Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

TheSpaz · 10:31 PM

Lets all go to Apple support site and submit a bug report for the laggy slow menu hiliting in Tiger... it's not just on my machine and it doesn't matter how fast your machine is.

Open a menu and wave the cursor up and down... does the hilite skip items? ... Now try it in an app like iTunes, or Illustrator... doesn't that feel more natural and fast? I don't know what Apple changed in Quartz or whatever they did, but they need to fix it quickly.

My other theory is... maybe Quartz is so fast now... it draws and un-draws the hilite so fast it doesn't even show up. So maybe it's not laggy at all... but, they need to do something about this... this is the only real thing that makes Tiger feel slower than Panther... other than that... everything is pretty well zippy for me.

By the way I did an erase and install and everything works a LOT better... I'm guessing that Tiger didn't like the old preference files from Panther... maybe they were clashing.

azdude · May 3, 2005, 10:34 PM

Sorry, bud... works fine here.

ManOfSteal · May 3, 2005, 10:46 PM

What. Are. You. Talking. About?

TheSpaz · May 3, 2005, 11:12 PM

I'm talking about menu hilites. Open a menu and move your cursor up and down and see if the hilite appears to SKIP some menu items (that are not gray obviously). Then open iTunes... and FEEL the difference where the hilite follows your cursor really closely! Try it... I'm not going insane here... I already talked to a few people about it and they have the same exact problem and it doesn't matter how slow or fast your computer is.

ManOfSteal · May 3, 2005, 11:16 PM

It's the same for me man (as in it works just fine), sorry!

leperkuhn · May 3, 2005, 11:16 PM

No issues here.

TETENAL · May 3, 2005, 11:23 PM

Originally Posted by TheSpaz

I'm talking about menu hilites. Open a menu and move your cursor up and down and see if the hilite appears to SKIP some menu items (that are not gray obviously). Then open iTunes...

You keep telling us to try it first, then try it in iTunes. But you don't tell us in which app to try it first. In Safari and Finder I see no such problem. Which app is it where you try it first?

TailsToo · May 3, 2005, 11:26 PM

Not sure either... no problems here.

CharlesS · May 3, 2005, 11:36 PM

Originally Posted by TheSpaz

I'm not going insane here...

Sorry... I'm afraid you are.

ManOfSteal · May 3, 2005, 11:37 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Sorry... I'm afraid you are.

Yeah, you have passed "Go" and collected your stars...

icibaqu · May 3, 2005, 11:38 PM

hilite = highlight?

besson3c · 12:15 AM

We need to petition Apple...

When I put stuff in my trash can, the paper is a little off-white. In Panther, the paper was a perfect white.

I don't like the idea of having dirty looking trash, it makes me less productive. I can't believe Apple would do a think like this. Is there a way to downgrade back to Panther?

No offense to the original poster, but I find it amazing what concerns some people...

Zimphire · May 4, 2005, 12:12 AM

Originally Posted by ManOfSteal

What. Are. You. Talking. About?

What.He.Said.

Peabo · May 4, 2005, 12:41 AM

While it's extremely pedantic, I can actually see what he means.

powerbook911 · May 4, 2005, 01:36 AM

I can see what they mean too. However, it doesn't bother me. Maybe they will change this for you by accident at some point? I'm sorry it is causing you trouble though. Honestly. I hope you can find a solution or get used to it.

THE MAC GOD · May 4, 2005, 02:40 AM

I wasn't sure what you meant ... then I realized you mean 'highlights'... But my 400 g4 and 700 g3 iBook don't have problems... But I did completely clean installs of tiger on a zeroed out partition.

Chuckit · May 4, 2005, 03:34 AM

I still don't know what he meant. It's clear that he doesn't mean menu highlighting is universally laggy, since he clarifies that it behaves differently in "an app like iTunes or Illustrator." I'm not sure in what context this lag appears.

ASIMO · May 4, 2005, 03:56 AM

This inanity registers two notches above people resizing their windows all day long.

You should be stoned to death in public.

Or at least put into perspective your complaint.

Xeo · May 4, 2005, 04:18 AM

I think what he is talking about is, say you open your Bookmarks menu in Safari, then you move your cursor fast up and down over the (in my case a full screen height of bookmarks). It doesn't highlight every single item. It might skip 5 or 6 to keep up with your mouse rather than highlighting each for a split second. And the ones that it does highlight, it is a solid blue, hence looking "choppy".

