Strange Performance Issues With New Macbook Pro

Hi All:

I recently bought the new Macbook Pro.

Long story short, I have been having some odd performance hiccups for a new computer that I considered pretty top of the line at the time of purchase. I don't see anything unusual happening in activity monitor, and I usually have at least 4 GB of RAM remaining.

Are the issues that are happening (I list them below) to be expected of with new hardware running a new OS? Are they just to be expected of with computers in general (I remember growing up no matter how much money my Dad spent on a computer it would always BSOD)? Am I just running into software / developer issues, related to the code they wrote and not my machine?

I know I'm kind of all over the place here, but just curious what other people's experience has been with the new MBP.


Things that are happening:

• When I go to adjust certain settings in System Settings, the Macbook will freeze for 45-60 seconds with the spinning beachball
• When I switched user accounts earlier today, the system froze on a black screen. I had to manually power down the computer
• Various apps freezing, crashing, or losing major functionality. This actually does not happen too often, but I've seen it with Omnifocus, Calendar, 1Password, Evernote, and Postbox.
• Other odd annoying things that I'm frustrated I can't remember as I type this but I certainly remember feeling emotionally!

Things you should know about my computer:

• I try to limit my browser tabs, I never have more than 10 or so open.
• I do have a ton of menubar apps open (10-15 in addition to system defaults), as I love the little mini-functionality they provide. Things like copy-em paste, flux, bettertouchtool, myspeed, etc.
• I occasionally will have WebStorm IDE open, but that's the only developing that's going on on my machine

Here are my specs:

• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016)
• 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
• 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3
• 500 GB SSD

Thanks all for any suggestions you might have. If you'd like to see any other stats, please let me know.

Are you, by chance running any antivirus software in that suite? Have you let Spotlight finish the indexing of the drive it needs to do? (That can take a few hours, and only runs when the system is idle, but can slow things down if it's busy when you want the machine.) How many things in startup? The more you load it down, the harder it has to work and the more likely that two of them will collide. Try creating a new user and not have ANY startups in that account and see if it runs faster there. Also, with 1Password, Evernote and others, the internet speed is critical as they all try to keep every device in sync.

That's a top of the line 2016 MacBook Pro which definitely should be performing better than what you describe, spotlight or no spotlight indexing. If you are within your two weeks of purchase, you might want to pay a visit to your local Apple Store there in Austin and have them look at it. If there is a problem with it, they can exchange it for a new one on the spot. Make sure you have a current backup before taking it on in.

MacInWin said:

Are you, by chance running any antivirus software in that suite? Have you let Spotlight finish the indexing of the drive it needs to do? (That can take a few hours, and only runs when the system is idle, but can slow things down if it's busy when you want the machine.) How many things in startup? The more you load it down, the harder it has to work and the more likely that two of them will collide. Try creating a new user and not have ANY startups in that account and see if it runs faster there. Also, with 1Password, Evernote and others, the internet speed is critical as they all try to keep every device in sync.

Click to expand...

**Great example of slow performance. When I went to System Preferences to check my 'startup on login' programs to write the below answer, I clicked on "Login Items" and the tab turned then stayed gray. I wait 7 seconds, then clicked around to no response. About 20 seconds later from the original click, it switched me over to what I wanted to look at.

0. I want to also add I'm not running FileVault
1. Not running any antivirus software
2. Spotlight has finished indexing (computer was purchased 6 weeks ago)
3. Creating a new, clean user was a great "control group" suggestion. I''ll try that out later tonight!
4a. This seems to happen mostly at home, but then again I spend most of my time there and only go into the office occasionally. At home I have really fast internet though: 220 Mbps running off of Apple Time Capsule on the 5 Ghz network.
4b. I work for a large software company with a very unforgiving network security policy / slow VPN. I'll be on the lookout for if things are happening more at the office, which does have a bad network, now that you mention it.

OK, but if it doesn't run faster in that new account, it's only 6 weeks old, I'd go back to the Apple store like chscag suggested and get them to take a look.

Ok I'm being bold by posting this so quickly after only a small amount of testing, but I think I found the fix.

For background I should say I don't have a new Mac per-se. I've been using the same "Mac" since July 2012 in the sense that two times I've upgraded (meaning I'm on my 3rd Mac now) I've always started from the previous Mac's Time Machine backup.

Maybe this makes no difference to what I am about to say, but this, along with my very strong desire to not have to take this thing to the Apple Store, inspired me to **dig just a little bit deeper** on Google and find something you all probably have known about forever: https://yasuformac.com/.

I ran this, clearing out a variety of system caches (particularly the font cache which I've heard terrible things about). I restarted the computer. Afterwards, the easiest way for me to test for issues was just to click around System Preferences. The performance was super snappy and what I originally expected when I bought this device.

I could be posting prematurely, and it would probably be ironic and weirdly-deserved if my computer bricks in the next 5 minutes, but I will make to post back here if the performance degrades again to close the loop!

Given that change, I would recommend you get Onyx from www.titanium.free.fr and run the cleaning process it has. Leave the defaults the developer has set, they are the best and safest settings. Make sure you get the right version for your version of the OS. The software is free and well recommended here. It tests, cleans and, in general, takes care of your Mac really well.

You'll have to get around Gatekeeper to install and run it the first time. If that is a challenge, come back and we can walk you through it.