This has been my experience across Linux distros and was also the case on my MacBook Pro. Whenever I mention my MacBook issues the down voters swarm despite the fact that there is an open bug regarding poor performance on certain MacBook configurations. And no the performance fix for Macs that came out a few months ago didn't resolve it.
Is it faster on Windows? This would be quite fascinating if it is the case - my experience with windows is that it is an all round slacker when it comes to performance.
