Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

(GUIDE) Leopard Speed Improvements

eyoungren said:
Possibly another optimization here:

Code: 
sudo pmset -a disksleep VALUE
Click to expand...

For spinning (mechanical) hard drives this is a good tip. It will can help reduce power draw and if using a laptop can extend battery run time.

Keeping mind there are no moving parts in a SSD. So if you happen to be using a SSD there is no need / advantage.

You can completly disable disksleep for both BATTERY & CHARGER modes by entering this command

Code: 
sudo pmset -a disksleep 0
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: eyoungren
Although it isn't really speed related, this does make Leopard better appear to be running on an Intel machine. It makes everything that displays on your screen look deeper, more vibrant, and less washed out, too.

Go into System Preferences, then Displays, Color, then select your current profile, and click the 'Calibrate' button. Click continue when the window comes up, and then choose '2.2 Television Gamma', instead of '1.8 Standard Gamma'. 2.2 is the setting all Intel OS X releases have used by default since 10.6.

Anyway, after that, set the white point at its native setting, then save the profile. Your computer will now look much better.

-

I've got another tip for speeding Leopard, though. (And this works with all OS X releases, too.)

Launch System Preferences, and open the Keyboard and Mouse pane, then you should be in the 'Keyboard' section by default. Set the 'Key Repeat Rate' to 'Fast', then 'Delay Until Repeat' to 'Short'. Typing should now be much zippier, without feeling too fast. Learned that on an edition of the MacWorld magazine from the mid 2000's. :)
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: aalls159, AmazingHenry and eyoungren
Hmm, I added an SSD to my DLSD but typing in Spotlight feels like I'm wading through concrete. Any ideas?
 
Dronecatcher said:
Are they connected to network shares? I seem to remember in the distant past, as soon as you type in Spotlight, it's scraping all network drives too.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I forgot about that. In Spotlight (System Preferences) you can exclude items. Perhaps there are some devices that no longer exist that are included still and Spotlight may be looking for them?
 
In case it wasn't very obvious, and if anyone else puts their Applications folder in the Dock to act as a primitive Launchpad like I do, I've found that decreasing the number of items in your Applications directory (uninstalling unneeded applications, moving utility applications like Font Book, Automator, AppleScript, etc. to the utilities folder...) greatly increases the speed at which the Dock Application folder opens its grid, thus making graphical performance seem snappier.

Before (slow to open):

Picture 1.png


After (quick to open):

Picture 2.png


And the animation is totally flawless if you have Quartz2DExtreme + QuartzGl enabled and BeamSync turned off.

We inch ever closer to bringing Leopard to the ranks of its Intel brother and giving it the tiny optimizations it never got, hence my love for community solutions. :)
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Raging Dufus, bobesch, G4fanboy and 1 other person
@z970mp: What's the difference between the "Stuff" and "Things" folders if you don't mind me asking? To me, stuff and things is the same :D
 
  • Like
Reactions: z970
I use the same type of folder names. Like "dump" "stuff" "sort" for things that need to be accessed at some point, but are in the way anywhere else.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: z970
z970mp said:
Although it isn't really speed related, this does make Leopard better appear to be running on an Intel machine. It makes everything that displays on your screen look deeper, more vibrant, and less washed out, too.

Go into System Preferences, then Displays, Color, then select your current profile, and click the 'Calibrate' button. Click continue when the window comes up, and then choose '2.2 Television Gamma', instead of '1.8 Standard Gamma'. 2.2 is the setting all Intel OS X releases have used by default since 10.6.
Click to expand...

Was just reading through this old thread to see if there were any tweaks I hadn't applied, and stumbled on this. This is 100% a matter of opinion on what looks better I guess, but wow! IMO, my Powerbook's LCD has never looked better after applying that!
 
  • Like
Reactions: z970
Well, I wasn't expecting to cause a heated internal debate over the difference between "Stuff" and "Things".

Actually, I'm not doing anything particularly important at the moment, so I'll explain. :D

I needed one folder to put all my directories of subdirectories of files in, and I didn't want to use the built-in Documents folder because I heard from somewhere that a full Documents folder slows boot speed, so reasonably, I wanted something immediately accessible on the Desktop.

