I've been having some sort of severe performance issue in one form or another since Mojave/Catalina or so with a 2017 MBP and a 2020 M1 Mac Mini.
The symptoms is always generally poor performance after the system has been running a while (4h to a week, varies), usually with WindowServer using CPU cycles non-stop and UI that felt choppy across all programs.
This seemed to happen frequently after "opening many files", like doing some recompiling with Xcode for a few hours, or indexing a large volume with Spotlight. Rebooting helps temporarily.
Today I realized that data read/written since boot was about 1TB in a few hours on a brand new OS install, and I traced this back to the com.apple.Safari.History process. Somehow having bookmarks and previously using Safari 15.x caused a huge amount of I/O that wouldn't stop - the solution was to remove all bookmarks and reading list items. Performance was immediately back to normal, no reboot needed.
So just logging in with your iCloud id, you could be "importing" whatever performance problem you're having on a new install.
I recommend you reboot and take a look at your disk I/O stats - maybe this will help someone!
Do you run your laptop on non—native resolution? Or an external monitor with a non-native resolution?
I'm runnign on 2018 MBP, 16GB RAM + 4k external monitor. I experienced the same type of issues a couple of months back — high WindowServer CPU, mega choppy UI after a few days of use. Initially thought it was Safari, but it kept happening with other browsers as well. Researched it a bit and found a thread where someone suggested running both the laptop and the monitor on native resolution. Haven't had any problems since doing that. WindowServer sits at about 10% CPU and ~2GB RAM, current uptime 10 days.
I think I had the same problem as you (similar hw and setup). Do you have a discrete GPU? If so check the link below out. For me, this behavior was due to OSX flip-flopping between discrete and internal GPU. Once I set it to discrete all the time (I'm always plugged in) the problem went away.
Seems to me a different issue than what people are complaining about atm... but what do i know, might be one and the same.
Edit: very weird... Looks like this setting was reverted for me. I just updated from 11.? to 12.0.1, so I wonder if the installer undid some of my changes. No performance issues, but I've literally just my computer on for the first time after the upgrade.
IIRC, when the M1 first came out, there were a bunch of people saying their SSDs were being worn out super quickly, citing SMART statistics. Perhaps this safari process was the culprit?
BTW, Apple totally lied when they said they "fixed it" in an update and it was only a "reporting issue". It's not fixed, and it was absolutely f'ing not a reporting issue. People's SSDs have already failed because of this, and obviously they're soldered.
wow Safari is the IE5 of browsers now, having to do so many work arounds like we used to have to do with IE5 and now its killing hardware that you can't even replace.
Yes I've seen something similar. WindowServer taking up all the memory.
In one case I also had it crash while I was out, with every open program opened several times on the dock. I didn't do this and in fact macOS doesn't let you do this. Everything was hanging completely so I had to turn it off and on again :)
But this kind of thing does not instill a lot of confidence
Yes, noticed this some time ago with WindowServer taking all my CPU usage but only twice so far for this year I think so it was okay. When it occurs every day then I will start to worry then
SafaribookmarkSync, Cloudd, along with Content Cache has been problematic for years. Especially if you have huge number of Tabs and Bookmarks that is being synced across devices.
Along with iCloud syncing for one reason or another have relatively higher probability of being messed up during update, and you end up with a scenario where something is to probably synced and it keeps trying it over and over again.
I just ordered the M1 Max with 64GB RAM because I'm constantly getting the "Your system has run out of application memory." popup while working on Lunar[1] in Xcode.
Every time this happens, Xcode uses about 4GB of RAM (probably because of the monolithic UI storyboard of Lunar) but it should still leave enough memory for my other non-memory hungry apps.
But then I open Activity Monitor and I see WindowServer using ~80GB of memory [2]
The only remedy is either `killall WindowServer` or a full reboot.
I've been using an M1 MacBook Pro and Monterey since the first developer beta but this only became an issue in the last 2 months or so.
