Surfing On A Mac Is Slooooow

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
This has probably been posted before but I'm getting real frustrated at how slow Safari, FireFox, IE, Mozilla and Netscape renders it pages under OSX. I?m a web-app programmer for a financial corporation; I create extensive reports that when printed out take up at least 10 ? 15 pages of paper. On Windows, Linux, Solaris or BSD these reports render in about 10 seconds, OSX 55 ? 1:20. It goes for sites with lots of pictures or graphs as well. Anybody have some speed-them-up techniques that I can borrow because this is really starting to piss me off. My Boss is also a Mac user and he?s starting to think I write bloated programs. This is not the case, in fact I?ve learned better programming techniques trying to optimize my code just for Mac users.



Example of machines used;



Powerbook G4 12 1.33ghz 1.25gb <- Mine

Powerbook G4 TI 1ghz 1gb

PowerMac G4 Dual 1.25ghz 1gb

iMac G5 1.8ghz 1gb
«1345

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 98
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Relic

    This has probably been posted before but I'm getting real frustrated at how slow Safari, FireFox, IE, Mozilla and Netscape renders it pages under OSX. I?m a web-app programmer for a financial corporation; I create extensive reports that when printed out take up at least 10 ? 15 pages of paper. On Windows, Linux, Solaris or BSD these reports render in about 10 seconds, OSX 55 ? 1:20. It goes for sites with lots of pictures or graphs as well. Anybody have some speed-them-up techniques that I can borrow because this is really starting to piss me off. My Boss is also a Mac user and he?s starting to think I write bloated programs. This is not the case, in fact I?ve learned better programming techniques trying to optimize my code just for Mac users.



    Example of machines used;



    Powerbook G4 12 1.33ghz 1.25gb <- Mine

    Powerbook G4 TI 1ghz 1gb

    PowerMac G4 Dual 1.25ghz 1gb

    iMac G5 1.8ghz 1gb




    I noticed that you gave not a single example of any of the non-Macs used. Without this information, no one can either dispute your contentions or help you find a solution for your problem. Without speaking to the accuracy of your observations, I have counterexamples in my own professional life.
  • Reply 2 of 98
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr. Me

    I noticed that you gave not a single example of any of the non-Macs used. Without this information, no one can either dispute your contentions or help you find a solution for your problem. Without speaking to the accuracy of your observations, I have counterexamples in my own professional life.





    PC,s Used;

    Compaq d530 2.8ghz 512mb

    Sun Blade 150 650mhz 1gb

    Sun Ultra 60 Dual 350mhz 2gb

    Dell Laptop 1.5 mhz 1gb



    Except for the Compaq these are pretty slow machines.



    Thanks
  • Reply 3 of 98
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    Quote:

    My Boss is also a Mac user and he?s starting to think I write bloated programs.



    You'll have to explain how that relates to opening a web page.



    From personal experience, and through a test just then in which I loaded a 271 page document in around 13 seconds, I'd have to say I haven't seen what problems you're talking about. The part that took the longest was actually getting the file.



    It should be noted I work quite regularly with both PCs and Macs and since Safari came out I really haven't seen any substantial speed difference. It is possible your issues lie with OpenGL and how macs draw certain things. If that's the case then I'd suggest the problem will be fixed come Tiger.
  • Reply 4 of 98
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Telomar

    You'll have to explain how that relates to opening a web page.



    A lot, the pages are created dynamically from PHP and MySQL. Poor scripting is usually the main cause for slow performance. I also think it?s the graphics sub-system. I still get those spinny wheels of death on a regular bases when displaying heavy graphics and I still haven?t seen a Mac albeit the new dual G5?s that can resize a Safari window or iTunes without jerking.
  • Reply 5 of 98
    ijerryijerry Posts: 615member
    I think your problem my lie with PHP and Mysql. I believe that the code is on the server for those databases, with that it checks for what web browser you are using then reformats the data accordingly...I further believe that they have trouble identifying what browser is what when it comes to the Mac side. They are optimized for IE. So, that may be your problem, or I could just be talking out of my ass again.
  • Reply 6 of 98
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ijerry

    I think your problem my lie with PHP and Mysql. I believe that the code is on the server for those databases, with that it checks for what web browser you are using then reformats the data accordingly...I further believe that they have trouble identifying what browser is what when it comes to the Mac side. They are optimized for IE. So, that may be your problem, or I could just be talking out of my ass again.



    Thanks for the reply; PHP is a server side scripting language that generates (echoes/prints) HTML according to conditions met in the program, i.e. if (this) then(that). Unlike JavaScript, the browser cannot directly parse(execute) PHP code. The only way PHP would not be compatible with the browser is if I intentionally echoed out a HTML tag or JavaScript function that the browser didn?t support. As for MySQL, it communicates directly with PHP hence the browser doesn?t know it exists.
  • Reply 7 of 98
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Just to rule out the obvious things: Does quitting and relaunching Safari have any effect?



    After a few days it starts getting s l o w...
  • Reply 8 of 98
    relicrelic Posts: 4,735member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    Just to rule out the obvious things: Does quitting and relaunching Safari have any effect?



    After a few days it starts getting s l o w...




    If I clear the cache I'll get a few seconds. The thing is for everyday surfing OSX is fine, just as fast as a PC. However, when surfing on content rich pages or "self made super reports" it's slow.
  • Reply 9 of 98
    Is there any flash or stuff like that on it? I too notice that Safari is generally slower than PC browsers, and most of the issues come from ads and stuff like that on the page.