Cue the Panther retail box:

2019-02-27-076.jpg


2019-02-27-078.jpg


If you look closely, you can see the "Stuff" folder the guy in the photo made, which I thought was a great idea and used the concept ever since. Been doing it for years.

As for "Things", I was moving some "things" from my Mac Pro to my G5 (because I was going full PPC once more, which is not quite as impossible to do now that the platform's Linux scene is evolving), which I still have not gotten to sorting out yet. I gave the folder that name after less than 5 seconds of thinking, because it was there for transitional purposes.

I do hope everyone is satisfied.

@Amethyst1 That's the point. All that said, I'm not completely without subtle humor in my life. :D
[doublepost=1551283408][/doublepost]
dbdjre0143 said:
Was just reading through this old thread to see if there were any tweaks I hadn't applied, and stumbled on this. This is 100% a matter of opinion on what looks better I guess, but wow! IMO, my Powerbook's LCD has never looked better after applying that!
Click to expand...

I don't think it's really a matter of opinion. 1.8 objectively looks washed out. 2.2 is objectively deeper, with richer-looking colors. You can compare the two.

You can also do the same in Tiger, Panther, and probably before. It's what I do on all my installs.

Though in any case, glad I helped.
 
z970mp said:
If you look closely, you can see the "Stuff" folder the guy in the photo made, which I thought was a great idea and used the concept ever since. Been doing it for years.
Click to expand...

Same here - for years as a designer my HDD was named "STUFF"..only after working for a particularly humourless company did I adopt the sober and unimaginative "HD"
 
  • Like
Reactions: z970
z970mp said:
Well, I wasn't expecting to cause a heated internal debate over the difference between "Stuff" and "Things". [...]
Cue the Panther retail box:
View attachment 823749
View attachment 823748
[...]
I do hope everyone is satisfied.
Click to expand...
Yep, fully satisfied. Gonna name all our boys "Adrian" ... ;)

To be serious: I like old pictures from original retail-boxes.
And the idea of naming folders "things" and "stuff" is something I do also make use of. I do like the naming of "Things" and "Stuff". Mine is named "#Ablage (= #Inbox") to keep the desktop free from being littered (most of the time I do not succeed). The "#" make important folders top of the list. (I actually use "@" but that letter will mess around with user-names in this forum).
I use an "#MyDocuments" subfolder within the Documents-folder for my personal files and folders and my "#Inbox" is the first subfolder within "#MyDocuments" followed by others, that are named the same on all of my my machines (#Ablage, #COMPUTER, #DEVONthink, #Financial, #Home, #Job, #Privat, #Uncategorized.
I've put an Alias of "#Inbox" onto my desktop to keep all files within the User/Documents-Folder and keep the User/Desktop-Folder free from personal files.
That is because I use to make backups of the Document-Folders of all my different machines to an external SSD (CCC is set to start backup, as soon, as the external drive is connected, which makes backup very convenient).
Backup-procedure on my main Mac is also set to backup all the document-backups of the other machines back to that main-Mac. So I have all files from all machines at hands.
Sounds a bit awkward, but I like to use different old machines side-by-side and on the other hand also like keep things together in one place.
I didn't notice any glitches concerning a big Documents-folder.

Instead of spring-cleaning the Programs-folder I've created a separate folder, that contains Aliases of my favorite applications and linked that folder to the Dock too. Aliases can be also renamed by purpose and Apps already in the Dock can be left out.

Dock.png
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: z970
amagichnich said:
A while back we had a thread about deleting a specific audio related kext to improve speed even a bit more - does anybody remember which one it was?
Click to expand...

AudioIPCDriver.kext.

Found in both Tiger and Leopard.
[doublepost=1553366809][/doublepost]We should really have this thread pinned and readily accessible. I'd argue it is just as important as alternative operating systems, new user guides, and the TenFourFox tweaks.

What does everyone think of that?
 
  • Like
Reactions: B S Magnet, heyimquinn, tigerintank and 2 others
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back