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My desktop Mac is a late 2017 21 inch 4K iMac, 8 GB RAM (2 4 GB DIMMs), 1 TB fusion drive, 3.4 GHz Quad Core i5 processor. It’s upgradeable by the brave to 16 or 32 GB RAM.
I switched from Quicken 2007 to SEE Finance for 3 reasons: - Death knell for 32-bit Quicken
- Subscription model inevitable for Quicken
- SEE finance seemed to have reporting capabilities that came closest to approximating Q2007.
However, it’s been a struggle. I really dislike many of the UI elements. However, what’s killing me is the launch time, which has climbed steadily and now can be as long as a full minute after clicking its icon in the dock (I’m on 10.14.6).
Just now, Activity Monitor tells me that only WindowServer is consuming more RAM (1.2 GB) than SEE Finance just after lanch (866 MB), although right now I have 14 apps with a UI open.
Apple says the computer can be upgraded to 32 GB RAM; OWC says 64 GB, with 2 32 GB DIMMs, for < $200 and < $400 respectively.
Activity Monitor says I have a > 1 GB swap file at the moment, but “memory pressure” is low.
Fusion drive seems to be working normally, but I think if I were to venture inside it would go bye-bye in favor of an internal SSD.
My question:
First, for other SEE Finance users, are launch times like this typical on relatively current hardware?
Second for iMac users who’ve been inside, is this kind of surgery something a non-stupid but non EE-certified user can accomplish on the dining room table (without ruining my marriage)?
And for experienced macOS users in general, is a RAM upgrade likely to help enough to make this worthwhile?
I’ve done lots of screwdriver and Torx-driver requiring upgrades on Macs over the years, including processor swaps, and even snipping a motherboard resistor and a bit of soldering on an early Mac Plus (to bring it up to the then astounding RAM of 4 MB (remember, the original Mac could talk and Captain Magneto could step around that tiny screen powered by only 128 KiloBytes of RAM).
However, I’ve never lifted the screen off any iMac, nor replaced a car windshield using suction cups. The nearest Apple Retail store is 256 miles and two states away in Spokane. (I know because I suggested a pilgrimage to Spokane to my spouse when we learned that a little wrinkle in our Audi Q5’s left rear fender meant that the car has to be flatbed-transported there—also the closest Audi dealership—for collision avoidance sensor recalibration after someone in an unidentifiable pickup of indescribable color, somewhere between primer and baby-poop, backed into it while we were “securely stationary" in a parking garage eating sandwiches; far from attempting to flee, instead the somewhat confused “other party" pulled forward for another attempt. which in his cannabis fueled state likely would have been no more successful than the first). My wife was uninterested in the trip; of course, I “forgot” to mention it’s also the closest Nordstrom Retail Store.
Jim Robertson
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Your 8G ram should be adequate. More ram may help but it might not make any difference. Is it faster loading if you don't have any other apps running?
It kind of sounds like your Finance software might be trying to load its database into ram (for faster access?). maybe not.
I think you should contact the developer of your software and see if they know about this problem. There may be some sort of maintenance procedure that will help keep the app running smoothly.
Dave?
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By the way, adding RAM does not require taking the iMac appart. There are 2-3 screws holding a cover at the bottom center of the screen that lets you access the RAM slots.?
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On Oct 21, 2019, at 9:15 AM, Dave Kelly via Groups.Io < drkelly@...> wrote:
Your 8G ram should be adequate. More ram may help but it might not make any difference. Is it faster loading if you don't have any other apps running?
I quit from the app, then relaunched it and reached a fully loaded UI by about 20 seconds. I should mention that I’m experiencing the same thing in Excel and Word, now that I’m Office 365/2019 for Mac (subscription based). I think that’s unforgiveable, too. I don’t blame my computer or my OS installation because everything else I do seems to run as quickly as it used to. In the early days of VW Dieselgate, (2015) I was a frequent user of an online Excel workbook that summarized the experience of many thousands of unhappy VW owners whom VW made happy by buying back their cars; the entire workbook was reachable by mere mortals only online, and it loaded and calculated incredibly quickly. I’ll have to try to see if I can find that amazing bit of work again and ask its author if he’s had the same experience with the newest versions of Excel and Word. It kind of sounds like your Finance software might be trying to load its database into ram (for faster access?). maybe not.
You’re right. I should contact the developer. I’ll post again after I’ve done so.
By the way, adding RAM does not require taking the iMac appart. There are 2-3 screws holding a cover at the bottom center of the screen that lets you access the RAM slots.? Actually, that’s not the case for my computer (iMac 18.1, 18.2. OWC, MacFixit, and many others have videos showing how to do it. Given that the back of the Motherboard IS reachable though that little cupboard on many iMacs, one must wonder whether perversity rather than the “runway model, you can never be too rich or too thin” distorted body image was the motivation for this design. Watch the videos; they will terrify some, but the one I watched ended with its author saying it had been a “fun” project.
