Recently, older-model Mac users were asked in a reddit thread to provide details regarding our experience with Minecraft 1.13. My experience so far hasn't been great, so I've been experimenting a bit.
A short time after joining a single-player world in 18w30b, my kernel_task process starts to chew up the CPU. When this occurs, the Minecraft Java process also starts consuming more CPU, and this escalates until my entire system slows to a crawl. The snapshot is effectively unplayable after 10-30 seconds (excessive block lag, continuous rubber banding, etc.).
Now, excessive CPU usage by kernel_task is not unheard of, and there are various suggestions as to both the cause and the resolution (often resetting the SMC and/or PRAM), but in this case I can correlate it directly to the Minecraft Java process. The kernel_task will continue its high-CPU consumption, even after I exit the world to the title screen, until the Minecraft Java process is exited. At that point, the kernel_task immediately returns to normal.
I don't know exactly why Minecraft is being so heavy on the core OS process. This was not (and is not) an issue in 1.12.2. Please let me know if you need me to track down further details.
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Crash report attached. kernel_task was just starting to exhibit the behavior when I initiated the crash.
Note that the reddit post was mostly to check if we needed to up the minimum requirements in community support
Understood about the purpose of the reddit post. Personally, I think it would be a good idea to up the requirements. Although the game is playable, it requires a good deal of configuration that effectively trims the Minecraft experience (fast graphics, minimal particles, etc.). Running pretty much any version of Minecraft at more than 30 FPS on my pre-2014 laptop will turn the keyboard into lava.
The performance is indeed better in 1.13.1. However, it's still not really playable to any extent. This may have more to do with some of the new chunk loading and entity culling. For example, depending on the render distance, I can see the entity count whip back and forth between what I assume is a normal number, and something in the high hundreds (even thousands or tens of thousands). It's during the abnormally high entity counts that I notice the most significant lag. Extreme numbers cause the game to halt on my machine.
Please force a crash by pressing
F3 + Cfor 10 seconds while in-game and attach the crash report (minecraft/crash-reports/crash-<DATE>-client.txt) here.