Logos 4 still not up to speed (no pun intended)

Inasmuch as I appreciate all the hard work, and I'm hopeful of Logos' future on the Mac, I have to say that it's still very sluggish and jerky. I know we have quite a few fanboys who refuse to believe it, but Logos for Mac is very sluggish for me. I have a perfectly capable machine (Core 2 Duo, 4 gbs or ram, GeForce 8600 256mb graphics card, 500gb 7200rpm WD HD. Scrolling is jerky, panels are jumpy, spinning beach balls when trying to open and close on occasion. Is it just me?

Perhaps there are some adjustments that need to be made on my end?

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Ben Phillips

I have seen some of the same problems with L4 on the Mac. I much preferred the speed of Logos when I was running it on the PC. I have found that scrolling and searching are both much slower now. I have a MacBook Pro with 2.4ghz core i5; 8gb DDR3; dedicated 256mb graphics; 320gb 7200rpm drive with 120gb free (usually half is free but I recently ripped some movies that I have not dropped to an external drive yet).

I have other programs that are heavy loads but they still run better than Logos does. Perhaps it has something to do with being written exclusively for OsX as none of these are cross-platform.

One curious thing I noticed today in my activity monitor. Logos is not identified as being a 64bit program when it is running. Is it still running on 32bit? Could this be part of the reason for the slowdown?

Love Logos. Just wish it ran more efficiently.

Mr. Simple

I have seen some of the same problems with L4 on the Mac. I much preferred the speed of Logos when I was running it on the PC. I have found that scrolling and searching are both much slower now. I have a MacBook Pro with 2.4ghz core i5; 8gb DDR3; dedicated 256mb graphics; 320gb 7200rpm drive with 120gb free (usually half is free but I recently ripped some movies that I have not dropped to an external drive yet).

I have other programs that are heavy loads but they still run better than Logos does. Perhaps it has something to do with being written exclusively for OsX as none of these are cross-platform.

One curious thing I noticed today in my activity monitor. Logos is not identified as being a 64bit program when it is running. Is it still running on 32bit? Could this be part of the reason for the slowdown?

Love Logos. Just wish it ran more efficiently.

I have the same issues and the hardware is not the bottleneck, it is clearly in software

My setup

Server - Mac Pro 2010 Quad Core with 16 gig of RAM

Operating System - OS/X 10.6.8 running in 64 bit mode.

Nominal Operating Environment - The Server is dedicated to Logos, no other applications are used other than system utilities

Graphics - ATI 5770 with 1 gig of video RAM

Disk Subsytem - The entire system and Logos installed on a dedicated state of the art Solid State Disk drive from OWC

260 Megabytes a second on Read/Write sustained
Up to 50,000 I/O operations a second sustained

Network/Intranet -

Dual Gigabit Ethernet (Link aggregated for 2 gigabit) for connection at the server.
Aggregated and switched ethernet at the hub

Internet - Fiber Optic Network to the house with a 100 megabit upload speed

Logos Limitations

Logos runs in 32 bit mode
Logos does not take advantage of the available RAM
Logos does not take advantage of the available cores

mab

I think you will see some operational improvements in the next (4.3) release. I have a less capable Mac, but I still can get some things done on it. It's more zippy on my older PC, so I switch to that when I need to run some things with less churning. I really love L4. This program is a true game changer. Nothing else comes close.

I haven't run my copy of Accordance in months.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

Please elaborate what is slow, would like to try to replicate so Logos developers can have a repeatable test case.

From a previous Logos 4 Mac slowness discussion, learned about reverse interlinear scrolling issue, which has been greatly improved in current 4.3 Beta development cycle => Scrolling: Reverse Interlinear Bible, which can be very slow at times

Adventurous option is installing current 4.3 Beta to try out improvements (many items noted in wiki Mac and PC User Interface Differences => Feature Parity section). Wiki has => Logos 4 Beta Program page with information and risks: could join this Beta development cycle, then switch back to stable release using set update channel to default command.

