Why does macOS slow down with newer versions?

[bearinthetown]

I'd like it to be a kind discussion. I'm expecting this, but saying just in case.

I have an unpopular and perhaps a little controversial opinion that Apple makes old devices obsolete on purpose. Most people I talk about with about this disagree. Most people think that adding features to software makes it slower. I'm a programmer myself and I know this is not the case. Unless this feature works in the background, it has no impact on performance whatsoever.

It's the same with iOS. When we install new versions, our hardware "naturally" becomes more and more obsolete. Or does it not? What is exactly happening in these new versions that use more resources all the time? I remember that before this "battery saving" (yeah, right) scandal blew up, every iOS version made home screen slower on older iPhones. I've been super suspicious about this, because making UI smooth is easy even in resource-hungry environment. It's just the matter of thread priority and Apple clearly didn't want to do this. And even that's assuming that something else used most resources of older iPhones, which I'm quite sure is not the case at all. Luckily, after the scandal they stopped it and now even a few years old iPhones are smooth on home screens.

I opened this topic as macOS thread, as I'm expecting more professionals here than in the iOS thread.

I feel like there are some thinking pattern traps that allow this to happen. One day I realized that it works like that with any software update. Once it's new and branded as "stability improvements", we feel like our software is super stable. Until there's next one - before we install that one, we feel like our previous one is no longer stable and we have bad quality software. But our software never changed! It's not like it got less stable over time. I hope you guys understand my point, because this shows the thinking patterns about hardware too. Many software requirements don't change, because this software remains the same, yet we are always pressured to replace our hardware, because if the new one is released, our becomes "obsolete". This is insane if you think about it. My favorite example are MacBooks, especially the jump from Intel to Apple Silicon. 16" Intel used to be considered a monster, until Apple Silicon came and 16" Intel became instantly "slow", even though the software we use was still the same.

Is anyone with me on that?

 

[LeeW]

Show us some evidence to back up the claim. Don't get me wrong, we all know they have done it on other devices in the past but on macOS devices? Not seen any evidence to support that.

 

[bearinthetown]

Show us some evidence to back up the claim. Don't get me wrong, we all know they have done it on other devices in the past but on macOS devices? Not seen any evidence to support that.

My evidence is my programming knowledge and my experience with Apple devices. My MacBook Air 2018 got significantly slower version by version. I hear complaints even from i9 owners. And it's been a decline even before Apple Silicon was a thing.

 

[LeeW]

My evidence is my programming knowledge and my experience with Apple devices.

Oh, well, in that case, a programmer of 25 years, a Linux server admin for 20 years, and a user of Apple devices for 23 years here. I have seen no meaningful slowdowns on my devices over the years.

Not being flippant but your evidence is your experience, my evidence is my experience and we are getting nowhere without something to support/prove the theory.

Now that said, older intel devices I suspect will start to show signs of slower operation. Apple is all in now on its own silicon. How much love are they giving to older devices do you think when it comes to optimizing newer versions of macOS for those devices? Little to none I suspect.

So what people are probably seeing is some slowing of devices due to that but for those that are using any newer Mx devices, it will look worse side by side.

Are they intentionally slowing older macOS devices? I doubt it, but they are not putting the effort into keeping them optimal. Is that the same thing as intentionally slowing them down? Perhaps.

 

[bearinthetown]

@LeeW if it's true that you don't notice the slowdown probably means that you have slower perception, many people do. Many users don't see the difference between 60 Hz and 120 Hz. When Apple slowed down iPhones to "save the battery" many people denied that as well. I just learned the hard way that our perceptions differ. A lot. I notice huge slowdowns.

 

[LeeW]

that you have slower perception

Ah, being disrespectful won't win you any prizes.

/u

 

[dmr727]

My current MBA replaced a 2015 MBP, and the decision to replace the MBP occurred after upgrading from Catalina to Big Sur. It was the first time my machine ever felt 'slow'. Of course I could've gone back to Catalina, but instead decided a little retail therapy was in order and jumped on the Apple Silicon bandwagon. Not sure if the bloat is intentional to get guys like me to upgrade, but I'm sure there's not a lot of pressure at Apple to spend time and money making the code more efficient.

Not that any of this is new - I lamented how much slower System 7 was on my Dad's IIcx than System 6.

 

[bearinthetown]

Ah, being disrespectful won't win you any prizes.

/u

I didn't mean to be disrespectful. Do you notice the difference between 60 Hz and 120 Hz?

 

[AlixSPQR]

I have had a Late 2012 Mac mini starting with Mac OS X Mountain Lion and it is now running macOS Monterey with the help of OCLP. I have put it through Geekbench several times during the last ten years and it scores basically the same. I do not notice any lag with recent version of macOS running either. The startup time is somewhat longer in recent years, but I believe this to be expanded start up security meaures. The only thing which can differentiate compared to other users' experience is that my mini has an i7 CPU, which is still quite capable.

 

[prefuse07]

Sorry OP but you have no idea what you are talking about.

