Why does the 'Lorenz' animation run slowly on a Mac when using MATLAB?

I would like to know why the 'Lorenz' animation runs very slowly on a Mac. i noticed that this also affected the performance of some of my figure plotting routines.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The reason why 'Lorenz' animation runs slow on Mac computers may be related to the fact that Sun's rendering code path is disabled.

To work around this issue, some customers have found it helpful to do the following:

1 - Use Java 1.5 Update 4 or a more recent version from Apple.

2 - Enable Sun’s rendering code path by disabling Quartz:

2a - Create a java.opts file in the $MATLABROOT/bin/$ARCH

($MATLABROOT is the directory returned by typing

MATLABROOT

and $ARCH is the directory corresponding to your system architecture)

Alternatively, you may create the java.opts file in the directory where you start MATLAB.

2b - Add

 -Dapple.awt.graphics.UseQuartz=false

to the java.opts file.

With Java 1.5 Update 4 and this flag set, the Lorenz Attractor should execute faster.

For details on how to change the version of Java that MATLAB is using on a Mac, see the related solution below: "How do I change the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that MATLAB is using?"