Jim Robertson
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By the way, adding RAM does not require taking the iMac appart. There?are 2-3 screws holding a cover at the bottom center of the screen that lets?you access the RAM slots.?
Not, I think, on the model of iMac he described…
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Unless they changed something recently, that is true of the 27” iMacs, but not the 21.5” ones, and he said he had the smaller one. On Oct 21, 2019, at 11:22 AM, Dave Kelly via Groups.Io < drkelly@...> wrote:
By the way, adding RAM does not require taking the iMac appart. There are 2-3 screws holding a cover at the bottom center of the screen that lets you access the RAM slots.?
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If we could, perhaps a reminder to carry the conversation forward when we post. AT this point I don’t know to whom you are responding.
?
Thank you for your consideration.
--?
Vincent Winterling
Vineland, NJ
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Your 8G ram should be adequate. More ram may help but it might not make any difference. Is it faster loading if you don't have any other apps running?
It kind of sounds like your Finance software might be trying to load its database into ram (for faster access?). maybe not.
I think you should contact the developer of your software and see if they know about this problem. There may be some sort of maintenance procedure that will help keep the app running smoothly.
Dave?
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Sorry, I try to do that. When I answer from the web page the messages flow is much better.
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If we could, perhaps a reminder to carry the conversation forward when we post. AT this point I don’t know to whom you are responding. ? Thank you for your consideration. --? Vincent Winterling Vineland, NJ
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On Oct 21, 2019, at 9:15 AM, Dave Kelly via Groups.Io < drkelly@...> wrote:
Your 8G ram should be adequate. More ram may help but it might not make any difference. Is it faster loading if you don't have any other apps running?
It kind of sounds like your Finance software might be trying to load its database into ram (for faster access?). maybe not.
Just now I looked at the same task (launching SEE Finance) on my late 2016 15” Quad Core i7 MacBook Pro 2.7 GHz , 16 GBytes RAM, 512 GB internal SSD. The program loaded completely in 10 seconds, and occupied about 850 MB of RAM when it was finished loading. That’s a comparable space to what’s committed on the iMac, where my swap file is twice the size and the total available RAM is half as much.
So, I suspect more RAM might help. I’ll contact the developer for verification or other ideas.
Jim Robertson
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On Oct 21, 2019, at 7:31 PM, jimrobertson via Groups.Io < jimrobertson@...> wrote:
Just now I looked at the same task (launching SEE Finance) on my late 2016 15” Quad Core i7 MacBook Pro 2.7 GHz , 16 GBytes RAM, 512 GB internal SSD. The program loaded completely in 10 seconds, and occupied about 850 MB of RAM when it was finished loading. That’s a comparable space to what’s committed on the iMac, where my swap file is twice the size and the total available RAM is half as much.
So, I suspect more RAM might help. I’ll contact the developer for verification or other ideas.
The Scimonoce Software folks answered my inquiry about the slow launch times of SEE Finance and acknowledged that it does load its entire database into RAM at launch. However, I’ve discovered a few other oddities that puzzle me.
- If I have a bunch of apps open on the 1 TB Fusion-Drive, 8 GB RAM iMac, so that the RAM in use shown by Activity Monitor is about 7 GB and the swap file is > 1 GB, then launch SEE Finance for the first time in awhile, it can take 50 seconds to open its first account window (there’s a “Loading” flash screen displayed until then).
- Here’s what’s weird: if immediately, I quit from SEE Finance, then launch it again, it only takes about 10 seconds to load and display the same account window.
- Here’s what’s even MORE weird. If I reboot the iMac and make sure that the only app with a user controlled interface that autolaunches is Activity Monitor, launching SEE Finance (with less than 4 GB of RAM in use) again takes 50 seconds for first launch, 10 seconds for relaunch.
I’m guessing (wildly guessing) that there are two bumps in the road to launch. One is probably the 8 GB of total RAM; the second may be the Fusion Drive, and how/where the OS puts stuff (rotating platter vs the very small SSD that’s part of the Fusion drive) when I launch the app.
Despite the videos I’ve watched regarding upgrading the innards of a 21.5 inch iMac (which should be accompanied by the March to the Gallows Scherzo from Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique as a soundtrack), I think I might take that leap, but I certainly won’t tell my wife first! While I’m in there, if it’s possible I’ll swap out the Fusion Drive and replace it with a fast SSD.
