Disappointed Switcher #2

Kona*

Kona*

Kona*

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29 Dec 2003
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Newcastle upon Tyne
After reading Rainmakers thread (and more specifically, steveo's post) I thought it was time to make a thread of my own outlining the problems I'm having with my 13" 2010 MBP (2.66GHz C2D) before taking it to Apple, to see if this performance is to be expected.

Anyway, when I first got it back in February I was loving the hardware and OSX was a refreshing change (although I use Windows 7 on it quite a bit now) but after the honeymoon period was over I started to notice a few problems, namely system tasks hogging 30%+ of CPU at all times with only a few apps running (iTunes, Chrome, Adium), poor video performance (can't play a 1080p video full screen or in a window without stuttering, both in VLC and iTunes. Choppy window movement and 60%+ CPU-hogging system tasks when used with an external monitor running 1920x1080) and applications beach-balling for 10-20 seconds before coming back to life

Initially I thought this was down to lack of RAM or the speed of the HDD so I ordered an 8GB kit and a 7200rpm WD Black HDD - I cloned my original install of OSX on to the new HDD and this didn't solve the problems so I performed a clean install of OSX and ran the combo update, again this didn't solve the problems I was having.

Looking at Rainmakers thread this machine should fly but I am disappointed in the performance even with 8GB of RAM and a 7200rpm HDD :( There is no way it's worthy of a "Pro" brand name the way it is now. Is this simply because it's a last-gen CPU/Chipset? I'd have thought it would be superb at video playback given the more powerful graphics chipset.

Thanks for reading, all help is appreciated :)
 
Kona* said:
After reading Rainmakers thread (and more specifically, steveo's post) I thought it was time to make a thread of my own outlining the problems I'm having with my 13" 2010 MBP (2.66GHz C2D) before taking it to Apple, to see if this performance is to be expected.

Anyway, when I first got it back in February I was loving the hardware and OSX was a refreshing change (although I use Windows 7 on it quite a bit now) but after the honeymoon period was over I started to notice a few problems, namely system tasks hogging 30%+ of CPU at all times with only a few apps running (iTunes, Chrome, Adium), poor video performance (can't play a 1080p video full screen or in a window without stuttering, both in VLC and iTunes. Choppy window movement and 60%+ CPU-hogging system tasks when used with an external monitor running 1920x1080) and applications beach-balling for 10-20 seconds before coming back to life

Initially I thought this was down to lack of RAM or the speed of the HDD so I ordered an 8GB kit and a 7200rpm WD Black HDD - I cloned my original install of OSX on to the new HDD and this didn't solve the problems so I performed a clean install of OSX and ran the combo update, again this didn't solve the problems I was having.

Looking at Rainmakers thread this machine should fly but I am disappointed in the performance even with 8GB of RAM and a 7200rpm HDD :( There is no way it's worthy of a "Pro" brand name the way it is now. Is this simply because it's a last-gen CPU/Chipset? I'd have thought it would be superb at video playback given the more powerful graphics chipset.

Thanks for reading, all help is appreciated :)
Click to expand...

Think you have answered your own question there matey, take it back as it should fly without the upgrades you have made. I had a 2006 macbook 2.0 ghz core duo and never ran into any of the issue you had there. That was with a 5400rpm drive as well.
 
I know you read my thread, but I can only +1 the 'take it back' suggestion. That's not normal, and as I found out Apple are pretty cool at sorting stuff like this. :) I went from thinking Apple were junk, to falling in love with my MBP and never wanting to use anything else again. Hopefully you'll have the same experience.
 
The choppy window movement is a sign of something gone wrong for sure. My refurb uMacbook has 4gb of Ram and a 2ghz C2D. It handles 1080p with ease, but I don't really use the thing for video as it is a 13" model.

No way should that setup struggle with video, and the high cpu usage is somewhat suspect. I know iTunes is a well behaved app under OSX, I've no idea about the other two but I've yet to see a system hogging app and I've been on OSX since 2009.
 
Okay, looks like I'll be taking it back then :D

Thanks for the input chaps, I thought it wasn't right. Would it be best to take it back with the stock hard drive and memory in it or leave the upgrades in?

Cheers :)
 
Take them out.

Edit:

For future reference, here is my Mac Pro at 'idle' (VMWare running with Windows 7 x64, Photoshop, iTunes, Mail, Safari, InDesign, Xcode, Excel, MSN and iChat).

CPU usage is 1-2% (of 100%), it should also be noted that activity monitor shows a % out of number of cores * 100. So when something is taking up 30% in activity monitor and you have a dual core HT (Four threads) CPU then it's only 7.5% of the actual CPU time.

(Apologises for the big image)

activitymonitor.jpg
 
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Your machine should be flying, as others have said. Let us know what happens when you take it back :) Just looked at my own activity monitor, with iTunes playing and running Chrome I'm still only using 12% of the CPU in my 2010 13" MBP with 2.4Ghz and 4GB of RAM.
 