Evidence to the contrary can be obtained by you looking within the Mac Pro forum. There are thousands of users using "unsupported" (meaning the machines are no longer officially supported by apple) versions of Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina (and even some users successfully running Ventura) extremely well on older hardware machines. There are even users running the same on Mac Minis, iMacs, Macbooks and Macbook Pros with the same success rate.

I myself was running Monterey 12.6.4 very fluidly on my 2009 Mac Pro before I upgraded to my 7,1.

Maybe iPhones and other iCrap devices get slowed down with iOS, but macOS does not.

This thread should be either renamed to reference iOS or closed out completely.

macOS DOES NOT slow down devices.

And in case you are confused: macOS != iOS

 

[bearinthetown]

Sorry OP but you have no idea what you are talking about.

Evidence to the contrary can be obtained by you looking within the Mac Pro forum. There are thousands of users using "unsupported" (meaning the machines are no longer officially supported by apple) versions of Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina (and even some users successfully running Ventura) extremely well on older hardware machines. There are even users running the same on Mac Minis, iMacs, Macbooks and Macbook Pros with the same success rate.

I myself was running Monterey 12.6.4 very fluidly on my 2009 Mac Pro before I upgraded to my 7,1.

Maybe iPhones and other iCrap devices get slowed down with iOS, but macOS does not.

This thread should be either renamed to reference iOS or closed out completely.

macOS DOES NOT slow down devices.

I asked for kind conversation in the first paragraph. You put it as if I was saying some random falsehood, yet there are countless examples of people experiencing slowdowns. If not, why would people replace hardware that was good in, let's say 2015, to another one in 2018, when software still requires the same resources or slightly more?

For me, even Finder works slower with every new macOS version.

 

[Nermal]

From version to version there's not likely to be much/any noticeable difference, but things get a bit different when you start stretching out over multiple years. Taking this to an extreme, I have a 23-year-old iMac with OS 10.3, as well as a Late 2014 Mini with 12.6 and an SSD. The 2014 Minis were infamous for being slow, but in absolute terms are certain to be much, much faster than a 333 MHz iMac. Despite that, the iMac is noticeably more responsive than the Mini when e.g. opening bundled apps, navigating through Finder or working with TextEdit.

Yes, this is almost comparing apples with oranges, but you'd expect the 2014 machine to be faster than the 2000 one. I'm sure if it were possible to install 10.3 on the Mini then it'd zoom.

 

[GMShadow]

My current MBA replaced a 2015 MBP, and the decision to replace the MBP occurred after upgrading from Catalina to Big Sur. It was the first time my machine ever felt 'slow'. Of course I could've gone back to Catalina, but instead decided a little retail therapy was in order and jumped on the Apple Silicon bandwagon. Not sure if the bloat is intentional to get guys like me to upgrade, but I'm sure there's not a lot of pressure at Apple to spend time and money making the code more efficient.

Not that any of this is new - I lamented how much slower System 7 was on my Dad's IIcx than System 6.

Honestly, I think macOS's better leveraging of multiple cores may be partly to blame here. Even if you were replacing a 15" you still only had a quad core, and 4th gen Intel at that. I've got a 2013 13" I use for light stuff (on Big Sur), and man do I notice it's only a dual core when I start to push it - while my two six-core Intel Macs (9th and 10th gen) still keep up with Ventura just fine.

Building on that, Apple is better than most at avoiding "works on my (seriously overpowered) machine!" but I do think they have internal metrics for how much effort can be put into improving performance on older hardware - something on the trailing edge probably isn't assigned much engineering resources. The tradeoff of free OSes, I suppose.

 

[prefuse07]

I asked for kind conversation in the first paragraph. You put it as if I was saying some random falsehood, yet there are countless examples of people experiencing slowdowns. If not, why would people replace hardware that was good in, let's say 2015, to another one in 2018, when software still requires the same resources or slightly more?

People replace their hardware because of apple's forced-obsolescence-forced-upgrade policy where machines become "unsupported" (again, meaning apple no longer officially supports it) after a set number of years, and they don't want to lose support, or learn how to "hack" their machines to continue to use newer macOS, so they buy new machines. I am surprised you are just now learning about this. Would've though this was long-standing common knowledge by now, especially among devs/programmers such as yourself.

Look at how many devices have been dropped from support on Ventura:

^^^Those are all very capable machines, with one caveat -- they don't support AVX2 instructions, which is a requirement for Ventura.

Now look at what remains as supported on Ventura:

By thinning the herd -- apple is able to push out more new machines and continue to drive profits.

As I mentioned in my previous post -- there are THOUSANDS of users successfully running modern macOS on older hardware without any issues. iOS on the other hand is a different story.

Let me ask you this -- what machine(s) are you running that are experiencing slowdowns?

For me, even Finder works slower with every new macOS version.

I do agree that macOS is far from perfect (and it used to be way better before Timmy became CEO). It does have bugs here and there, and apple has been focusing on bringing more fluff instead of making things more solid lately, but in my experience, that's due to poor programming and rushing to put something out and not apple "intentionally slowing down old machines" the same way that they do with iDevices and iOS.

