Mac OS UI Slow Response

I am new to Mac so forgive the naive question. I have used Windows & Linux for a long time in the past and no matter how slow the system becomes (this actually applies almost only to Windows), the UI is usually snappy if the system is not busy executing multiple background tasks. For example, if I click on a Window or hit Alt-Tab, the switch is almost immediate (unless of course, the application executes some tasks when its window is activated). However, this is not the case with my Mac and a simple click on even the Finder window takes between 500ms to 1000ms to take effect. This is always the case no matter how busy or free my Mac is. Even though it is relatively old (Early 2015), the hardware is quite powerful:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch)
Processor 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 16 GB 1867 DDR3
Graphics Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB

In comparison, my Ubuntu laptop (System 76) is about 3-4 years old, but it is much faster and I rarely feel I have to wait for a second or so before it switches application!

Has this always been the case with Mac, or there is something to configure on my machine?

Solution 1:

The best way (in my opinion) is to launch an application called Activity Monitor. You can do so by using spotlight (the magnifying class in the upper right hand corner), or by pressing Command+Space at the same time. Just type "Activity Monitor" and an option should pop up. This lets you see the CPU usage by process, as well at RAM being utilized, and a lot of other good metrics. This should help you get a good idea of what might be slowing down your machine.

Solution 2:

Yep, certainly not normal. In my experience Macs are almost always more responsive than Windows PCs under nearly any load as long as memory (RAM) isn't full.

Macs also don't go on "disk rampages" like PCs tend to, which always hits the PC with a load of latency every time it goes into a fit of disk access, so overall responsiveness should be much superior.