Earlier in this 4.3 Beta development cycle, releases were buggy (crashed a lot for many). Recently switched a stable 4.2b SR-1 installation to 4.3 Beta 11 to test resource downloads (found download could hang, but took fewer restarts than stable to download many resources); also hope to verify automatic transition to stable 4.3 release (update channel is set to default, not beta).

If encounter Logos 4 Mac Beta issue, can post in Mac Beta forum for support and discussion.

Typically Beta releases are couple weeks apart; for past 5 weeks, new Beta has been released weekly. Looking at Logos 4.3 Beta 11 release notes, noticed two known issues that are not Personal Book Builder (PBB) related (premier new 4.3 feature).

Logos 4 is currently a 32 bit application on Mac & PC. Thankful for quicker response using 64 bit Snow Leopard kernel, link included in Wiki Mac Troubleshooting => Slow Performance section.

Observation: Logos 4 is resource intensive on Mac & PC – benefits from fast processor, graphics, and disk along with adequate memory (i.e. newer hardware since Logos 4 being designed for use over 5 to 8 years).

Personally observed Logos 4 Mac menu responsiveness being noticeably quicker on 2.93 GHz Quad Core i7 compared to 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, but still can be frustrating to use due to humanly noticeably lag time between click and drop-down appearance (e.g. File, Layouts, Search Resources, etc) on Mac & PC.

Knowing Logos 4 on Mac & PC can be disk intensive at times (e.g. opening a layout with many resources) and understanding data transfer rates slow down from outside of rotating disk to inside, I partitioned a new 7200 rpm drive into 4 partitions: outermost 40 GB dedicated for Logos 4, then split space into three partitions by size so operating system in 2nd faster data transfer, medium transfer speed partition, and slow transfer partition. Now have Logos 4 in fastest physical transfer area of rotating disk drive.

Note: partitioning not applicable to Solid State Disk (SSD), whose controllers distribute data (for wear leveling). Looking at SSD specifications, have noticed wide range of transfer rates (somewhat slower than disk drives to much faster).

Keep Smiling [:)]

Mr. Simple

I think you will see some operational improvements in the next (4.3) release. I have a less capable Mac, but I still can get some things done on it. It's more zippy on my older PC, so I switch to that when I need to run some things with less churning. I really love L4. This program is a true game changer. Nothing else comes close.

I haven't run my copy of Accordance in months.

I love Logos 4, just addressing the limitations of throwing hardware at the problem at this stage of maturity. The software is lagging behind in terms of exploiting hardware advances that have occurred in the last couple of years.

David Mitchell

Improvements to performance are being made on a continuing basis. As Michael Ballai indicated, certain operations in the current beta of 4.3 are significantly faster than they were in 4.2b. Additional improvements are coming in the next beta of 4.3, and I even have extra tweaks and fixes on my machine that aren't yet ready to be shared with the world.

Mr. Simple

Improvements to performance are being made on a continuing basis. As Michael Ballai indicated, certain operations in the current beta of 4.3 are significantly faster than they were in 4.2b. Additional improvements are coming in the next beta of 4.3, and I even have extra tweaks and fixes on my machine that aren't yet ready to be shared with the world.

Awesome !

Jack Caviness

Additional improvements are coming in the next beta of 4.3,

Good to hear. Can I ask, "What about some improvements to Notes?"

Fr. Charles R. Matheny

For me, speed and ease has not improved in better than six months, still hammers my processor, still slow to scroll.

Before being asked "what in particular is slow", the answer is : Everything.

Will not invest more until program works decently without having to spend time "geeking/tweaking" the program to make it work decently. This is not something Mac Owners usually do, it is not part of our life, not part of our makeup. We are used to installing and using, setting some preferences for workflow, but not used to having to do odd things like reading wiki pages to make things load and work, tweaking all kinds of performance values and such.

Logos has potential, just not there yet.

My opinion is that Logos has tried to do too many things at once, perhaps better to do one thing at a time, do it extremely well, then move on to the next thing.

In this case, stable platform that uses memory, processor well, then work on feature parity. I think features came before performance which is what has thrown things into difficulty across different Macs/feature sets. It's just a thought, just my own, nothing more.

