Slow Mac

[MMFrank]

My Mac (desktop) was running slow. When I took it into the Apple store the clerk told me I had too many apps running. My activity monitor shows my CPU is 90% idle. What am I missing?

 

[chscag]

Welcome to our forums.

We would like to answer your question but first, please supply some info about your Mac:

Year and model?

Version of macOS?

Apple Stores are closed. When did you take in and what tests did the genius bar run?

 

[Randy B. Singer]

My Mac (desktop) was running slow. When I took it into the Apple store the clerk told me I had too many apps running. My activity monitor shows my CPU is 90% idle. What am I missing?

Well, CPU time and RAM usage are two different things.

So if, for instance, you had, say, 8GB of RAM, and you had 10 applications open, and they all took up 7.8GB of RAM while all open, but nine of the applications were idle, your Mac would still run like a dog even though not much CPU time was being used.

Applications, and even the Finder, need available RAM to operate well. Your Mac might hit your hard drive to use it instead of real RAM (as virtual memory), but your hard drive, even if it is an SSD, is significantly and noticeably slower than using real RAM.

Unless you have a lot of RAM installed in your Mac, it's usually a good idea to quit any applications that you aren't currently using and that you don't need to switch to quickly. This will provide the maximum available free RAM and preserve performance.

 

[MMFrank]

Welcome to our forums.

We would like to answer your question but first, please supply some info about your Mac:

Year and model?

Version of macOS?

Apple Stores are closed. When did you take in and what tests did the genius bar run?

Thanks for taking a look at my post! I don't know which model I have but it is a "Late 2013" desktop. Catalina 10.15.4 with a 2.7 GHz processor. It was running very slowly so I took it in to the Apple store. The tech looked around and said he closed a bunch of programs (?) and it worked well again. I took it in just as the Corona virus was hitting my state. I was likely the last customer they had before shutting down. The only programs I like to leave open are Safari and Excel for Mac. I use both of them often and if I close them down they take a long time to reopen. The tech said that of all the iMacs my model had the most problematic processor. I was prepared to buy a new computer and he was prepared to sell me one so I took his criticism with a grain of salt. Another reply to my question gets into RAM vs CPU. I don't know much about either one but will be doing some research. Thanks again!

 

[MMFrank]

Thanks for taking a look at my question. Not being very knowledgeable about computers I'm grateful for any input! I may be looking at the wrong information but my activity monitor shows I have 8.00 GB or physical memory, 6.27 GB Memory Used, 1.71 Cached Files and 270.0 MB Swap Used. The memory used indicator shows about 1/3 being used. Are these good numbers?

 

[Raz0rEdge]

If those were the answers the Genius at the Apple Store gave you, they are far from being a genius it seems since the answers were nonsensical. Very akin to a shady used car salesman trying to take advantage of a novice by selling them something they don't need.

Anyway, click on the Apple icon on the top left of your screen and choose About this Mac. A dialog will appear showing the basic specs of your machine, if you can take a screenshot and paste it here, do so. If not, just enter the information you see on the first tab. Then click on the Storage tab and tell us what is says for your Macintosh HD, it should say "XXX available of XXX GB".

Next, launch Activity Monitor, and select the CPU tab. Now click on the % CPU header to sort the apps on the ones using the most CPU. Take note of the System, User, Idle values below. If, as you stated earlier, the Idle is at or above 90%, then your system is largely sitting waiting to do work. Now jump over to the Memory tab and the Physical memory is how much total memory you have, Memory Used is what's been used up from your applications. There should be a breakdown of App, Wired and Compressed associated with that. Wired memory is basically memory that locked down and cannot be reused. App memory is memory in flux that can move between applications and Compressed is what was recently used but not currently in use but could be used again, so it's compressed ad saved away.

Swap is amount of time the system has run out of memory and has needed to make space by copying stuff out of memory to the HD. The lower the number, the better. You are doing well with 270MB of that.

If the Memory Pressure is less than half the chart, you are doing good there as well.

Now, tell us if the slowdown exists immediately after a restart? Also, besides Safari and Excel what other apps are normally running?

 

[JohnCL]

Late '13 model running Catalina leads me to believe that it is running a spinner. Tell us about your hard drive, if an old school spinner is installed while running Catalina it is like running in mud. ;D

 

[chscag]

I agree with John. If he's running a spinner and upgraded to Catalina, that means his hard drive is formatted to APFS which actually slows down normal hard drives. APFS is designed for SSDs.

 

[MMFrank]

Okay, so what is a "spinner"?

 

[chscag]

A "spinner" is a standard hard drive that rotates and has heads which seek out data. A SSD is a solid state device and does not rotate nor does it have heads to seek out data. As I stated above, the new file system by Apple, ie: APFS was designed for solid state drives not standard ones.

However, whenever the upgrade to Mojave takes place, the drive is automatically formatted to APFS causing older spinning drives to actually slow down. The same takes place when upgrading to Catalina from an older version of macOS. We think that may be what is slowing your iMac down.

 

[MMFrank]

Thank you! While I'm not an expert and don't know a lot, it makes sense. The tech at the Apple store was showing me the solid state drive and it was much faster opening programs. Now I know why. I'm glad I stumbled on this forum and joined it. It's like taking a class!