers. That is not the case anymore.<\/p>\n

And this iMac isn’t even the base model! Insane.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I spent many years using Macs booted from hard drives, including a 4,200 RPM one in a MacBook Pro. You would think a modern iMac would be faster than that, both because of the CPU and because the larger capacity drives have a higher data density<\/a>. But it sure seems like macOS performs worse than it used to if you don’t have an SSD.<\/p>\n

Is this because there are more background processes that are accessing the disk? If so, is there anything that can be done about that? Within my apps, I try to limit concurrent operations on the same physical disk. You might think GCD would do something like this system-wide, but it doesn’t<\/a>.<\/p>\n

iMacs now use 2.5-inch notebook hard drives, presumably to make them thinner, but that doesn’t explain why Apple has chosen to use 5,400 RPM<\/a> models rather than 7,200.<\/p>\n

There are also software bottlenecks even on an SSD. Some customers have reported Mail on Mojave taking over a minute to launch, seemingly related to FSEvents monitoring a DataVault<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2018-11-27): Colin Cornaby<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It’s really frustrating when you boot Windows from the same Mac and it’s running pretty well with a slow disk<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2018-11-28): Jonathan Fischer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I bought a 2017 4K iMac a month or so after they launched, and I opted for the Fusion drive. It was miserable. My family complained, constantly. Finally swapped in an SSD last week and suddenly I’ve never used a faster computer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

nut_bunnies<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Guarantee the reason they don’t use 7200 rpm drives in the iMac is because it would be too loud for their standards. The terrible thermals in many of their computers are due to this, for example<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Tijmen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Sadly this has been the case since Mavericks I think. At that time we just had to upgrade our iMacs with SSDs as they became borderline unusable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2018-11-29): Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It’s ridiculous just how badly macOS performs on a spinning disk. It was unconscionable to ship a product that performs this badly five years ago, never mind in 2018, yet the iMac line still comes with spinning disks by default<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2018-12-03): Eric Schwarz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

A family member’s 2012 Mac mini (8GB RAM and an i7) was painfully slow and replacing the hard drive with an SSD restored its performance to like-new (or better). The fleet of 2015-era iMacs at work have also gotten really awful, mirroring what others have said in the linked stories, so they’re getting SSD upgrades, as well.<\/p>\n

Apple moving to an all-SSD future is completely reasonable, but making machines that are new or still under their factory warranty run worse than they should seems like a bad look, even if MacBooks are way more popular. It’s especially concerning when other operating systems appear to be fine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

cocobandicoot (via Meek Geek): I took a screen recording of how long it takes to open Safari on a brand new 5400 RPM iMac. Apple, this is ridiculous. My workplace purchased a fleet of 5400 RPM computers for some basic typing and Web browsing needs. Every single one of them is this way. Opening Microsoft […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2018-11-27T21:50:08Z","apple_news_api_id":"ec348606-7b82-4b53-b924-c8aa12c0a89c","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-11-13T16:26:12Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A7DSGBnuCS1O5JMiqEsConA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[126,217,880,1297,30,1609,103,183,174,1942,1227],"class_list":["post-23511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-applemail","tag-fsevents","tag-grand-central-dispatch-gcd","tag-imac","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-14","tag-safari","tag-ssd","tag-storage","tag-thermal","tag-top-posts"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23511"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30673,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23511\/revisions\/30673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}