Will keep what I have and keep watching for improvements, but agree, this is not a mature platform for Osx as yet.

Blessings.

Dan

Please elaborate what is slow, would like to try to replicate so Logos developers can have a repeatable test case.

As far as what is slow, you answered your own question: it's the GUI. As the original poster said, "Scrolling is jerky, panels are jumpy, spinning beach balls when trying to open and close on occasion."

To me, this is inexcusable! The entire application "feels" slow, not because it performs tasks slow (although that may be the case) but it is just NOT responsive. Period.

Observation: Logos 4 is resource intensive on Mac & PC... but still can be frustrating to use due to humanly noticeably lag time between click and drop-down appearance (e.g. File, Layouts, Search Resources, etc) on Mac & PC.

Knowing Logos 4 on Mac & PC can be disk intensive at times

There is no way that Logos 4 is more resource intensive or disk intensive than video editing or 3D modeling or photoshop or any number of "real" heavy duty applications! My Mac handles all of these tasks great without slowing down the GUI. Users understand that some tasks take longer to complete than others, but it does not make sense for the GUI to be so unresponsive. Logos 4 is the absolutely least responsive application on my machine, without exception! That is not a good thing for the future of Logos on the Mac. The number of times this has been mentioned on these forums bears witness to the number of users who are incredibly frustrated by the substandard performance. Despite the promises of improvement, the GUI is still the slowest application I've EVER used on the Mac. What other application can you name that takes several seconds just to display a menu once you click on it? Please, please, please fix the GUI. (And make it work like a Mac, i.e. Open menu, etc., not like a Windows port.)

Andrew Hanson

What is the ETA of 4.3?

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

Please elaborate what is slow, would like to try to replicate so Logos developers can have a repeatable test case.

As far as what is slow, you answered your own question: it's the GUI. As the original poster said, "Scrolling is jerky, panels are jumpy, spinning beach balls when trying to open and close on occasion."

Wondering what Logos resource(s) are irritating to scroll ? up or down ? magic mouse ? magic pad ?

Wiki has http://wiki.logos.com/Screenshot that describes how to capture and post screen shot(s), which would be helpful to see jerky scrolling Logos resource(s).

Wondering if "panels are jumpy" is same issue as thread => BUG: Completely unexpected behaviour

Observation: spinning beach balls can be an indication of RAM shortage for all open programs; cursor spins while paging being done.

Older scrolling issue with Reverse Interlinear Bible had a memory leak; more scrolling meant more memory used (and spinning beach balls). Current Logos 4.3 Beta12 includes fixes for scrolling speed and memory leak. While replicating older scrolling issue learned different Logos resources scroll at different speeds.

For grins, used page up and down to scroll Lexham Hebrew-English Interlinear Bible (with manuscript, transliteration, and English). Press page up (or down) key, wait a second or two for update on 27" iMac (with one processor spiking). In contrast, using arrow keys to scroll up and down moved nicely.

Running Logos 4.3 Beta 12 on 2.93 GHz Quad Core i7 has usable Mac Menu for me (File, Guides, Layouts). Albeit Layouts takes a second for initial display. In Bible Search, clicking on Top Bibles takes several seconds to show list of my collections (also slow on PC).

What is the ETA of 4.3?

Looking at Logos 4.3 Beta 12 release notes, appears Personal Book Builder (PBB) known issues are shrinking. Once PBB ready for stable release, anticipate stable 4.3 release candidate (speculation: possibly later this month, depends on PBB progress).

Keep Smiling [:)]

Ben Phillips

So I decided to try the 4.3 beta since there are supposed to be improvements in the speed. I have worked with it for the last 24 hours or so and the issues that I have been concerned about are still the same.

When you do a Bible search in "Top Bibles" the scrolling is jerky when using the 2-finger gesture on my trackpad or my Logitech mouse. The same is true in Basic Search as well. Even in commentaries, there is some jerking (though not as noticeable) as it seeks to "catch up." I understand the amount of content being accessed, but the overall interface feels sluggish which is something you cannot exactly take a screenshot of without making a video of your screen (which of course is possible).

