Mac problems?

[B2L]

So I've had my Macbook Pro for somewhere around a month now. But I have had some extreme lag problems. Problems that I think probably shouldn't be happening with the specs I have.

Specs:
2.2 GHZ Quadcore i7
4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
750GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1Gb DDR5 Graphics memory

Yesterday I was doing some very minimal work with Adobe Flash CS5, which seemed to show a ton of problems. Doing simple scrolling in flash would lag quite a bit. It will let me do a small amount of work, and then I get the little rainbow wheel that spins saying it's working or whatever. My Fiance has a laptop that's a few years old with alright specs, and it doesn't even lag as much as my Macbook Pro does, doing the same actions with Flash CS5. (Her laptop has a dual core AMD with 2GB of ram.)

Does anyone have tips? Should I get a replacement? or is there an easy fix for this? It seems to struggle with some of the easiest tasks that I give it. I've searched all over various Mac forums, and support areas and found nothing. I know quite a bit about PC's, and relatively nothing about Macs. This whole situation is just frustrating me. :/

 

[johnlgalt]

Check for an ATI driver update for Mac....

 

[B2L]

Check for an ATI driver update for Mac....

I'll have to do that when I get home. Hopefully it will work, I didn't even think of that.

 

[johnlgalt]

hat was just a random thought from me, it may or may not work. let us know either way.

 

[alostpacket]

^it's a good educated guess -- Adobe has had a hell of a time trying to get 3D acceleration working on Macs because Apple wouldn't release the native APIs -- but most of that has been updated over the past two years, so the apps are slowly coming together performance-wise.

This of course always makes me chuckle a bit though when people say Macs are great for graphics work....

....uh


Also, I dont know how much you use smart objects, but they KILL performance. Flash's "symbols" do not harm performance at all in comparison.

 

[alostpacket]

Oh, and the spinning wheel of colorful anger is pretty normal in OSX Photoshop, so I dont think it's the Mac, but rather the Mac + PS.

Also if you could post a bit more about what actions you're taking, might help isolate the ones that really arent optimized all that well

 

[saywat?]

repair hard drive permissions. or best solution is reinstall everything fresh. also check hd make sure it doesnt have any hardware problems

 

[AngelArs]

It will let me do a small amount of work, and then I get the little rainbow wheel that spins saying it's working or whatever.

This is called the 'beach ball' and it pops up whenever the memory is being stressed. All Macs will see it from time to time, HOWEVER if it's on your screen for longer than a minute then you might want to look closer at your memory. Either you don't have enough, it's going bad, the contacts are dirty, or it's just poor memory but something is up with the memory. Adobe programs require a lot of it so I'm not surprised you're seeing the beach ball, the real question is for how long. I always max out my Macs with Mushkin as they make a lot of OEM memory for Macs, and I have never had any memory related issues. I can't remember the last time I saw the beach ball. You can do a memory stress test but just make sure you do it overnight for real accuracy. It should be included on your OS X disc

 

[!on]

repair hard drive permissions. or best solution is reinstall everything fresh. also check hd make sure it doesnt have any hardware problems

Onyx is good for that. It will verify your disk then you can configure it how you like it (scheduled cleaning, hidden features...). I run it manually every month or so & tell it to clean everything.

 

[B2L]

^it's a good educated guess -- Adobe has had a hell of a time trying to get 3D acceleration working on Macs because Apple wouldn't release the native APIs -- but most of that has been updated over the past two years, so the apps are slowly coming together performance-wise.

This of course always makes me chuckle a bit though when people say Macs are great for graphics work....

....uh


Also, I dont know how much you use smart objects, but they KILL performance. Flash's "symbols" do not harm performance at all in comparison.

I can't believe I haven't even glanced at this thread in a while. You fixed my problem, I removed the smart objects and now it runs smooth like butter. I added quite a few when I first got my Mac, and had no idea. Lol.

Also @AngelArs no disk was included with my Macbook Pro. (They stopped doing it with the 2011 models.) But I will do a memory stress test just in case.

 

[johnlgalt]

Thanks for coming back, checking for and trying out the solutions, and then reporting your results back.