> sluggish performance of a 2015 iMac since practically the day we bought it
I wish I had found this website when my MacBook Pro was still alive, maybe Chrome actually killed it after all. The low performance was so bad I moved to Windows 10 ("the last Windows system" they said), but after it notified my system can be upgraded to 11 I quickly moved to Ubuntu. I'm currently experiencing a few hiccups and reduced them with some memory tweaks, but still the experience is much better than Mac and Windows.
I too have the problem with WindowServer although for me it seems to happen with just regular usage. I have not rebooted in 48 days, and currently it is using 10GB RAM (I have a MacBook Air with 16GB). I have seen some people claim it has to do with using a display scaling setting other than the default (I use 1280x800).
It’s really something, isn’t it? I’ve never regretted my decision to switch from macOS to Linux over a decade ago. Having to restart a 64GB machine constantly because it runs out of memory? Meanwhile my 4GB Linux computer shows a 38-day uptime (only because I accidentally unplugged it last month) and my two Linux servers have uptimes of over a year.
Apple has few and long-lived product identifiers; as such it is possible for specific problems to become well known.
It's extraordinary to find more than a handful of anecdotes about any particular model number of consumer Windows laptop that happens to be on sale at Best Buy today. There are so many, and they cycle so rapidly.
I want to buy a 16" M1 Max because it looks awesome...but my base-model 13" M1 is a beast of a machine and I use it every day for dev work. It has only 8gb of ram but it still chews through everything. And I got it for a great price brand new considering how much I've been using it since launch. In my own experience so far, if I buy that expensive 16" M1 Max it will be because I want it.
Note that I've had Dell XPS laptops that were configured with the same price point as a Macbook and while nice...those devices definitely didn't have the same attention to quality that I've experienced with Apple products. So it seems unfair to make such a broad criticism against Apple users at large!
Find me one laptop with a trackpad that works as well as a MacBook and we can talk.
I use a MacBook trackpad to make diagrams, for 3D modeling using Blender and FreeCAD, to draw schematics and route PCBs with KiCAD, and whatever else you’d otherwise do with a mouse, and it just doesn’t get in the way.
Over the years, I’ve been forced to use work supplied top-end Thinkpads, HP, and Dell laptops and none come even close to even the trackpad of my long retired, lowly 2009 MacBook Air 11”.
I don’t really care whether I use macOS, Linux or Windows: they all run the same applications. I also don’t care about the price of a laptop: what does it matter that a tool that I use day in day out for years costs $1000 more?
I care that it’s usable.
MacBooks are usable for things I use them for. The other laptops are not.
I love my 2017 mbp and I so want to tell every person posting workarounds for their $2000 brick please return it! Tim Apple won’t fix anything with all the $$$ in his eyes flowing in.
A finance professor once told me “if you don’t vote with your wallet you don’t get to complain”
Great to see you pop up on HN. I discovered Lunar a couple of weeks ago after wondering whether something like it existed and it's been a great tool so far. Solves one thing and solves it well. Keep up the great work!
It is virtual memory, the real memory size is usually sub 1GB. But I just can’t find any other culprit, and killing WindowServer is the only thing that helps.
I have no idea how to troubleshoot this and don’t really have time for it when working on hotfixes, I just want to get back in a state where I’m not facing an imminent system lock up where I can’t even save my recent work.
Activity Monitor shows a "memory footprint", rather than just a simple sum of virtual memory usage. Among other things, this number splits memory usage for resources shared across multiple processes (e.g. system libraries) and attributes a fraction to each of them.
I feel like I'm a bizarro world, because I don't get this stuff: crashes, memory leaks, and so on.
I use: VScode, Idea, iTerm2 (with x86 brew), Logic (and lots of plugins), FCPX, Live (x86, and lots of plugins), Slack, Reeder, MS Office, Spotify, Chrome and other stuff. MBP M1 16GB.
What I do get, is some bluetooth issues (e.g. affecting the mouse cursor. If you start the bluetooth deadmon it fixes itself for a day or so.
I love that Apple hasn’t been able to fix their Bluetooth bugs in forever. I always hope they’ll be fixed with the next OS version, maybe the next MacBook, maybe the next iPhone.
