[NeverFade]

I hate that thing! I mean, honestly... WTF? I am at work, and I have a dual 2.5 G5 w/ 4.5 gigs of Ram, and I still get the lag time with the damn color wheel. Just now I was attempting to close a finder window... Big problem I know <insert sarcasm>, and I hit cmd-w, which I always do, and the computer puts me on hold for about 20 seconds thinking about my command!?

I mean, I got the top o' the line Mac, pretty well established Ram, wouldn't you say? I already today zapped the Pram, and fixed the permissions...

I am impressed with the machine as a whole, and I love OSX for the most part, but this damn fk'n lagging has got to stop!

Here's hoping that Tiger will make the snappiness of OS9 comeback... I know, I know, but OS 9 was pretty quick within the UI.

[Crusader]

I was ripping a DVD the other day, pulling down massive bandwidth, and rendering a movie. I would have been happy to see the beachball. What did I get? The old school watch from days of yore.

Lucky bastard with your nice, colorful, spinning beach ball.

[Windswept]

I hate the beachball. Death to the beachball!

[torifile]

You need more ram. I mean, honestly, the G5 can take 8 gigs and you're handicapping it with 4.5??!? WTF man!



The problems you're seeing are strictly related to the finder. It sucks. It's got nothing to do with your machine. I'm hoping and praying that Tiger fixes it. It's by far the worst part of OS X.

[Wraven]

NeverFade,
That is very strange. I will attempt to provide some actual help for you. Could there, just maybe, be something wrong with your computer? I mean, with my comparably "puny" Mac mini I NEVER get the spinning beach ball when trying to doing the tasks you describe above. I would check the RAM, check what processes are running (maybe something taking up a TON of processor cycles / RAM), etc... This is not normal behavior given your plethora of RAM and powerful system.

[NeverFade]

Wraven - thanks, but I don't belive that there is anything wrong with my system. I actaully have a slightly less system at home ( dual 2 G.5 w/3 gigs of RAM ) and the lagging shows there too, at times within the finder... I understand when I am working on large files or whatnot, but geez...

It's not like this happens everytime I go to open or close a window, but the fact that it happened even once on the machines that I have is unacceptable, in my book, and should never happen. Yet, the computer shows it's thinking... and thinking for my machine should be done instantaneoulsy...!

Like I said, I love OSX, and have been working with Macs for years, but I just felt the need to bitch about the unresponsiveness of the most powerful Mac out there. It happens, and it's not just my machine - it's the OS and I hope Tiger is really optimized so that the beach ball stays far away...

[BuonRotto]

What else are you running? I have this problem after doing heavy lifting with graphics apps. The RAM and caches are basically stuffed with all that pixel/vector/video whatnot and when I switch to anything outside of that workflow, the beachball comes up for a bit while it has to make room for something else. How full is your hard drive too? More than 75-80% and it will start thrashing a lot more even though you have tons of RAM, again, especially when you break out of a particular workflow.

[Luca]

Finder + Safari = Death. Too bad there's not much you can do about the Finder (other than using PathFinder, I guess).

[NeverFade]

oh, I usually have Photoshop, Illustrator, ( these 2 are the largest ) and then the samll ones, like suitcase, iTunes, entourage, and Safari..

That's usually about it. I am a package designer, so there are times I have rather extensive graphics open at the time, but at other times, I do not... so, it really doesn't seem to matter. Oh, and Safari seems to crash a lot too - or just quit out. I have delelted the perfernces too, doesn't help. I am running 10.3.7 - maybe I should get 10.3.8 and see if that tweaks something into place. I haven't heard of any bad press about that update, so I guess it's okay to install... I always wait at work here - Although I update the day it comes out at home...

Anyways, yes, Safari seems to quit or unexpectedly, too. I am so hoping Tiger takes care of a lot of these little things so that the pace gets picked up a bit!

Here's hoping... for that damn ballon to get popped!

[edit] oh, the HD has 75 gigs available, so there's NP there...

[torifile]

Originally Posted by Luca Finder + Safari = Death. Too bad there's not much you can do about the Finder (other than using PathFinder, I guess).

Huh? I've found Safari to be very stable. It pegs the CPU with animated gifs but that's about it.

The finder, OTOH....

[alcimedes]

was there a network drive linked to the window you were closing? the only time i've seen the Finder lag out on my machines (both slower than yours) is when the Finder is waiting for input from a networked drive. usually one that's no longer mounted but hasn't realized it yet.

the other time i've seen that happen is if a drive is failing, and the computer is having a hard time reading/writing to it. might want to run a hardware check on your disk(s) just for kicks.

[Paul]

Originally Posted by Luca Finder + Safari = Death. Too bad there's not much you can do about the Finder (other than using PathFinder, I guess).

yup... the finder only has one thread (multi task in the finder and you will see the beachball ALL the time) and safari seems to have a hard limit with regard to tabbed browsing and downloading information in the background... I get the beachball all the time when I'm doing some heavy surfing... The web cache, auto complete, and history mechanisms need to be completely re-built....

[fiddler]

Originally Posted by torifile Huh? I've found Safari to be very stable. It pegs the CPU with animated gifs but that's about it. The finder, OTOH....

Mine is fast except when browsing eBay. Beachballs everywhere, absoutely unbearable.

[ThinkKnot]

If you haven't already done it.
In Safari, go to Preferences>Autofill
Un-Check Other Forms

This should help reduce the spinning beachball. I still get them though throughout most of my applications but this has greatly reduced them in Safari.