Now in iTunes, it will, again, skip some. The menus are smaller so trying to get it to skip is more difficult. However, the ones that it does highlight, it is more of a transparent blue, I assume meaning it is one it is skipping, I think. There is definitely a difference in how they look.

That said, I would never have noticed this on my own. I will agree that it "looks" choppy in Safari, but it technically is not. It keeps up with your mouse, which is the point.

It would be good of Apple to make it consistent, one way or the other. I'll give him that. We do demand perfection.

ul1984 · May 4, 2005, 04:30 AM

i have this problem too, it is very noticable.

makes the menus feel kind of unresponsive imo

im not 100% sure its really skipping menu items, but something is clearly wrong.

JLL · May 4, 2005, 04:33 AM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

I still don't know what he meant. It's clear that he doesn't mean menu highlighting is universally laggy, since he clarifies that it behaves differently in "an app like iTunes or Illustrator." I'm not sure in what context this lag appears.

In cocoa apps the blue highlight skips items when you move the pointer down the menu quickly. In carbon apps it highlights every item.

TheSpaz · May 4, 2005, 08:06 AM

Originally Posted by ul1984

i have this problem too, it is very noticable.

makes the menus feel kind of unresponsive imo

im not 100% sure its really skipping menu items, but something is clearly wrong.

All I know is that when I switched to Panther something felt different about the menus (You do notice these things after using it one way for a long time and then it changing on you... and I don't sit there and scroll menus all day long to see if I can make it do it)... but, I did notice something different so I found out what it was doing and I reported it. I personally would rather have the quicker more responsive hilights like in iTunes.

Fonzie · May 4, 2005, 08:34 AM

I notice some slowdown here if I move the mouse really fast up and down. But not something that i'm upset about.

TheSpaz · May 4, 2005, 07:34 PM

I don't just wanna deal with it... I want it fixed... and if enough people report this to Apple... we can get it fixed in a future update. Please help me out here.

TimmyDee51 · May 4, 2005, 09:18 PM

I'm not sure if anyone remembers this (or would have reason to), but the same behavior has been around since (at least) Mac OS 8.6. How do I know this? When I got my first iMac (333 MHz), it was such a big upgrade from my parents' Performa 575 that I sat and whipped through the menus. This exact thing happened.

My hypothesis? If every menu item flashed as you scrolled up and down so fast, you'd probably have a seizure. We have just gotten used to seeing all menu items flash because the GUI was less responsive. It's been so long since anyone has used OS 9 extensively (with exceptions, of course) that we don't remember that this is a "normal" behavior. It may have taken a while, but I think the GUI speed in Tiger is damn close to OS 9 (finally).

d0ubled0wn · May 4, 2005, 09:39 PM

Originally Posted by THE MAC GOD

But I did completely clean installs of tiger on a zeroed out partition.

I took it a step further and dragged magnets across the hard drive. Just to be sure.

Appleman · May 4, 2005, 10:02 PM

I really did not understand what he meant, But after trying I do now. Pfff, if that's all you can find when having Tiger just new. But he is right.
Go to the Finder and choose Edit.
Now go fast up and down, it will skip some.
But I couldn't care less.

Cadaver · May 4, 2005, 10:31 PM

I think I see what he's saying, but I so rarely move over menus that fast that I probably would never have noticed.

ul1984 · May 4, 2005, 10:54 PM

quotes from AnandTech's Tiger review

But it would appear that I may have missed the boat, as performance in Tiger is a mixed bag. I'd say that overall performance in Tiger is an improvement over Panther, but there are some definite exceptions to the rule.

The biggest exception, from my perspective, is the fact that menu highlights always seem to just barely trail my mouse pointer in Tiger, whereas Panther kept up very well. At first, I thought that I was just imagining things, but then I set up a G5 test bed with two identical hard drives; the only difference being one drive had Panther while the other had Tiger. After booting them back to back, it's clear that my worries were founded. Tiger's menu highlight does seem to be slightly more laggy than Panther's.

My only complaint with UI performance continues to be the menu highlighting issue from earlier. It's not a show stopper, but it's definitely something noticeable.