Nope. My AirPods have regular issues and my Magic Mouse regularly disconnects.
Anything below Bluetooth 5 is barely usable. The 2.4Ghz freq gets interfered by anything from fluorescent lamps, old Wi-Fi hotspots, old laptops and phones to microwave ovens, and if it's not yours, it's somebody else's. You basically have no control over whether your bluetooth devices get interfered.
I used to have similar problems. It turned out to be Bluetooth congestion. When I relocated to an office away from a window that faced a public street, the problems went away.
This whole thread is striking a nerve with me since these seem to be all of the issues i had been dealing with since getting a new 16 inch a few weeks back. Specifically "windowserver" and also these bluetooth issues.
See my other comment in this thread about how i solved "windowserver".
Bluetooth issue was a hw proximity issue for me. My CalDigit hub was mounted right below my Macbook. I noticed when I moved my MacBook's location (still connected to hub), the bluetooth issue when away.
It's worth a try if you have a powered accessory near your macbook and haven't tried this already, but...
I do still get the issue once in a while, but I can now at least just turn the keyboard/touchpad off/on and it goes back to normal whereas before, it happened all the time.
Once in a while I still have to Shift+Option+"bluetooth menu icon" and reset bluetooth module.
I know these are just work arounds, but at least it allows me to get back to work and only have to deal with it weekly instead of not being able to use bluetooth at all.
Edit: just upgraded to 12.0.1 and noticed Shift+Option+"bluetooth menu icon" to reset bluetooth module is gone!?
It’s probably USB 3.0 frequencies clashing with Bluetooth freqs. Even worse if you’re connected to 2.4Ghz wifi since it’s the same frequency Bluetooth uses.
Same here - I've been slamming my 13" M1 base model (8gb ram, 512 gb storage) and it's a beast of a machine. I throw a lot at it for work every day - multiple browsers open, back-end processes, the UI app, pgAdmin and postgres both running locally...it crushes everything I throw at it, with great battery life too.
Only issue I've seen with it is some bluetooth flakiness sometimes the way you mentioned. Other than that, it's been a rock solid device and the only reason I haven't upgraded to one of the new MBPs despite really wanting one...is because so far I haven't been able to justify it yet considering how rock solid the M1 has been!
I find all three (Linux, MacOS and Windows) to be fairly stable. It's been many many years since I've run into either BSOD on Windows or the beach ball of death on Mac.
My guess is faulty hardware. I've had plenty of those on the 2018 MBP (keyboard getting stuck, bulging battery and dead zones on touchbar). Waiting to see if the QC is better with new M1 Pros before buying.
I have had really bad issues with bluetooth mice on my M1 macbook, the lag is so bad. Bluetooth is basically unusable for me so I had to switch to the logitech unifying receiver which has been flawless. This seems to be related to using airpods at the same time.
Both in this article and other comments here, people mention Safari being a factor. It sounds like this is likely related to the browser. I noticed that you're using Chrome. I use a variety of browsers but rarely Safari, and I don't have any of these issues either.
>What I do get, is some bluetooth issues (e.g. affecting the mouse cursor. If you start the bluetooth deadmon it fixes itself for a day or so.
Can you elaborate on this? I think i was hitting this as well. Specifically when I scroll or type, it "halts" for a split second every other second. Originally I thought it was a video card failing or something but after a long time I finally traced it to Bluetooth. Since then I have been using wired connection on my keyboard and mouse.
What do you mean by "If you start the bluetooth deadmon"
In my case it's visible in the mouse (the keyboard is wired, mechanical), and it's like you describe, at certain points there is laginess. After some time, it's like the mouse slows down, and lags more.
I've heard this happens when you have some USB-C hubs attached, which I do. Not sure what the connection is -- but I think my Anker hub does causes this.
>What do you mean by "If you start the bluetooth deadmon"
Sorry, I meant: "if you restart the bluetooth daemon", e.g. "sudo pkill bluetoothd".
i have an older macbook pro (only for another week until my new one arrives), and i found switching from iterm2 to kitty improved performance of my computer drastically. i think i have some other HD corruption issues going on, but kitty extended the lifespan of my computer such that i was able to wait for the new pros.
