Newly Purchased 13" MBP slower than molasses

[PLUMMER]

Hello all,

Few questions on our apple gear.

1. 13" MBP purchased from apple online in july, but first turned on 3 weeks ago. (it says late 2012 build, why??? i don't know, would think there would be a 2015 build around) Anyways it Runs slower than my 1984 MSDOS high school computer. currently using an Airport Extreme Time Capsule on WOW provided internet. There is an ASUS modem then the apple router. Is the wow asus modem even necessary? On the "check my speed test 14.97-15.06 MBPS dwnld. and 1-2mbps upload.

Besides the speed issues, this new MBP is having lots of delay problems even offline. click here and wait 10 minutes,... numerous windows not opening after wake up or opening after being closed days ago. Been to the apple store and things check out at genius bar...

el captain, 2.5 i5, 4gb ram, 500gb HD, intel 4000 grafix card, so a very basic cheap unit. However our 2008 15"MBP is 1000000 times faster and working fine. Its been trouble since the first turn on. Just a few apps like iWork and i movie. nothing else. wow speed is 15 mbps, but we rarely see 2mbps dwlds actual speed . only been trying to download updates for 2 weeks now. seems each time the screen goes to sleep, the update or download stops.

thanks

 

[chscag]

The machine you purchased new is actually the same machine that Apple sold in late 2012 which is the only remaining non retina MacBook Pro that has an optical drive and is fully upgradeable. Even though you purchased it in 2015, the "About this Mac" will show it as a late 2012. That's normal.

As to the slowness problems, the connection speeds are going to depend on your ISP and the network. I don't know anything about the WOW internet you're using, but you can always check connection speed problems by using another network. Go to Starbucks, Panera, McDonald's, etc, and check the speeds. If you've been to the genius bar and everything checks out, it must be something at your end which is causing the slowdowns.

 

[lclev]

... currently using an Airport Extreme Time Capsule on WOW provided internet. There is an ASUS modem then the apple router. Is the wow asus modem even necessary? On the "check my speed test 14.97-15.06 MBPS dwnld. and 1-2mbps upload.

Besides the speed issues, this new MBP is having lots of delay problems even offline. click here and wait 10 minutes,... numerous windows not opening after wake up or opening after being closed days ago. Been to the apple store and things check out at genius bar...

el captain, 2.5 i5, 4gb ram, 500gb HD, intel 4000 grafix card, so a very basic cheap unit. However our 2008 15"MBP is 1000000 times faster and working fine. Its been trouble since the first turn on. Just a few apps like iWork and i movie. nothing else. wow speed is 15 mbps, but we rarely see 2mbps dwlds actual speed . only been trying to download updates for 2 weeks now. seems each time the screen goes to sleep, the update or download stops.

First - as to the asus modem - yes you will need it if that is what you need to access your provider's internet service. If there is another modem box for your provider's service then chances are you do not but since you call it a modem I am betting you need it. The TC will handle DHCP, wired and wireless access to the modem for accessing the internet. Are there any other computers using your wireless at home and can they get the 15Mbps speed or are they having issues too?

You say you are running El Capitan. Is that 10.11.1 so that it is up to date? Has it always been slow or has this developed over time? If it is behaving that badly were you unable to reproduce the issues when you visited the genius bar?

While you did not get a really beefy machine it should be performing better than you say. Of course 8GB of memory and an SSD would have really increased the performance.

Lisa

 

[hempomatic]

You have other machines listed that have 8 gig of RAM. That could very well be the difference between the machines. I have basically the same computer, and with 4 gig of RAM it was very slow. Since you have El Capitan, there is a great tool in the Activity monitor. Click on the memory tab. There is a graph that indicates memory pressure. You can also see how much memory is actually being used as well as the swap file size. If the graph is all green and the swap file size is small, you should be OK. Once I ran more than 1 app and had more than 1 or two tabs open, the graph went from tan to red and the swap file size increased 4 or 5 times. If I rebooted the computer and turned off all apps, the memory pressure graph was in the green. Opening up an app, it went to tan, another app, into red.

I installed 16 gig of RAM and now it's like a new machine, significantly faster than it's EVER been and I can run multiples apps at the same time with no degradation in performance. I'm a happy camper.