TheSpaz · May 4, 2005, 11:12 PM

While we're on the subject about Tiger being a little less responsive in some areas... Finder scrolling seems to be a little sluggish... even in very simple windows with very few icons in them... it still doesn't seem as smooth as Panthers... Panther had a very very smooth scroll in Finder windows. Try it out for yourselves.

LightWaver-67 · May 4, 2005, 11:22 PM

Similar to others... I have 0 (zero) lag-time on my computer. The menu highlighting is dead-on.

Don't know what to tell yo. I 'almost' wished it DID happen for me. But nope. Acurate tracking on my machine. Sorry.

joltguy · May 5, 2005, 01:07 AM

Originally Posted by d0ubled0wn

I took it a step further and dragged magnets across the hard drive. Just to be sure.

eevyl · May 5, 2005, 03:36 AM

OMGWTF I demand a refund!

It.skips.menu.h1l1t3

TheSpaz · Jun 4, 2005, 09:41 AM

I was at work the other day in a Classic app and it's even SLOWER! Try it out. It was NOT like this in Panther, so for whoever was saying this has been this way since 8.6 or whatever... it's different now.

It definitely feels laggy to me and I don't like it. It makes my computer feel slow... if I had the ability I would take Panther's menus and stick them in Tiger because I can't stand the way the new Cocoa menus operate.

And for those of you who wanna joke around and stuff... so be it... I am serious about this and I want my $149 OS to be as smooth, or smoother than Panther... not BACKWARDS.

I didn't upgrade so I would have to learn to scroll through my menus slower and more carefully, I upgraded cause I thought that maybe Tiger would be FASTER than Panther... and it is for most part, but why the menus?

To me, this is annoying and I'm sorry for you slow users out there who don't give a rats ass and just upgraded cause you wanna play with Dashboard all day. I just wanna get work done.

besson3c · Jun 4, 2005, 01:27 PM

Originally Posted by TheSpaz

I was at work the other day in a Classic app and it's even SLOWER! Try it out. It was NOT like this in Panther, so for whoever was saying this has been this way since 8.6 or whatever... it's different now.

It definitely feels laggy to me and I don't like it. It makes my computer feel slow... if I had the ability I would take Panther's menus and stick them in Tiger because I can't stand the way the new Cocoa menus operate.

And for those of you who wanna joke around and stuff... so be it... I am serious about this and I want my $149 OS to be as smooth, or smoother than Panther... not BACKWARDS.

I didn't upgrade so I would have to learn to scroll through my menus slower and more carefully, I upgraded cause I thought that maybe Tiger would be FASTER than Panther... and it is for most part, but why the menus?

To me, this is annoying and I'm sorry for you slow users out there who don't give a rats ass and just upgraded cause you wanna play with Dashboard all day. I just wanna get work done.

Yes, I'm sure that whatever it is that you see that you cannot explain or express to the rest of us is preventing you from getting work done to the Nth degree. Since you can't get anything done, this explains why you would post this to these forums rather than... getting stuff done. After all, we are magic menu-speed-increasing specialists.

I'd really like to help you, but I can't because I'm busy playing with Dashboard....

LightWaver-67 · Jun 4, 2005, 01:46 PM

C'mon... there's no need to turn this thread sour.

I truly believe that people may be experiencing a slowdown with certain aspects, but I also believe that they are isolated incidents that although currently unexplained, are not an intrinsic trait of Tiger. Yes they manifested during the transition TO Tiger, and it may or may not be caused by a combination of DOZENS of things INCLUDING running Tiger.... but I cannot agree that Tiger is slower in any respect than Panther by nature, because my installation of Tiger is MUCH more responsive than Panther on identical hardware (It was an archive & install).

I feel your pain... it must be frustrating.

I was at a friend's house the other day (the one who recently switched to Mac) and as I was showing him some things, I noticed how slow and unresponsive EVERYTHING was on his Dual 2Ghz w/ over 2GB RAM. It was almost unbearable. I quit all open apps. Nothing. I Rebooted... no better... just as sluggish. I went into his "startup" items in the user's control panel and saw some Microsoft Office Test Drive crap that is enabled on startup. I shut it off and restarted.

BINGO!

Now... could it have been coincidental... could the problem just happen to have ceased as I chose to disable that...? Sure... I didn't do any "testing" per-se like re-enabling it and so-on... but I DO believe it is VERY possible for Tiger to become sluggish.