You're not in a bizarro world. Most users are pretty happy with their M1 Macs (myself included) and HN just tends to upvote anything anti-apple even if it's an isolated experience.
I'd wager most people on this thread do not actually own an m1 Mac.
My experience (and that of others I know that have them) has been nothing but stellar.
Please don't make spurious generalizations about the community—these images are nearly all in the eye of the beholder, i.e. people with the opposite preferences to yours see the community exactly the opposite way (and make similarly spurious generalizations about HN favoring Apple or whatever $BigCo they don't personally care for).
Because such generalizations are just encodings of personal likes/dislikes in the form of general claims, they lead to lame discussion.
I don't think it's really anti-Apple, but these articles do tend to take what seem likely to be very isolated events and present them as widespread, systemic issues.
I have absolutely no doubt that this person is having bad memory leaks (though their narrative about SoC memory or other elements seem unlikely to play any part whatsoever). Software has faults, and something in their environment or stack is causing problems. I have an M1 Mac and used every beta of Monterey, and now the release, and have had zero problems. Like nothing at all. I use XCode, IntelliJ, Chrome, Safari, Excel, Logic Pro among others all day long, heavily. Loads of other people seem to be having no problem with their systems. Eh.
If something has literally millions of users, saying "{X} happens" will invariably draw out someone with a similar anecdote, but that doesn't mean it happens to everyone, or even a significant minority. Some unique combination of factors is yielding a poor user experience, and hopefully there is a resolution, but it just doesn't seem likely that it's widespread.
I’m generally happy with my Mac products, but I’ve also gone through long periods where my Mac would crash multiple times per week due to serious OS bugs.
Most recently, the Thunderbolt 3 issues were responsible for countless hours of lost time rebooting my laptop last year, and I’m not alone: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/10/03/repro/
The weirdest part was that this occurred with only Apple products connected to my laptop. I couldn’t even blame it on 3rd-party products. It also worked perfectly fine before and after the range of affected MacOS versions. There were many reports of the same issue all over the internet, so I know I wasn’t alone.
Then one day Apple finally fixed the bug and everything was back to normal. But all those months of constant reboots and crashed and failed workarounds left a mark on my overall experience.
So while the Mac experience is generally good, it’s still far from perfect. Weirdly, I’ve had far fewer problems with my Windows system in recent years.
Unfortunately it’s comments and religious defenders like this that allow Apple to get away with selling broken products for years, and then issue recalls for products sold 4-5 years ago when people are not using them anymore, like they’ve done with multiple Mac laptops that had graphics card and screen issues.
Im willing to bet this community has a higher percentage of apple users than most others. The number of people claiming to already have an M1 of any kind is surprising, especially considering Ive received a macbook pro for every single software engineering job Ive ever had.
I think the main reason why these stories are brought up for Apple so much is because it has this persistent "things just work" narrative that a lot of people buy into when they decide to pay the Apple premium. When it turns out to not be true, it stings more than similar issues on e.g. Windows or Android, simply because the expectations there aren't that rosy to begin with.
Yep. I bought my M1 13" (with 8gb of ram) when it launched and it's easily the best laptop I've purchased. I want the 16" with the M1 Max because it looks incredible but so far the M1 13" has chewed through everything I've thrown at it, and I use it heavily every single day. Fantastic laptop.
Worth a read if you ever wonder why certain people on here are oddly fixated on the platforms other people are using. (Especially when they have no clue what you even do with your hardware.)
Since we all seem to be sharing that we don't have issues with our OSs, I've never had much issue with any NT based Windows systems. I've had bad hardware that once replaced improved reliability, but generally speaking I can go months without reboots. (except for those corporate forced updates for security reasons, but those exist on every platform, so I don't consider that an issue)
On the last few versions of Windows, it doesn't really feel like my computer anymore. I use my OS to lay out the structure of my thoughts, ie. I'll have text documents open, arranged in a certain way, project folders open, image editors with sketches in them... then Windows Update wakes my computer while I am sleeping and force-closes everything; I awake to a blank slate. It's as though someone has snuck into my house in in the middle of the night and swept everything off my desk and into the trash.