If no one hears from me for a few days, you’ll know what I’m doing (but it won’t be now; I’ll give fellow list members plenty of time to try to talk me out of it).
The curious cat in me will also want to experiment a bit to see which wrinkle in the architecture of my iMac is the greater impediment to full-throttle performance (RAM limitation or Fusion Drive). To sort that out, I think I’d have to do the upgrades separately from each other, but I certainly don’t want to peel that 4K display off the front of the so-thin chassis twice. I have an external monitor; does anyone know if the iMac can be operated without the screen in place hiding its internal organs?
Jim Robertson
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The Scimonoce Software folks answered my inquiry about the slow launch times of SEE Finance and acknowledged that it does load its entire database into RAM at launch. However, I’ve discovered a few other oddities that puzzle me.
- If I have a bunch of apps open on the 1 TB Fusion-Drive, 8 GB RAM iMac, so that the RAM in use shown by Activity Monitor is about 7 GB and the swap file is > 1 GB, then launch SEE Finance for the first time in awhile, it can take 50 seconds to open its first account window (there’s a “Loading” flash screen displayed until then).
- Here’s what’s weird: if immediately, I quit from SEE Finance, then launch it again, it only takes about 10 seconds to load and display the same account window.
- Here’s what’s even MORE weird. If I reboot the iMac and make sure that the only app with a user controlled interface that autolaunches is Activity Monitor, launching SEE Finance (with less than 4 GB of RAM in use) again takes 50 seconds for first launch, 10 seconds for relaunch.
I’m guessing (wildly guessing) that there are two bumps in the road to launch. One is probably the 8 GB of total RAM; the second may be the Fusion Drive, and how/where the OS puts stuff (rotating platter vs the very small SSD that’s part of the Fusion drive) when I launch the app.
I was about to suggest that, if you have an SSD to work with, that you try booting from, and starting SEE from the SSD. Then I remembered that what you said you had is a 1TB Fusion drive.
Some of this is almost undoubtedly stuff being read from the HD side of the Fusion drive onto the SSD for faster use, but being cleared off in favor of other uses after a period of not being accessed.
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On Oct 23, 2019, at 9:49 AM, Jim Saklad via Groups.Io < jimdoc@...> wrote:
Some of this is almost undoubtedly stuff being read from the HD side of the Fusion drive onto the SSD for faster use, but being cleared off in favor of other uses after a period of not being accessed.
So, before I do iMac surgery, I need to figure out whether I need a “stick” SSD or a “drive” size SSD to replace my Fusion drive. I think there’s a way to reformat the SSD portion of the Fusion drive and leave it in the case, but I suspect if I want the fastest performance I want the SSD “stick” to insert on the motherboard in the same place, in which the SSD part of the Fusion drive becomes useless silicon, and perhaps the rotating platter becomes a second internal drive.
Jim Robertson
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So, before I do iMac surgery, I need to figure out whether I need a?“stick” SSD or a “drive” size SSD to replace my Fusion drive. I think?there’s a way to reformat the SSD portion of the Fusion drive and leave?it in the case, but I suspect if I want the fastest performance I want the?SSD “stick” to insert on the motherboard in the same place, in which the?SSD part of the Fusion drive becomes useless silicon, and perhaps the?rotating platter becomes a second internal drive.
Jim Robertson
I *think* Apple implementation is that there are a physically separate?“blade” SSD and a SATA rotating disk HD which are *electronically*?merged to act like a single fused drive. iFixit’s site shows your model with a blade SSD and also with a HDD. If you replaced the HDD with a SATA SSD (e.g.,?an?OWC Mercury Extreme?Pro 6G) in 1- or 2-TB size,?I don’t know how you would tell?the OS to NOT try to make it a fusion drive.
Or maybe, while you’re in there, you also replace the small blade SSD with a not-quite-so-small super-fast SSD, and let the 2 be a fusion pair.
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On Wed, 23 Oct 2019 at 19:12, Jim Saklad via Groups.Io <jimdoc= [email protected]> wrote: I *think* Apple implementation is that there are a physically separate?“blade” SSD and a SATA rotating disk HD which are *electronically*?merged to act like a single fused drive. iFixit’s site shows your model with a blade SSD and also with a HDD. If you replaced the HDD with a SATA SSD (e.g.,?an?OWC Mercury Extreme?Pro 6G) in 1- or 2-TB size,?I don’t know how you would tell?the OS to NOT try to make it a fusion drive.
Or maybe, while you’re in there, you also replace the small blade SSD with a not-quite-so-small super-fast SSD, and let the 2 be a fusion pair.
Does Disk Utility show the drives? If not, try diskutil list in Terminal. According to <> the flash storage is in the range 24 - 128 GB.
