Another vintage silver palace

200 MB of Nothing – Thanks Apple

Richard Charpentier Macintosh, Notes from Rich, Tech Reviews, Tech Tips 1 Comment

This morning I was so sick and tired of slow network issues.  Ever since the upgrade to OSX Yosemite the headaches are mounting.  So I did some searching, reading, and monitoring and learned a few things about my Macbook Pro today.

OCSPD is hogging my bandwidth

There’s a process that you can find in your activity monitor called ocspd.  What is it?  What does it do?  Well, it verifies security certificates for your time on the net.  Now security certificates are small things, not large at all…..  Which is why I found myself wondering why OCSPD had consumed 195 MB of bandwidth within 30 minutes of my starting up the computer this morning!  While I was hunting around to learn more about it we went over the 200MB  marker.

Now, for someone hooked up on unlimited home cable service, who cares?  200MB is nothing, right?  Well, for folks on the road using 4G LTE, bandwidth caps are often around 10GB.  The OCSPD service at lets say 200MB per day will total up to 6GB per month, leaving you with 4GB of usable bandwidth.

Woah!  This explains a ton about my recent bandwidth usage spikes.

Call a beta a beta

It used to be that when new operating systems weren’t quite ready, developers would call it a beta test system and have people try it out for them.  Today it seems that Apple has moved forward with dumping betas on us as complete and final operating systems.  It’s not just this one service that’s an issue.  There are multiple network issues that people have been complaining about since the launch of Yosemite, and the issues have not been fully addressed.

Many people have been experiencing WiFi issues.  And there are fixes out there that require users to turn off the AirDrop feature, and other similar services.  The OCSPD issue has been around since Mavericks, and has never been satisfactorily resolved too.

It’s no longer Christmas for Apple

With each new OS release I always waited impatiently like a kid on Christmas.  That’s how much I’ve enjoyed OSX since 2002.  But with the last 2 major updates I’ve been more than a little disappointed.  Honestly, when the next major release comes out I can promise you I will not be an early adopter.  Somewhere along the way Apple has lost the vision that drove it for so long.  And it’s not just OSX…..the last few “improvements” to the IOS have actually left me with a slower phone, slower apps, and a feeling that Apple has abandoned me as a customer.

So, if you’re an RV’er depending on 4G service on the road, watch your activity monitor.  Read up on the “fixes” for these issues (Apple should just fix the issues as they are known and well documented).  And if you think you’re using too much bandwidth for what you’re doing, you probably are.

 

Comments 1

  1. When I updated my iPhone to 8.1 (skipped 8.0, it was a bug fest) I found it would just stop wifi connectivity randomly. This I worked around by powering it off, then back on. I finally traced the failure to a new feature called “hand off”, when I shut that off in system settings my problems when away.
    As for OS X, Snow Leopard was the best recent iteration. Rock solid stability, used close to 0% cpu when idling. Of course OS X is still years ahead of Windows, have you been subjected to the Win 8 debacle? I hear the next Win will be v10 to separate it (via marketing) from 8.

Leave a Reply