    One thing that I might suggest is that Safari seems to halt doing everything when it's waiting for more data. Often I'll be half way through rendering a page, then safari will sit there with a beach ball as it waits for file 13/18. Then it will get it and continue making the page. With PHP and other dynamically generated pages, it could be waiting for some part of data when it should be rendering what it already has.



    I think the culprit is tables. I suspect that Safari needs all the contents of a table, or at least a chunk of it before it attempts to render it whereas other browsers just render what they have and modify it as more content comes. If your PHP script is using large tables (which I suspect it is), perhaps you can try breaking it into smaller tables (each about the size of a screen) and see what happens.



    Code Master
  • Reply 10 of 98
    Post a URL so we can independently test your claims.
  • Reply 11 of 98
    Have you ran your site through the W3C validator? It can point out malformed HTML that Safari may have to work extra hard to accomodate.



    The URL for the validator might be:

    http://validator.w3c.org





    However, I have also noticed that tables are very slow in Safari. Not so much on the rendering side of things, but just scrolling the screen when there is a large table. However, I am using a 400 Mhz G3, so maybe I shouldn't expect too much.





    Do you use CSS, or do you have a bunch of font and color tags inside of each table cell? Using CSS might make the page render faster.



    PHP and MySQL should have no impact at all, because the server processes the code, not the client. (I realize that you know this already if you're writing PHP code)



    Are you using JavaScript? I heard that JavaScript was significantly improved in recent versions of Safari, but I don't really know if that is true. However, if you are using a slightly outdated version of Safari, that may be relevant.
  • Reply 12 of 98
    I work with mysql a lot querying upwards of 700,000 data points and it may simply be that the server that it is running on has not done the query recently so it drags that way. Don't get me wrong Safari has some issues, but I have had fairly good experiences with rendering tables and such. Another option is to think of a clever way to display the reports. I have had do do such things before. I have a db of images (of which i can't discuss, and no its not porn) that have associated information with them. and i have basically broken the web page down into chunks and only have it display what i need at that time...drastically speeding up the process...rather the servers querying time...I have done some tests with the server versus the web page and they seem to tak almost the exact same time...however if the query is changed by one small point the whole deal has to be run over again and I loose all of the cache slowing the process down again...Looking back I don't know if this will be any help but i just thought I would share my insight.
  • Reply 13 of 98
    What version of Mac Os X are you using for this? One the many reasons I don't want to upgrade from Mac OS 10.1.2 is the slowness that I have witnessed on the iMacs at university, which have just been upgraded to OS 10.3 from OS 9. It takes as much as 30 seconds to load every page using firefox, but I thought that might just be specific the the way they were set up, or because their iMacs are slightly slower than mine (which is also slow, G3 600mhz). Safari is a bit faster, but the whole internet connection seems sluggish despite the normally extremely fast university connection. Is it the case that 10.3 is worse than earlier versions in this regard? I don't have any problems with 10.1.2 regarding internet speed on my machine. It goes at a pretty normal speed (no slower than any pc) on IE that came with it, Omniweb, Mozilla 1.4, and Netscape 6.2.



    Another reason to hate the idea of upgrading? Do later Mac OS X versions slow the internet whilst older ones do not?
  • Reply 14 of 98
    amoryaamorya Posts: 1,103member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Morgoth

    Another reason to hate the idea of upgrading? Do later Mac OS X versions slow the internet whilst older ones do not?



    Later versions of OS X are faster than earlier versions, in general.
  • Reply 15 of 98
    Morgoth, is it possible that bandwidth for the school is maxxed out during peak times, and your observations were made during peak times?



    Mac networking has gotten slicker with time, in my opinion (ie: caching DNS queries automatically, etc)
  • Reply 16 of 98
    I think you point out something that is hard to clock.. But anybody who sits at a windows machine all day and then goes home to their mac will notice that the internet feels more "sluggish" even on a faster mac...



    however, I've notice huge speed improvements in the latest safari betas as well as network speed improvements with tiger 10.4 beta (HUGE wireless performance gains)
  • Reply 17 of 98
    telomartelomar Posts: 1,804member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by webmail

    I think you point out something that is hard to clock.. But anybody who sits at a windows machine all day and then goes home to their mac will notice that the internet feels more "sluggish" even on a faster mac...



    I don't. Perhaps it's just the sites I visit.
  • Reply 18 of 98
    mr. memr. me Posts: 3,221member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by webmail

    I think you point out something that is hard to clock.. But anybody who sits at a windows machine all day and then goes home to their mac will notice that the internet feels more "sluggish" even on a faster mac...



    however, I've notice huge speed improvements in the latest safari betas as well as network speed improvements with tiger 10.4 beta (HUGE wireless performance gains)




    For the most part, the connection at work tends to be faster than the connection at home.
  • Reply 19 of 98
    This site is very interesting and compares issues and performance of both Mac and PC browsers.



    http://www.quirksmode.org/



    I'm not a programmer, but it is somewhat enlightening and may give some insight into performance differences.
  • Reply 20 of 98
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr. Me

    For the most part, the connection at work tends to be faster than the connection at home.



    Generally however I have a dual 1.25ghz powermac and 2 pcs at work. One of which is 700mhz dell (crapola) with 256mb of ram and windows 2000. It pulls up pages faster than any mac web browser i've tried... :P even opens appleinsider faster ;-)
Sign In or Register to comment.