If windows is not responding error it's an app bug and not a windows bug. I have to swap between windows and mac all the time and both are perfectly usable when you have enough memory for your given task, and that is 95% an app issue as too many modern apps drink memory like they just came out of the Sahara.
Anecdotally, it feels like I must restart WindowServer in OSX more often I've had to restart explorer/dwm in Windows. But neither are particularly reliable, in my experience.
Do you by any chance have the base model? I'm trying to see if folks think it's sufficient for their needs. It's hard to calibrate memory needs coming from Intel.
I have the base model 13" M1 (8gb ram, 512 gb storage) and it's rock solid and sufficient for my needs. I use it every day for dev work. Got my UI app running on it for local development, backend processes, connections to Heroku and my local postgres db, multiple browsers open, music streaming, multiple bluetooth devices connected to it...
Performs like a champ with excellent battery life. I keep waiting for it to start giving me some slowdown as our apps become more complex, so I can upgrade to one of the shiny new laptops...but so far, it's been a champ.
It's probably worth reminding everyone who is new to the Mac or like most of us keep forgetting. Don't update your OS until at least half way through its update lifecycle e.g. for Monterey wait until 12.0.5.
This happens every single year where there are annoying/serious bugs that takes a while to get fixed as the focus is on P1 showstoppers.
Hah well with the M1 air I got a few days ago, it helpfully won’t let me upgrade to Monterey! I’ve downloaded the 12GB update three times now and it fails each time it tries. I guess I’ll wait.
I do that as well - I have work Mac and personal one, and I don't want to run them with different OS versions since Apple loves to change things between versions for no reason (last time they renamed "grab" to "screenshot" and needlessly reordered System Preferences) so using two versions of Mac OS is super annoying. And corporate takes a while to get all their crap running on a new version.
I saw this recently primarily with Firefox and (presumably?) Firefox may have been updated to fix the issue because it is thankfully not happening anymore.
When it did happen though, it seemed ludicrous: that a single app could in a matter of literally minutes start burning through gigabytes of memory, to the point where the entire system seems to freeze with no option except to kill Firefox (and everything it may be doing) to continue. And, like the author, I had started keeping Activity Monitor open so I could pre-kill Firefox at a point when I knew it would probably start to be pushing it.
It never feels good to baby-sit a machine. It feels even worse when it’s an expensive new machine. And it means that the operating system is failing at its most basic task (arguably the entire point of having an operating system) — to manage resources well.
> And it means that the operating system is failing at its most basic task (arguably the entire point of having an operating system) — to manage resources well.
Before about 2001, that would be a bold claim indeed in the Mac world. Pre-emptive multitasking only became a thing with the transition to BSD-based OS X
Sounds very similar to the macOS 10.15.6 release, which had a horrible kernel memory leak. It was especially visible when running virtual machines. After a few hours the kernel memory pressure was so high that it would oom kill every usermode process one by one, including critical system processes.
That one had me yearning for a linux grub menu entry for "previous kernel".
It's fundamentally the same thing, but when the kernel is refuses to deallocate memory you can't just terminate the process, you have to reboot the system.
MacOS has had intermittent memory leaks for quite some time. Even my 2013 MBP running an old OS version has all the Apple processes slowly leaking memory until I reboot.
I doubt it's directly hardware related, though it's possible it is scoped to special MacOS logic that only is executed on M1. My assumption has been that it's actually coming from shared libraries that Apple-owned processes share, because I usually don't notice it happening for non-Apple processes.
Which OS version? Personally I'm on 2015 MBP with High Sierra 10.13.6 and zero memory leakage. I go months without even turning off the MBP. Granted, sometimes I get memory leakage behavior from Chrome/Firefox. I usually stick to Safari.
