Help me understand my laptop + Google
June 13, 2016 12:42 PM
When my laptop (MacBook Air) wakes up from sleep, I have a really hard time reconnecting to Google stuff: my Gmail, my google docs, even just plain old google.com. At the same time that all of this is happening, I can connect to all sorts of other web pages.
For example, Gmail will give me a "loading" message...and then just get totally hung up. I can have a Google doc open already but it will tell me that it's trying to connect to server...and then get hung up. It might resolve itself in 30 seconds. It might still not have changed 5 minutes later. If I close the window or tab, sometimes I can open a new window/tab and everything is resolved. Sometimes those too refuse to load. Then a few minutes later all is well.
It only happens maybe 25% of the time when I wake up my computer. And, as I mentioned, while this is going on with these Google pages all my other tabs are working just fine. I'm running 10.11.5 on a mid-2011 Air, using Safari.
What gives?
For example, Gmail will give me a "loading" message...and then just get totally hung up. I can have a Google doc open already but it will tell me that it's trying to connect to server...and then get hung up. It might resolve itself in 30 seconds. It might still not have changed 5 minutes later. If I close the window or tab, sometimes I can open a new window/tab and everything is resolved. Sometimes those too refuse to load. Then a few minutes later all is well.
It only happens maybe 25% of the time when I wake up my computer. And, as I mentioned, while this is going on with these Google pages all my other tabs are working just fine. I'm running 10.11.5 on a mid-2011 Air, using Safari.
What gives?
This may be more an issue with your wifi having to reconnect then with google specifically.
posted by gryftir at 1:52 PM on June 13, 2016
posted by gryftir at 1:52 PM on June 13, 2016
(It's not the wifi -- other pages will connect while the Google-related pages won't.)
posted by BlahLaLa at 2:02 PM on June 13, 2016
posted by BlahLaLa at 2:02 PM on June 13, 2016
I have the same problem, which is especially annoying because we use google products for email and documents at work. At least 2-3 times per day my poor little MacBook Air just gives out trying to load Gmail or Gdocs. I usually just close the tab that's stuck and open a new one and it's fine.
A web developer I work with told me that it's because Google products are very "front end" heavy, meaning they are doing a lot of work in your browser using Javascript and your computers processor- as opposed to doing the work in the "back end" (a big powerful server somewhere) and then delivering the info to your browser with APIs when the hard work is done. I'm probably getting that explanation completely wrong but anyway, I was told I could either get a more powerful computer (no way, I love mine) or use the mail app to manage my email instead of Gmail in the browser. I tried that for a while but wasn't crazy about it so I just deal with having to close and re-open my mail or docs when they hang up.
posted by cilantro at 2:09 PM on June 13, 2016
A web developer I work with told me that it's because Google products are very "front end" heavy, meaning they are doing a lot of work in your browser using Javascript and your computers processor- as opposed to doing the work in the "back end" (a big powerful server somewhere) and then delivering the info to your browser with APIs when the hard work is done. I'm probably getting that explanation completely wrong but anyway, I was told I could either get a more powerful computer (no way, I love mine) or use the mail app to manage my email instead of Gmail in the browser. I tried that for a while but wasn't crazy about it so I just deal with having to close and re-open my mail or docs when they hang up.
posted by cilantro at 2:09 PM on June 13, 2016
I have the same problem, which is especially annoying because we use google products for email and documents at work. At least 2-3 times per day my poor little MacBook Air just gives out trying to load Gmail or Gdocs. I usually just close the tab that's stuck and open a new one and it's fine.
Same "fix" as cilantro, also on an Air.
It's annoying, but not the end of the world
posted by TravellingCari at 2:33 PM on June 13, 2016
Same "fix" as cilantro, also on an Air.
It's annoying, but not the end of the world
posted by TravellingCari at 2:33 PM on June 13, 2016
Google has some insanely complex server architecture. It seems to me that when you take the Mac out of sleep it's just finding a new possibly-flaky Google server to connect to.
And because properly recovering from a loading error is a Hard Thing, especially when you have as many moving parts as a Google Javascript app, it just gives up and you have to reload your tab.
I mean, we're talking about the company that paid a lot of money to some very clever people to write the first high-performance Javascript interpreter (Chrome's "V8" engine) just so they could get away with making Google Apps even more elaborate.
posted by neckro23 at 2:50 PM on June 13, 2016
And because properly recovering from a loading error is a Hard Thing, especially when you have as many moving parts as a Google Javascript app, it just gives up and you have to reload your tab.
I mean, we're talking about the company that paid a lot of money to some very clever people to write the first high-performance Javascript interpreter (Chrome's "V8" engine) just so they could get away with making Google Apps even more elaborate.
posted by neckro23 at 2:50 PM on June 13, 2016
So, it isn't the wifi, but hear me out: what if it actually is?
There is weirdness with wifi and DNS that occurs for me sometimes when I wake my Mac from sleep. Some apps, but not all, will exhibit similar behavior to what you're describing. And it doesn't happen all the time. At least 90% of the time, these problems are resolved for me if I turn wifi off and back on again. A small percentage of the time I have to reboot to clear everything up.
posted by fedward at 3:44 PM on June 13, 2016
There is weirdness with wifi and DNS that occurs for me sometimes when I wake my Mac from sleep. Some apps, but not all, will exhibit similar behavior to what you're describing. And it doesn't happen all the time. At least 90% of the time, these problems are resolved for me if I turn wifi off and back on again. A small percentage of the time I have to reboot to clear everything up.
posted by fedward at 3:44 PM on June 13, 2016
I have the same problem with my iMac and find that disabling IPv6 helps. Although it seems to get enabled again after a while for some reason - possibly software updates.
posted by thejanna at 6:41 AM on June 14, 2016
posted by thejanna at 6:41 AM on June 14, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by aniola at 12:57 PM on June 13, 2016