Remix.run Logo
PaulHoule 3 hours ago

On my Mac is is beachball… beachball… beachball… reboot… beachball… beachball… beachball.. you’d have thought somebody gets paid to make me watch the beachball for how much it happens. And this is a top of the line M4 mini with maxed out RAM and everything.

eknkc 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I had forgotten that mac has a beachball cursor. Something’s wrong on your macbook. (M4 max here)

PaulHoule 2 hours ago | parent [-]

What am I supposed to do, drive 300 miles to the nearest Genius Bar?

madeofpalk 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What would you do if your non-Apple computer was having performance issues?

PaulHoule 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'd say this. I haven't had a Windows desktop computer with serious problems since 2007.

I had a long string of Windows laptops that were basically OK from maybe 2013 to 2023 except for problems with USB that got progressively worse over time (for each machine.) I think some of them were were real hardware problems but I think also the USB 3 spec doesn't guarantee that you can plug in very many devices and have it work, it depends on the PCIe architecture inside the machine. That "ding" sound when a USB device disconnects from windows has traumatized me and I've turned it off anywhere where I can because it is like a gunshot to a Vietnam vet.

I found very little literature about other Windows laptops users facing these problems but endless posts by AppleCare frequent fliers who seem to spend their lives at the Genius Bar and getting their old defective laptops replaced with new defective laptops, I think Windows users just expect it to be all screwed up.

For a long time Windows has struggled with processes that suck down a lot of resources at boot time. At home it is things that do software updates and saturate my 2x20Mbps internet connection. At work it is the backup program that saturates my Ethernet.

bornfreddy an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Debug it? Swap some components? Good luck with that on that shiny closed box.

stefanfisk 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What have you tried?

PaulHoule an hour ago | parent [-]

Mostly getting stuff done on the Windows machine in the next room or playing music off a different stereo or playing music on cassette tape or minidisc on the same stereo, etc. It's easier to fall back to a world of 20th century electronics where latency is imperceptible than it is to dive into a world of third-party apps that were all designed around somebody's inscrutable KPIs but didn't consider at all my convenience or inconvenience. Probably it is Creative Cloud updating or some software for the mouse or some kind of crap and if I sat in front of the machine for 30 minutes it might settle down but it's rare that I sit in front of it for 30 minutes. It used to be that kind of thing wrecked the Windows experience but over a long period of time Microsoft did a lot of work to balance to load of startup processes and mostly you don't feel it.

My wife browses the web a lot on that Mac, she hasn't complained since I installed Firefox + uBlock Origin but maybe she expects it to be slow.

timothyduong 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Base m4 Mac mini. Only beach balling is when I saturate 16GB with compiles and builds. That thing of yours is a lemon.

bobbane an hour ago | parent [-]

Lemons do happen with Apple Silicon.

I had a Mac Studio that would kernel panic on a semi-weekly basis. Apple Care put me through the reinstall OS / remove all external devices tap-dance for weeks, insisting that hardware was the last thing to suspect - before Apple Silicon, kernel panics were almost always hardware, particularly RAM.

Ultimately I bought another Studio and swapped it in - kernel panics went away. With that evidence, Apple acknowledged the problem and exchanged my Studio for another one from the factory. I returned the swap unit within the 30 day window, so it didn't cost me anything but annoyance.

darkwater 24 minutes ago | parent [-]

Needing to shell out... what? 2000 bucks to prove Apple Support they were wrong seems a very, very bad sign for that Support. Even if you got them back.

storus 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My 128GB RAM M3 Max had logic board replaced 3x and I am still getting beachball alongside screen falling apart in blocks... There is something wrong with their firmware, especially when you are switching between multiple users often.

PaulHoule 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I think user switching is part of the problem in my case.

dgxyz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

WTF are you doing with it? Mine doesn't do that (M4 Pro MBP / 24Gb)

PaulHoule 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Try to browse the web. Try to listen to music with Plexamp. Ordinary boring stuff but I think it is looking all over Slovakia for my AirPods or something so it can take them away from whatever machine I really want to use them on.

The feeling is exactly like the way it was with Windows circa 2005 when you expected your machine to go bad like cheese in a few months.

dgxyz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Are you sure yours isn't broken? My daughter has an M4 and she does hefty biochem stuff on it. No beachballing or anything. Same with my M4 Pro.

Also airpods move instantly here. No issues.

K0balt an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Something is seriously wrong with your machine or one of the persistent apps you are running.

Backup, reset to factory. Try using it, if it’s fixed, try restoring. If it’s not fixed it’s defective in some way.

If it’s broken only after you restore, manually import your data and install apps one at a time making sure nothing breaks before installing the next.

beacon294 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My problem was simply chrome so I switched to brave.

HoldOnAMinute 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How many Electron apps are you running?