My late 2009 27" iMac has been running slowly more or less since I 
upgraded to Sierra at version 10.12.1. The late 2009 model is the 
oldest iMac that supports 10.12. I thought the slow performance 
might just be because the old machine was having trouble keeping up.

Since updating to 10.12.2 it's even slower, but that could be 
coincidence. It's almost to the point of being unusable.

Disk Utility and Tech Tool Pro 9 (version not updated to 10.12) find
no problem with the drive.

Reinstalling 10.12 from the Recovery partition made no difference. 
Opening system.log from the Console results in "Unable to read the 
file".

The EtreCheck report at http://npcnt.net/temp/EtreCheck_3.pdf
indicates that there is a problem with User Launch Agents missing.

(EtreCheck says that a file in ~/Library/Application 
Support/1Password/ is missing. I don't have that folder; I do have 
~/Library/Application Support/1Password 4/, however. I am running 
1Password 6. WTF?)

I had been looking forward to the hard drive dying to provide an 
excuse to go buy a new computer. But I don't want that to happen 
until Apple releases the next version of the 27" (assuming there is 
a next version).

Could this just be a problem with missing files? Someone please 
suggest a way to fix this. I could reinstall 1Password. What about 
the other apps? 

-- 
John Varela

John Varela <newlamps@verizon.net> wrote:
> My late 2009 27" iMac has been running slowly more or less since I 
> upgraded to Sierra at version 10.12.1. The late 2009 model is the 
> oldest iMac that supports 10.12. I thought the slow performance 
> might just be because the old machine was having trouble keeping up.
> 
> Since updating to 10.12.2 it's even slower, but that could be 
> coincidence. It's almost to the point of being unusable.

I have the same Mac running Sierra. No slowness here, but have you had 
the dreaded freezing issue, where your whole Mac locks up and you can 
only move the moust pointer? There are monster threads about it on the 
Apple forums.

> Reinstalling 10.12 from the Recovery partition made no difference. 
> Opening system.log from the Console results in "Unable to read the 
> file".

The system.log is readable only by admin, and Console *still* doesn't 
have an authentication feature that lets you read system.log files from 
a non-admin account. Log in to an admin account to read it, or run this 
Applescript from your non-admin account:

do shell script 
"/Applications/Utilities/Console.app/Contents/MacOS/Console > /dev/null 
2>&1 &" with administrator privileges

> suggest a way to fix this. I could reinstall 1Password. What about 
> the other apps? 

I don't know about your missing files. What does Activity Monitor report 
when your Mac is running slowly to the point of being "unusable"? 

Have you tried logging in to a different user account to see if the 
slowness occurs there? 

-- 
K.

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