Best of luck finding the problem.
-LW67

CharlesS · Jun 4, 2005, 02:48 PM

Originally Posted by TheSpaz

I was at work the other day in a Classic app and it's even SLOWER! Try it out. It was NOT like this in Panther, so for whoever was saying this has been this way since 8.6 or whatever... it's different now.

It definitely feels laggy to me and I don't like it. It makes my computer feel slow... if I had the ability I would take Panther's menus and stick them in Tiger because I can't stand the way the new Cocoa menus operate.

And for those of you who wanna joke around and stuff... so be it... I am serious about this and I want my $149 OS to be as smooth, or smoother than Panther... not BACKWARDS.

I didn't upgrade so I would have to learn to scroll through my menus slower and more carefully, I upgraded cause I thought that maybe Tiger would be FASTER than Panther... and it is for most part, but why the menus?

To me, this is annoying and I'm sorry for you slow users out there who don't give a rats ass and just upgraded cause you wanna play with Dashboard all day. I just wanna get work done.

How on earth would this cause you to have to scroll through your menus more slowly or carefully? Is there some reason you absolutely must see the highlight on each and every menu item that you're not going to click on in order to get your work done? I don't get it.

This is purely cosmetic. I would never even have noticed it if this thread hadn't existed. Apple probably did it for performance reasons - because guess what, not having to draw a whole bunch of blue highlights in a tiny span of time is going to make things FASTER than Panther.

TheSpaz · Jun 4, 2005, 03:15 PM

The reason why it's annoying is that it tricks my eye into thinking the cursor isn't hovering over the selection that I want to make... so I have to double back and make sure I'm clicking the right item. It's not un-usable by far... I can still use menus fine but, it feels slower and it distracts me. Do you understand now?

I'm glad that you figured out your friends problem with Tiger but, my Tiger install was an Erase and Install without porting over all user settings and files (except for music and photos and such). I did a fresh install of all my Applications so that I knew everything was up to speed.

Tiger runs great on my machine and I don't have any Microsoft stuff in my startup items. Tiger is overall faster than Panther but, the menus got slower... that's all I'm saying... I like the old way... why can't I have my old menus back... that's all I mean.

I didn't mean to offend anyone earlier... I just get frusterated at Apple sometimes... And you know what... I better just start getting used to the slow menus because 10.4.1 didn't fix it and 10.4.2 probably isn't going to fix it and I am willing to bet nobody at Apple even gives a care about this problem. 10.5 will even come and pass and this glitch still won't be fixed...

It will be just like the stupid scroll bars and progress bars that NEVER get updated and still look like Mac OS 10.0 and probably will forever... nice and blurry and faded washed out blue (or graphite). I'm sick of just dealing with the problems and shrugging them off and (just getting used to it).

In closing... I hope Apple will fix this but, I'm not going to hold my breath. In the mean time, I'll just deal with it I guess... like always. Peace.

ginoledesma · Jun 4, 2005, 03:40 PM

Originally Posted by TimmyDee51

I'm not sure if anyone remembers this (or would have reason to), but the same behavior has been around since (at least) Mac OS 8.6. How do I know this? When I got my first iMac (333 MHz), it was such a big upgrade from my parents' Performa 575 that I sat and whipped through the menus. This exact thing happened.

I'm not sure exactly if you're saying that this same behavior (laggy UI) has been around since Mac OS 8.6. On a PowerMac G4/400 running Mac OS 9.2, the menu highlights are blazing fast, and with the Platinum soundset enabled, too.

Appleman · Jun 4, 2005, 03:42 PM

Originally Posted by ginoledesma

I'm not sure exactly if you're saying that this same behavior (laggy UI) has been around since Mac OS 8.6. On a PowerMac G4/400 running Mac OS 9.2, the menu highlights are blazing fast, and with the Platinum soundset enabled, too.

That was in the Snappy™ era

ReggieX · Jun 4, 2005, 05:23 PM

You need to replace your muffler belt.

Appleman · Jun 4, 2005, 05:49 PM

Originally Posted by ReggieX

You need to replace your muffler belt.

---off topic--- What's a muffler belt?

msuper69 · Jun 4, 2005, 06:15 PM

Geez, you'd think the world was coming to an end.