Readit News
The symptoms is always generally poor performance after the system has been running a while (4h to a week, varies), usually with WindowServer using CPU cycles non-stop and UI that felt choppy across all programs.
This seemed to happen frequently after "opening many files", like doing some recompiling with Xcode for a few hours, or indexing a large volume with Spotlight. Rebooting helps temporarily.
Today I realized that data read/written since boot was about 1TB in a few hours on a brand new OS install, and I traced this back to the com.apple.Safari.History process. Somehow having bookmarks and previously using Safari 15.x caused a huge amount of I/O that wouldn't stop - the solution was to remove all bookmarks and reading list items. Performance was immediately back to normal, no reboot needed.
So just logging in with your iCloud id, you could be "importing" whatever performance problem you're having on a new install.
I recommend you reboot and take a look at your disk I/O stats - maybe this will help someone!
I'm runnign on 2018 MBP, 16GB RAM + 4k external monitor. I experienced the same type of issues a couple of months back — high WindowServer CPU, mega choppy UI after a few days of use. Initially thought it was Safari, but it kept happening with other browsers as well. Researched it a bit and found a thread where someone suggested running both the laptop and the monitor on native resolution. Haven't had any problems since doing that. WindowServer sits at about 10% CPU and ~2GB RAM, current uptime 10 days.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202043
Seems to me a different issue than what people are complaining about atm... but what do i know, might be one and the same.
Edit: very weird... Looks like this setting was reverted for me. I just updated from 11.? to 12.0.1, so I wonder if the installer undid some of my changes. No performance issues, but I've literally just my computer on for the first time after the upgrade.
No, for many people it was Rosetta apps.
BTW, Apple totally lied when they said they "fixed it" in an update and it was only a "reporting issue". It's not fixed, and it was absolutely f'ing not a reporting issue. People's SSDs have already failed because of this, and obviously they're soldered.
In one case I also had it crash while I was out, with every open program opened several times on the dock. I didn't do this and in fact macOS doesn't let you do this. Everything was hanging completely so I had to turn it off and on again :)
But this kind of thing does not instill a lot of confidence
See open(1), in particular the -n flag.
Dead Comment
Quitting Safari seems to resolve the slowness, but not always.
Along with iCloud syncing for one reason or another have relatively higher probability of being messed up during update, and you end up with a scenario where something is to probably synced and it keeps trying it over and over again.
Thanks for such a quality app.
Im only using it to fully turn off my built-in monitor while working in clamshell mode and then manually setting the external’s brightness.
So no sync mode (and not even sunset sunrise)
But solved my problems nicely and no more reaching out to my external monitor’s buttons in Narnia
If I’ll keep using it I’ll make sure to caffeinate you ;)
Dead Comment
Every time this happens, Xcode uses about 4GB of RAM (probably because of the monolithic UI storyboard of Lunar) but it should still leave enough memory for my other non-memory hungry apps.
But then I open Activity Monitor and I see WindowServer using ~80GB of memory [2]
The only remedy is either `killall WindowServer` or a full reboot.
I've been using an M1 MacBook Pro and Monterey since the first developer beta but this only became an issue in the last 2 months or so.
[1] https://github.com/alin23/Lunar
[2] https://cln.sh/CfEL6u
This is an intel Mac though. I haven’t seen it on my M1 at home.
https://chromeisbad.com/
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=115840...
I wish I had found this website when my MacBook Pro was still alive, maybe Chrome actually killed it after all. The low performance was so bad I moved to Windows 10 ("the last Windows system" they said), but after it notified my system can be upgraded to 11 I quickly moved to Ubuntu. I'm currently experiencing a few hiccups and reduced them with some memory tweaks, but still the experience is much better than Mac and Windows.
They sell you a very expensive machine that doesn't work.
Your reaction?
Buy a more expensive one from the same provider!
It's extraordinary to find more than a handful of anecdotes about any particular model number of consumer Windows laptop that happens to be on sale at Best Buy today. There are so many, and they cycle so rapidly.
Also, I get along just fine with the last few Macs I have had...