I can only echo what others have said. I bought a 13" MacBook unibody and it only has 2GB of ram and 2.2Ghz core 2 duo in it and even mine preforms better than yours.

Take the upgrades out, take it back and let us know what happens. :)
 
It's fixed (the major problems, anyway). I turned up at the Genius bar and showed them the problems I was having - I couldn't get any apps to beach ball this time but kernel_task and WindowServer were doing their usual 30%+ CPU usage and the choppy window movement was there. Playing one 1080p movie was okay full screen and windowed although it spiked the CPU up to 90%+ (I expected more like 20% CPU). At first he blamed it on the RAM but I explained I'd changed the RAM to an 8GB kit and still had the same problem so we then went ahead and re-installed Snow Leopard, this resulted in kernel_task and WindowServer behaving with no apps open, playing a 1080p movie worked okay but this time used ~70% CPU, having two movies side by side was a slideshow.

Apparently the 13" MacBook isn't designed for HD content (any HD video work for that matter) and that this type of behaviour while playing HD is normal, he questioned why I wanted to watch 2x movies at the same time (obviously this was just to prove a point) and suggested if I wanted that sort of performance the new 2011 MBP's will handle it fine (even the 2011 13").

I've come back home, put my 8GB of RAM and 7200rpm HDD in, reloaded SL and installed all of my apps again. Nothing has beach balled yet and kernel_task and WindowServer are taking ~10% of CPU instead of 30% this time however I have no idea why my first re-install of SL didn't fix this.

Gotta say I'm a little disappointed with the outcome, I'd have thought this machine would have been able to handle two HD movies at the same time without breaking a sweat and I wasn't best pleased at the "Just buy the new model" comment, I only bought it two months ago!

Oh well, I'll chalk it up to experience and next time wait until the new models come out :)
 
Just wanted to update this thread to say everything is now fixed and working great.

After I posted yesterday I decided to carry on researching the problems I was having and came across several YouTube videos showing video performance tests (one of them showing 3x 1080p Apple trailers playing at the same time) and it was working much better than mine. I booked myself in for a lunch time slot at the Genius bar (at a different Apple store) today and went in armed with the videos - this guy was much more helpful and after ~15mins of chatting he changed the motherboard (or as Apple call it, the logic board) and now everything is as it should be - the whole system feels snappier and HD videos play great. He even put my new HDD and RAM back in (took it in my bag with me) and made sure it was working fine, it was a totally different experience to my previous visit (which he apologised for).

I'm very happy with the machine now even know the honeymoon period is over. I'll be switching back to OSX in the next few days as it's usable now without having to swear every time I wanted to watch a video or do anything intensive - only one problem remains, this is that the red "X" bubble doesn't always work to close some apps, sometimes you need to click out of the apps window and then regain focus for the button to work, apparently this is a rare but known problem - any of you guys get this issue?
 
Glad you got it all sorted - Apple have always been very helpful with me It's a shame that the first guy you saw wasn't so nice..

Never had that problem with the X... No idea how to solve it either :(
 
Glad the machine is running like it should. Happy OS X days ahead! :cool:

With regards to the red X - not sure. If I want to quite an application I use CMD + Q and close the app. Easier, anyway. :)
 
So glad you got this sorted, and that you finally got some proper Apple-style service. :)

Regarding the 'x' issue. Not being condescending but are you sure it's failing to register? Coming from the world of Windows (and Linux) I'm used to nice big buttons that are easy to 'hit' when you click them. I find the small circular buttons in OS X a bit more fiddly, which even when hit don't often register.

That may or may not be the issue, but I thought I'd mention it. :)
 
Cheers for the replies chaps :)

Rainmaker said:
So glad you got this sorted, and that you finally got some proper Apple-style service. :)

Regarding the 'x' issue. Not being condescending but are you sure it's failing to register? Coming from the world of Windows (and Linux) I'm used to nice big buttons that are easy to 'hit' when you click them. I find the small circular buttons in OS X a bit more fiddly, which even when hit don't often register.

That may or may not be the issue, but I thought I'd mention it. :)
Click to expand...

I thought it was me miss-clicking the button too but I've made sure I'm dead in the centre of the red button and clicking 10+ times doesn't register the click - happens with the MBP trackpad, magic trackpad and magic mouse. As I say, loosing focus on that applications window and going back to click the red button usually works! It's a very strange problem, these two threads explain it in a bit more detail (and show that I'm not going mad):

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2245443&start=15&tstart=0

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11200968&#11200968

~REALiTY said:
So are you a happy switcher now? :)
Click to expand...

Yup, however I shouldn't have had to go back a 2nd time to prove there was a problem with the hardware! Glad it got sorted though :)
 
Im thinking of switching to a 13" MBP but gotta sell my spec below first! xD But i keep thinknig like a PC, i look at the specs and think it isnt worth it, but i know OSX its a better O/S with cpu usage and what not.

What are the major benefits? im gonna use it for surfing, video editing/photo editing and things like that.
 
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