Hi. I’ve been using a 2016 12inch MacBook and recently upgraded to a new 16 inch MBP.
The experience hasn’t been as exciting as I was expecting. When using Capture One and Affinity Photo there is noticeable lag and less than fluid performance.
I’m running OSX 10.15.2 which I think is current. I tried a different user account - same deal.
Any photographers here? When using frequency separation to edit images I find the old MacBook to be a smoother less jerky experience.
This seems mad to me - surely its not right? Help me.
I’m close to returning it but don’t want to be hasty.
What really worried me was the occasional appearance of the beachball when completing simple tasks, and hesitation of 1-2 seconds sometimes when switching between folders within Finder…on the internal drive!
When editing images I have tried GPU on and off but issues remain.
Hopefully someone here can help me or confirm this is not correct experience.
Thanks in advance. J
I’m running Affinity Photo on 10.15.2 on a new (2 weeks ago) MBP 16" with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD.
Absolutely no lags, beachballs or any of the issues mentioned by @jasonholt. Not with Affinity or anything else.
FWIW, I built this machine up from scratch – did not use migration assistant to place anything on the machine, since I didn’t want to inherit issues from the old 2017 machine I formerly used.
I use Photoshop and Illustrator and have not experienced any of the issues you mention. I am using the i9 version and get no lag or beach balls even when doing complex, graphics intensive work.
I also built the system as a new one and didn’t use migration.
Did you leave the new MB Pro sit for a while to give Spotlight time to index (md worker activity in Activity monitor)?
Did you migrate the data from the old Mac or Time Machine or did you do clean setup from scratch?
You can either spend a lot of time cleaning the machine of old cobwebs that moved or do a “Marie Condo” and start clean only with what you really need.
Thanks everyone.
I didn’t use a migration assistant - installed everything from scratch.
Not sure how long Spotlight needs. The MBP has been setup for approx 5 days.
Thanks Katie.
Same spec here, built up from scratch. No migration.
I tried a new user in case that was an issue.
Am reluctant to nuke it and start again but maybe that is a relevant experiment.
Only 5 days left before I have to return it or use it…
I was just reading up on Affinity Photo performance and according to a post of their forums (https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/52349-metal/) the metal functionality is only available on Intel graphics cards. Therefore, Affinity Photo may be the culprit here because it is not optimised for the AMD card in the MacBook.
Have you watched Activity Monitor when you experience delays, beach balls, etc? That may give you a clue at what is consuming resources during the delay.
It could be something seemingly unrelated like WiFi, Bluetooth, or indexing/background activity as mentioned before. Just today I had Zoom “lock up” because my AirPods were activating. Probably more a Bluetooth issue than a Zoom issue (though they should likely handle the audio interrupt better).
More rare but possible on a “new” system design would be a hardware issue. You could do all the diagnostics or take it to Apple and have them do it. If that’s the issue, you’ll be covered by the first year warranty even if you didn’t get AppleCare.