Note that I've had Dell XPS laptops that were configured with the same price point as a Macbook and while nice...those devices definitely didn't have the same attention to quality that I've experienced with Apple products. So it seems unfair to make such a broad criticism against Apple users at large!
I use a MacBook trackpad to make diagrams, for 3D modeling using Blender and FreeCAD, to draw schematics and route PCBs with KiCAD, and whatever else you’d otherwise do with a mouse, and it just doesn’t get in the way.
Over the years, I’ve been forced to use work supplied top-end Thinkpads, HP, and Dell laptops and none come even close to even the trackpad of my long retired, lowly 2009 MacBook Air 11”.
I don’t really care whether I use macOS, Linux or Windows: they all run the same applications. I also don’t care about the price of a laptop: what does it matter that a tool that I use day in day out for years costs $1000 more?
I care that it’s usable.
MacBooks are usable for things I use them for. The other laptops are not.
That's how you sound.
What is the alternative platform that runs Xcode but with the memory leak bugs fixed?
A finance professor once told me “if you don’t vote with your wallet you don’t get to complain”
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Looks like the 16gb model is now artificially made obsolete as well - you are supposed to buy the 64gb one.
I ran heap(1) on WindowServer [1] but there's nothing in there standing out so maybe this is a red herring.
[0] https://cln.sh/A7YPLN
[1] https://gist.github.com/772687dba65a35cca8cd707fcfda99c0
I have no idea how to troubleshoot this and don’t really have time for it when working on hotfixes, I just want to get back in a state where I’m not facing an imminent system lock up where I can’t even save my recent work.
I use: VScode, Idea, iTerm2 (with x86 brew), Logic (and lots of plugins), FCPX, Live (x86, and lots of plugins), Slack, Reeder, MS Office, Spotify, Chrome and other stuff. MBP M1 16GB.
What I do get, is some bluetooth issues (e.g. affecting the mouse cursor. If you start the bluetooth deadmon it fixes itself for a day or so.
Nope. My AirPods have regular issues and my Magic Mouse regularly disconnects.
I hoped my next M1 would solve it. Guess not.
Doesn't really make sense for a new CPU/GPU to fix the problem, what you want is for Apple to stick in their own networking cards.
See my other comment in this thread about how i solved "windowserver".
Bluetooth issue was a hw proximity issue for me. My CalDigit hub was mounted right below my Macbook. I noticed when I moved my MacBook's location (still connected to hub), the bluetooth issue when away.
It's worth a try if you have a powered accessory near your macbook and haven't tried this already, but...
I do still get the issue once in a while, but I can now at least just turn the keyboard/touchpad off/on and it goes back to normal whereas before, it happened all the time.
Once in a while I still have to Shift+Option+"bluetooth menu icon" and reset bluetooth module.
I know these are just work arounds, but at least it allows me to get back to work and only have to deal with it weekly instead of not being able to use bluetooth at all.
Edit: just upgraded to 12.0.1 and noticed Shift+Option+"bluetooth menu icon" to reset bluetooth module is gone!?
Only issue I've seen with it is some bluetooth flakiness sometimes the way you mentioned. Other than that, it's been a rock solid device and the only reason I haven't upgraded to one of the new MBPs despite really wanting one...is because so far I haven't been able to justify it yet considering how rock solid the M1 has been!
My guess is faulty hardware. I've had plenty of those on the 2018 MBP (keyboard getting stuck, bulging battery and dead zones on touchbar). Waiting to see if the QC is better with new M1 Pros before buying.
Otherwise I have been very happy with the laptop.
That sounds like a big bug and a very possible cause.
Can you elaborate on this? I think i was hitting this as well. Specifically when I scroll or type, it "halts" for a split second every other second. Originally I thought it was a video card failing or something but after a long time I finally traced it to Bluetooth. Since then I have been using wired connection on my keyboard and mouse.
What do you mean by "If you start the bluetooth deadmon"
I've heard this happens when you have some USB-C hubs attached, which I do. Not sure what the connection is -- but I think my Anker hub does causes this.