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Does Disk Utility show the drives? If not, try diskutil list
The application does (sort-of) show the 2 contributions to the Fusion drive, but it provides less information than does Micromat’s MachineProfile, which displays both the rotating platter internal SATA drive (5800 rpm) and the PCI module SSD (28 GB — amazing that we now think of that as being “small.”
People at OWC tells me I’d get the best performance from an OWC PCIe SSD, which isn’t TOO much more than a SATA module, leaving the current internal rotating platter drive in place. I could reinstall Mojave on it, but of course it wouldn’t be as snappy as it is now without a tiny PCI-e “turbocharger” SSD as part of the same logical volume. I don’t have a bunch or 32-bit apps hanging around, however, and I doubt that if I installed Catalina on the Aura-Pro 2X 1 GB PCI-e SSD I ‘d be booting to that laggardly internal rotating platter drive very often.
I have one other (sort of) related question, although we’ve wandered pretty far afield from why SEE Finance can take so long to load as an app.
I still don’t understand why Apple is insisting that we no longer run 32-bit apps. Clearly the hardware can still run them. Does crafting the new OS to permit that somehow limit its capability, or prevent some security protections from working correctly?
Thanks so much,
Jim Robertson
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On Oct 23, 2019, at 2:51 PM, jimrobertson via Groups.Io < jimrobertson@...> wrote:
I still don’t understand why Apple is insisting that we no longer run 32-bit apps. Clearly the hardware can still run them. Does crafting the new OS to permit that somehow limit its capability, or prevent some security protections from working correctly?
I googled why 64 bit applications and got a few answers:
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On Oct 23, 2019, at 4:27 PM, Dave Kelly via Groups.Io < drkelly@...> wrote:
I googled why 64 bit applications and got a few answers:
Thanks for the pointer. However, most of the responses address a question I didn’t ask; i.e.,"why would I want to run 64 bit apps and not 32 bit apps," rather than “why would the OS developers make it so that 32-bit apps won’t run at all?”
I guess I should ask this question on the Apple support forums. I’ll do so.
Jim Robertson
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While there may be some security issues or some hard-to-avoid incompatibilities between new features and 32-bit apps (I don’t know), there are a number of deprecated APIs that are 32-bit only. Maintaining lots of backwards compatibility is expensive and adds complexity (making reliability more difficult). It uses more RAM (both versions of libraries loaded, for example), etc.
It happens with almost all OSs that, after a couple years warning, they drop old features, as much as anything to make room on the developer’s workload for new ones.
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On Oct 23, 2019, at 16:33, jimrobertson via Groups.Io <jimrobertson@...> wrote:
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Does Disk Utility show the drives? If not, try diskutil list
The application does (sort-of) show the 2 contributions to the Fusion drive, but it provides less information than does Micromat’s MachineProfile, which displays both the rotating platter internal SATA drive (5800 rpm) and the PCI module SSD (28 GB — amazing that we now think of that as being “small.”
People at OWC tells me I’d get the best performance from an OWC PCIe SSD, which isn’t TOO much more than a SATA module, leaving the current internal rotating platter drive in place. I could reinstall Mojave on it, but of course it wouldn’t be as snappy as it is now without a tiny PCI-e “turbocharger” SSD as part of the same logical volume. I don’t have a bunch or 32-bit apps hanging around, however, and I doubt that if I installed Catalina on the Aura-Pro 2X 1 GB PCI-e SSD I ‘d be booting to that laggardly internal rotating platter drive very often.
I have one other (sort of) related question, although we’ve wandered pretty far afield from why SEE Finance can take so long to load as an app.
I still don’t understand why Apple is insisting that we no longer run 32-bit apps. Clearly the hardware can still run them. Does crafting the new OS to permit that somehow limit its capability, or prevent some security protections from working correctly?
Thanks so much,
Jim Robertson
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On Oct 23, 2019, at 7:08 PM, jimrobertson via Groups.Io <jimrobertson@...> wrote:
Thanks for the pointer. However, most of the responses address a question I didn’t ask; i.e.,"why would I want to run 64 bit apps and not 32 bit apps," rather than “why would the OS developers make it so that 32-bit apps won’t run at all?” The answer is that the os developers want To be able to evolve the os to adopt new technologies So that they can do new things and not have to rely on old outdated libraries (some of which are 32 bit). So, at some point they cut the cord and it lets them move ahead instead of being bound by restrictions that 32 bit causes. Sure, they could stick with 32bit, but it is a drain on resources to have to develop for both 32 bit and 64 bit code. This also allow apple to support new hardware and keep up with competition. Dave
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Dave Kelly
Jim Saklad