If the genius bar gave it a clean bill of health, that would be my recently educated guess.

ken

 

[lclev]

I know 4GB is the bare minimum of memory and 8GB is better but I still can't see that as being a problem with the OP's new MB Pro. I just did a little unscientific experiment with my Macbook Air 2013, 4GB, 256 SSD. I opened Photoshop CS6 and a RAW photo, Indesign with a simple pamphlet, Excel and a simple spreadsheet, Word with a 4 page document, Inssider wifi monitoring app, iMovie with a small video project, my calendar and contacts, Voila to take a screen shot of my Activity Monitor, iTunes, Photos, and I used Team Viewer to remote into my work editor to work on a project in Premiere Pro.

My MB Air, with all that, is still responding quickly with no beach balls opening each app in seconds and hopping between each quickly. Yes, the SSD makes a big difference. But I still say something is wrong with the OP's new MB Pro. I am voting for a bad hard drive or logic board issues not leaving out the possibility of an app issue. But if it were mine, I would do a fresh install of OS X, see if things improved and if not - park my cute little back side at the local genius bar and show them what it is doing.

Lisa

 

[PLUMMER]

Thanks so much for the quick replies.

YES!!!! Theres lots of beach balls.....with just safari or just one application and one window open. Memory shows only 1 to 9% being used at anytime. when there are problems. i can say without question this is not normal apple performance. I am just surprised that it doesn't work as supremely excellent as every apple device I've used.
Currently downloading el captain again for a new install (on day 6 of downloading it). it is up to date. Wow is just like comcast in our area if that helps for an idea of service provider. but theres still problems offline or on. Our older MBP with the SSD and 8MBram with much older processor is blazing fast , no issues until heavy wifi use. ( downloading just el capitan bring all devices to a crawl, yet only the new MBP has beach balls or weird windows opening ) genius bar was NOT an impressive visit. they do get busy and murphies law might have followed us there too.

we are wondering now if we may regret this purchase, for a more upgradable MBP. We have faith APPLE support and this forum will resolve anything we have as always.

well ^up arrow command and 3 or 4 will not give me a screen shot of monitor or anything. we are not the computer savvy types. sorry..on my list

Is there a reason , why "my wife name" and "BigBrother" are the names on most of the items running? Big Brother is a new one as of today. Usually its just wifes name and apple.

 

[chas_m]

I own the actual made-in-2012 version of that machine, and was not unhappy with it from the get-go. I only recently replaced the HDs with SSDs (obviously this makes a big difference in day-to-day speed) and I upped the RAM a while back to 16GB. It's incredibly "snappy" and I continue to be pleased with it.

One thing you could check out is to make a new "clean" admin-level account on your machine (or simply use the "guest" account that's built-in) and see if the machine's responsiveness improves significantly when that is invoked. If so, that would tell us that there's something in your user account setup that's stealing what Windows people would call "resources" from your normal operation.

If there's an Apple Store near you, you should definitely bring it in for a "checkup" after doing the test I described above if that doesn't show a clear path to a resolution.

 

[dtravis7]

For a Screen shot, COMMAND+SHIFT+3 to do the whole screen or COMMAND+SHIFT+4 to select the area to take the screen shot of.

 

[lclev]

I am lost as to what you mean by "Big Brother". Since you plan a re-install that will clear up any potential app problems. I do like what chas_m suggested. Create a new admin account and see if it runs better.

Lisa

 

[pm-r]

Besides trying a new admin "test user", maybe also add in and try a Safe Boot and see, and how up to date are the Internet peripherals as they may be bottlenecking a newer Mac for connection/speed which wouldn't always affect the older Mac as much, if at all.

 

[Rod]

There is something seriously wrong with the either the RAM, processor or user account for a new MBP exactly the same as I am writing this on now to behave that way. Lisa's experiment gets the same results here on my MBP with 4Gb RAM in El Capitan. The Test User idea should rule out software issues that leaves taking it back to Apple as the only other alternative. The screen shot is Command key, plus Shift key, Plus 3 or 4 key at the same time. Command shift 3 will give the whole screen (you will hear a "camera" click). Command shift 4 will give you cross hairs for a cursor, left click, hold, drag to size and release to capture a section of the screen. They will by default all end up on your desktop.

 

[S.SubZero]

OS X has become increasingly burdened on HDD-equipped units. Apple is really designing it to perform well on their bread and butter units, which are all solid state storage or at least Fusion drives.

 

[Rod]

OS X has become increasingly burdened on HDD-equipped units. Apple is really designing it to perform well on their bread and butter units, which are all solid state storage or at least Fusion drives.

I fail to see how that is relevant to this OP's problem. As discussed it is operating well below par for a brand new device that is proven entirely caperble of running OS X 10.11.