I have an unpopular and perhaps a little controversial opinion that Apple makes old devices obsolete on purpose.

I strongly agree that your point above applies to iDevices and iOS -- because those devices are what generate the most $$$ for apple, so they need to keep pumping them out, and also keep pushing people to buy them (which should be illegal really). Hence the forced-obsolescence-forced-upgrade BS. However, they don't make nearly as much profit from computers, so it's not the same with macOS

Remember, macOS != iOS.

 

[orionquest]

I recently upgraded to Monterey from Mojave, and I've noticed some slower preformace. I think it's tied to the extra security Apple has implemented. You can feel or see the OS do little pausing here or there, mostly around disk or location access. Otherwise programs themselves seem to perform the same as before.

 

[rappr]

New features every year don't come for free. The operating system will slow down as new capabilities are added over time. Why not go back to MacOS updates every two or three years? Partially because non-yearly MacOS updates was one of the things used by the blogs as evidence of the "Apple doesn't care about the Mac" narrative from a few years ago.

 

[Choco Taco]

I agree that it's noticeable OP because I have functioning eyeballs and reactionary senses. Planned obsolescence is not some new concept with Apple. Whether it's intentional (and sometimes it is) or it's just the operating system becoming more demanding based on current needs of the operating system (and people) is the issue. But Apple has literally been caught red-handed throttling older hardware.

 

[ricketysquire]

I think part of it is that, there's not much of an incentive to push out good code/features when you can push out an update and fix it after the fact. Back in the day when internet speeds were slower and/or access was non-existent, software had to be a bit more polished. For example, if you coded an NES game it had to be fairly bug free, as over the air updates were non existent and creating new cartridges weren't cheap.

 

[bearinthetown]

New features every year don't come for free. The operating system will slow down as new capabilities are added over time. Why not go back to MacOS updates every two or three years? Partially because non-yearly MacOS updates was one of the things used by the blogs as evidence of the "Apple doesn't care about the Mac" narrative from a few years ago.

This is not true. Like I said in my post, new features do not slow down the system, unless they are services running in the background.

 

[Siliconguy]

Now that said, older intel devices I suspect will start to show signs of slower operation.

Graphics. The CPU is still fast enough, but, as an example, the Hd 4000 graphics on a 2012 mini is not up to the HD 5000 of the low end 2014 mini, or even more so the Iris graphics of the better 2014 mini.

The Stock 2010 Mac Pro needed a better graphics card to run Metal to upgrade to Mohave. People tricked it into running Mohave without a Metal GPU, but the results were not good. With a Metal GPU and OCLP I got Monterey going quite well, but it still lagged at times, then I found out the drive bays were only SATA 2. Install a PCI NVME card and now it flies. Six cores at 3.33 GHz is still enough.

So it's not the just the CPU, it's the increasing demands the graphics and storage systems are pushing on the system. The 2012 and the 2014 minis have basically the same processor, I-5 at 2.5 GHz or so. The difference in performance was noticeable even in Catalina.

And it's not just Mac OS, the 2012 is notably faster running Mint XFCE vs Cinnamon. Simpler desktop, more perceived speed.

PS, I like the new version of XFCE.

 

[Siliconguy]

Ah, being disrespectful won't win you any prizes.

/u

It's not being disrespectful. Some people can see the flicker of fluorescent lights, I can't. I used to be able to hear a 16 KHz tone, but not any more. Some people get seasick. I did once, when I was already sick with some Aussie bug from Perth. The rest of the time I was fine. People are not identical.

I doubt I can see the difference at 120 Hz refresh either, but I haven't had the chance to try.

 

[thefourthpope]

I notice that when I first get a machine I am overwhelmed by the feeling of speed and polish. The more I use it, the more that feeling wears off. I am no longer “wowed” at how fast apps load on my m2. In fact, I’m now actually impatient if an app icon bounces twice before loading. I could probably articulate that as feeling like my machine is now slower at some tasks.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, OP. I’m joining others in saying that relying on perception is a dodgy metric.

 

[winxmac]

iOS 9 made iPhone 4s barely usable... Apple should have let it stayed on iOS 8

I recently purchased a pre-owned 15 inch MacBook Pro 2015 16 GB RAM 1 TB storage Intel Core i7 2.8 GHz with no discrete graphics... When I attempted to restore the version that it came with, it defaults to High Sierra but it can go up to Monterey...

I decided to have it on Catalina... Because of my experience with newer iOS on older hardware, I decided to keep it on the 3rd version that it supports since I have 5 choices for macOS on this hardware...

 

[Warped9]

Never experienced slowdowns with any of my updates.

And I don’t have slower perception.

 

[iMattPro]

It's also not a case of "planned obsolescence"

Ventura was optimized for M1 and most likely M2 chips as well. It is not optimized for a 2017 Intel MacBook Air. It may have been tested on one to make sure it works and can be supported on it, but each new OS that Apple develops is always optimized around their current and/or coming processors. So, quite simply, the older gear just gets less able to keep up with the demands of the newer OS's, until they make a decision that forces end of support for old gear (like using Metal 2).