It's not a bug. It's a small way to add a bit of speed to the user interface.

aristotles · Jun 4, 2005, 06:54 PM

Open up Activity monitor and check to see if you have anything hogging the CPU. I was worried that Tiger was slower when I tried to play WCIII and WCIII FT and the fps was atrocious. It turned out that the TV Tracker Dashboard widget (before 1.5) had stalled a number of times leaving a under of python processes running in the background.

Are you running a shapeshifter theme?

Gamoe · Jun 4, 2005, 08:25 PM

What the heck is wrong with some of you? Why are you giving this guy sarcastic and rude replies? If it's too small a problem for you and you don't care-- that's fine, but why all the crap? Some of us do care about these small matters. TheSpaz hasn't gone all crazy about it either. And like Xeo said "We do demand perfection."

Rude/sarcastic comments are the noise in the conversation. They don't contribute anything to it, and interfere with it. Some of you would be better off keeping your comments to yourselves or learning to be more civil to others in a forum.

chris v · Jun 4, 2005, 09:11 PM

Originally Posted by Appleman

---off topic--- What's a muffler belt?

it turns the muffler bearing-- DUH!

Chuckit · Jun 4, 2005, 09:47 PM

Originally Posted by Gabriel Morales

What the heck is wrong with some of you? Why are you giving this guy sarcastic and rude replies? If it's too small a problem for you and you don't care-- that's fine, but why all the crap?

Well, he did order them to let Apple know. Making a "Fire! Fire!" thread about something so inconsequential is kind of begging to be made fun of. If I made a thread about how I'd prefer the Apple menu to be half a shade lighter (just 'cause I think it's pretty), I'd expect to be made fun of too.

xenu · Jun 4, 2005, 10:19 PM

You know it's going to be a slow day when you decide to move the curser up and down menus as fast as you can.

I have tried this on the longest menus I can find, and it is smooth - on a 700 Mhz iMac.
Not as smooth on my 1.25 Ghz Powerbook, but that's just the way my track pad is set up.

TheSpaz · Jun 5, 2005, 12:18 AM

I don't think you guys understand me. The hilight follows the cursor just fine... it just don't blink on every menu item so it "LOOKS" or "FEELS" laggy to me.

I'm not saying that the menu item hilight is lagging behind the cursor (that would be annoying as well) but, WHY ON EARTH WOULD THIS NEED TO BE CHANGED IN TIGER! What kind of perfomance hit was Panther recieving for drawing menu item selections???

To me... it's a bug. It wasn't meant to be. I can tell it wasn't meant to be that way because iTunes (as well as other Carbon Apps) do not suffer from this at all. It's purly Classic and Cocoa Apps.

The only reason I started this thread was... I didn't think Apple would notice this bug, and I feared that if enough people didn't report it... it would never get fixed... I just wanted it to get fixed in a future release but, if Apple doesn't realize it's there (sometimes they don't) IT WILL NEVER GET FIXED (unless it was accidentally fixed).

I kinda didn't want to be the only person who submitted a bug report on this... I was kinda hoping just for a second that people would take my side and get this info out to Apple (with me). There is power in numbers.

I know it's cosmetic, I know it's too small for "regular" people to notice, but I notice and it doesn't make my Tiger experience as wonderful as it COULD have been. Look at it from my point of view. Why would Apple purposly change this from Panther... to me, it's actually slower... I guess from what I'm hearing from you people is that it's faster and there's no lag or hint of a lag whatsoever.

So in closing... I guess I'm just gonna have to grit my teeth and hope that someone at Apple read my very nice feedback and is working on a fix... but, they probably noticed that I'm the only one who left feedback about the issue so it must be my particular setup only and I MUST HAVE done something wrong... That's kinda why I wanted some help... but, if nobody want's to help me... fine.

CharlesS · Jun 5, 2005, 12:22 AM

Originally Posted by TheSpaz

To me... it's a bug. It wasn't meant to be. I can tell it wasn't meant to be that way because iTunes (as well as other Carbon Apps) do not suffer from this at all. It's purly Classic and Cocoa Apps.

There are lots of difference between Cocoa and Carbon apps that have been in there for years without changing, so apparently that's not a good metric to use.

Although, I'd be happy as a clam if Apple would fix those discrepancies (particularly the line endings and the shortcuts in text fields).