I have basically tried every suggestion offered for speeding up the Mac performance, but none of them solve the jerky nature of the GUI when working with the larger materials. Even if the search is the only thing running, the problem is still there. I have dedicated graphics always on, 8gb of Ram, and a more than sufficient processor. Others see the same with better specs and even with SSDs (which I have been drooling over). One other thing I noticed again today, even in the beta, is that the "guides" menu at the top hesitates before loading. I had this problem under 4.2 as well.

There are just areas of sluggishness in the interface. If these are simply inherent to the nature of the large database with which Logos is working and nothing can be done to help it, then so be it. But if there are improvements that can be made to the program itself, that would be even better.

I wonder which it is?

David Mitchell

I wonder which it is?

There are a couple of known issues regarding scrolling in search results that have not yet become top-priority issues. If you know good developers, please send them to http://jointheawesome.com/ so that we can get to these sorts of fixes more quickly.

Ben Phillips

I wish I knew some. Thanks for the response though. At least we know the issues are known. In previous forums all that seemed to be said was there must be a problem with this or that. So obviously it is not a problem on any one person's system, but an issue that Logos is aware of and working to fix (with time and programmers of course).

Thanks for the info David!!! I am glad we finally know that Logos is aware.

Matt B

I'm kind of glad to see this thread. I recently purchased an i5 iMac with the 500GB HDD. I have an i7 Windows laptop with Logos on an SDD. I had hoped to get rid of the Windows laptop and go just mac, but Logos was frustratingly slow, and I thought it was maybe being spoiled on SSD.

Can't wait for the performance enhancing updates!

Patrick S.

[...]them to http://jointheawesome.com/ so that [...]

Hello David - just to let you know - the actual link behind text above is incomplete, is only "http://joi/"

MJD

I wonder which it is?

There are a couple of known issues regarding scrolling in search results that have not yet become top-priority issues. If you know good developers, please send them to http://jointheawesome.com/ so that we can get to these sorts of fixes more quickly.

Hi David,

I am sure you know the slow clunky feeling on a Mac is frustrating! I hope your efforts at Logos are focused first and foremost on basic performance on the Mac before any upgrades to features. I really think this lack of performance is a serious issue, and I hope it is being addressed as such. I would rather see performance improved before new books being released. Are the same programers used to make new book resources? If they are it would be really nice to get everyone on the performance issue first and foremost.

blessings,

Mike

Fr. Charles R. Matheny

I agree with Mike, adding resources and features before improving/fixing operations is/would be a mistake that will only compound the issue.

If the truck does not run well, has bad tires, adding more weight will only make things worse and could lead to complete failure.

Would love to see Logos function well/efficiently across Mac Platforms it is rated for, then see features/resources added.

Thanks to David for the honest reply.

It is good to feel "heard" and not feel like there must be something "wrong" with us for wanting the program to run on a Mac like other programs do.

I really appreciate Davids response.

Blessings,

Rusty+

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

Are the same programers used to make new book resources?

Suspect not; Logos has over 40 full-time developers (plus hiring more) => What Logos development is doing that includes:

Windows has more users than Mac, but Mac is behind and needs improvement, and it is gaining market share on the way to 50%. We consider it equally important to Windows, and already are at the point where some new work is Mac first, then ported to Windows.

Also, Logos has ~100 resource product managers => http://community.logos.com/forums/p/35165/267014.aspx#267014

Keep Smiling [:)]

David Mitchell

I hope your efforts at Logos are focused first and foremost on basic performance on the Mac before any upgrades to features.

We have somewhere around 40 developers at Logos, many of whom have little or no Mac experience (especially those working on Android, web services, etc.). To ask everyone to start focusing on the performance of the Mac product would actually slow any such efforts down. While I would love to see more Mac developers join Logos (http://jointheawesome.com), I can assure you that it would not be in anyone's best interest to retrain the people who are already working on other teams at this time.

I would rather see performance improved before new books being released. Are the same programers used to make new book resources?

The skills necessary to make books and the skills necessary to tune our software products are not interchangeable. I, for one, would make a horrible book designer…