>What do you mean by "If you start the bluetooth deadmon"
Sorry, I meant: "if you restart the bluetooth daemon", e.g. "sudo pkill bluetoothd".
I'd wager most people on this thread do not actually own an m1 Mac.
My experience (and that of others I know that have them) has been nothing but stellar.
Because such generalizations are just encodings of personal likes/dislikes in the form of general claims, they lead to lame discussion.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I have absolutely no doubt that this person is having bad memory leaks (though their narrative about SoC memory or other elements seem unlikely to play any part whatsoever). Software has faults, and something in their environment or stack is causing problems. I have an M1 Mac and used every beta of Monterey, and now the release, and have had zero problems. Like nothing at all. I use XCode, IntelliJ, Chrome, Safari, Excel, Logic Pro among others all day long, heavily. Loads of other people seem to be having no problem with their systems. Eh.
If something has literally millions of users, saying "{X} happens" will invariably draw out someone with a similar anecdote, but that doesn't mean it happens to everyone, or even a significant minority. Some unique combination of factors is yielding a poor user experience, and hopefully there is a resolution, but it just doesn't seem likely that it's widespread.
Most recently, the Thunderbolt 3 issues were responsible for countless hours of lost time rebooting my laptop last year, and I’m not alone: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/10/03/repro/
The weirdest part was that this occurred with only Apple products connected to my laptop. I couldn’t even blame it on 3rd-party products. It also worked perfectly fine before and after the range of affected MacOS versions. There were many reports of the same issue all over the internet, so I know I wasn’t alone.
Then one day Apple finally fixed the bug and everything was back to normal. But all those months of constant reboots and crashed and failed workarounds left a mark on my overall experience.
So while the Mac experience is generally good, it’s still far from perfect. Weirdly, I’ve had far fewer problems with my Windows system in recent years.
Why do I see so many pro-Apple posts then? And even posts directly pointing to an Apple ad.
My Mac used to expose the same kind of problems, that's why I switched to Linux on non Apple laptops years ago.
My feeling was that the quality of the OS went down constantly and apparently it's not coming back with newer releases.
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/11/group-nar...
I recently had to use a Windows laptop for work, and god I hate when windows becomes "not responding"
On the last few versions of Windows, it doesn't really feel like my computer anymore. I use my OS to lay out the structure of my thoughts, ie. I'll have text documents open, arranged in a certain way, project folders open, image editors with sketches in them... then Windows Update wakes my computer while I am sleeping and force-closes everything; I awake to a blank slate. It's as though someone has snuck into my house in in the middle of the night and swept everything off my desk and into the trash.
Performs like a champ with excellent battery life. I keep waiting for it to start giving me some slowdown as our apps become more complex, so I can upgrade to one of the shiny new laptops...but so far, it's been a champ.
This happens every single year where there are annoying/serious bugs that takes a while to get fixed as the focus is on P1 showstoppers.
Now, if I were to update my hardware that won’t be an option.
I will probably soon-ish update to MacOS 11 "Big Sur" (released November 2020), but not yet the just-released MacOS 12 "Monterey".
When it did happen though, it seemed ludicrous: that a single app could in a matter of literally minutes start burning through gigabytes of memory, to the point where the entire system seems to freeze with no option except to kill Firefox (and everything it may be doing) to continue. And, like the author, I had started keeping Activity Monitor open so I could pre-kill Firefox at a point when I knew it would probably start to be pushing it.
It never feels good to baby-sit a machine. It feels even worse when it’s an expensive new machine. And it means that the operating system is failing at its most basic task (arguably the entire point of having an operating system) — to manage resources well.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1735345
Before about 2001, that would be a bold claim indeed in the Mac world. Pre-emptive multitasking only became a thing with the transition to BSD-based OS X
That one had me yearning for a linux grub menu entry for "previous kernel".
I doubt it's directly hardware related, though it's possible it is scoped to special MacOS logic that only is executed on M1. My assumption has been that it's actually coming from shared libraries that Apple-owned processes share, because I usually don't notice it happening for non-Apple processes.