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Speeding up Mac

K

ktalebian

macrumors regular
Original poster
Hi, what are some good tips, and/or programs (free most favorably) that help you speed up your Mac?
 
ktalebian said:
Hi, what are some good tips, and/or programs (free most favorably) that help you speed up your Mac?
Click to expand...

I like XSlimmer, it really does help with application start up times. It also helps you save a little space.

Past that.... I can't really think of anything, other than to make sure that you have around 20% of your hard drive empty.
 
Cheapest one:
Decrease your screen resolution and/or color settings.

Other free one:
Start your Mac with your original MacOSX disc and use Disk Utility to verify and repair permissions, it will help if you haven't done that in a while or if you have installed some new applications recently.

Optimize your HDD.

Disable things you are not using: bluetooth, wifi, firewall, etc.

Try to get some free memory from someone who has update their RAM.

Depending on which Mac Model you have there are other paths to go, but most of them are realted to the RAM, the processor,the HDD you use and how you access it.
For example If you have an external HDD and it has firewire use it instead of USB.
You also can speed up your internet connection for an increased speed experience.
________
Yamaha YM2151 history
 
Last edited:
Huh? This is not a IIci, reducing resolution and colors will not help.

You dont have to run the disk utility form the CD, and repairing permissions will not speed anything up.

Turning off bluetooth, airport, etc.. It would have such a minimal effect it not worth doing.
 
Aright thanks for everything
some questions though. When I run the Disk Utility from the CD, would I lose any files?!
But, any programs that would actually do all of this? I know there were many programs for Windows. Any of them for Mac?!
Thanks
 
ktalebian said:
Aright thanks for everything
some questions though. When I run the Disk Utility from the CD, would I lose any files?!
But, any programs that would actually do all of this? I know there were many programs for Windows. Any of them for Mac?!
Thanks
Click to expand...

General consensus is that a mac will run as well a year from now as it did the day you bought it.

There are also dozens of AV program for Windows, how many of there out there for mac, that you know, people actually need/use.
 
Using Disk Utility to verify or even repair your drive and/or permissions shouldn't result in any data loss. Even though you can't repair the drive from Disk Utility on your boot volume, it might be easier to at least verify from here to save you the hassle of repairing when it may not be necessary.

You've asked a pretty general question. To get some more specific answers, it might help if you were more specific about what you're using your machine for and what areas you want sped up. OSX is a much better operating system than Windows in that it doesn't generally get bogged down by extra apps and system processes. As such, it makes it difficult to "speed up", as it hasn't really slowed down in the first place. 🙂
 
Thanks again 🙂
Well, today I installed Windows (because I needed to run Matlab, and I already had Matlab for Windows).
Anyhow, after that, my Mac has become a bit slower. I mean, for example, when i open any of the folders using the shortcuts, it takes 2 seconds before it does it (also, it actually shows the "Go" menu being selected!)
So by speeding up, I mean speeding up those kind of things 😉
 
How much free space does it have on the boot drive? Have you verified the disk yet with Disk Utility? 🙂
 
Yes I have! I have 75GB (57GB is free).
And yes, I have checked the volume with Disk Utility.

Btw, I found a great way to use XSlimmer! I found this program MacJunitor, to delete applications! So I installed XSlimmer, and then after using the 50mb, I uninstalled it with it, and then reinstalled it. And again it gave me another 50mb. The only thing is if you use backup, you need to save it on an external hard drive.
 
ktalebian said:
Yes I have! I have 75GB (57GB is free).
And yes, I have checked the volume with Disk Utility.

Btw, I found a great way to use XSlimmer! I found this program MacJunitor, to delete applications! So I installed XSlimmer, and then after using the 50mb, I uninstalled it with it, and then reinstalled it. And again it gave me another 50mb. The only thing is if you use backup, you need to save it on an external hard drive.
Click to expand...

It's only $12, and it really is great.

Monolingual does a similar job (I still prefer XSlimmer) and is free.
 
Running Console.app and looking at the logs are likely the 2nd best bet for nailing things sucking cycles -- besides the first by looking at the RAM and CPU hogs in Activity Monitor.

Either something will show in Activity monitor as a process hog, or in the logs erroring out.
 
ummm, i'm new to Mac! So could you explain what I need to do more? Cause my folders take a bit a of time to open up for the first time (once I have them opened, if I close them, and open them again, they open instantly! It's just the first time after each restart)
 
Install as much RAM as your machine can hold.
It really does improve the responsiveness of OSX.

Another thing you can do is minimize desktop clutter.
 
By RAM, do you mean the physical RAM? You mean add a RAM Card physically to my MacBook Pro? How much are they roughly?
 
ktalebian said:
By RAM, do you mean the physical RAM? You mean add a RAM Card physically to my MacBook Pro? How much are they roughly?
Click to expand...

Just to make sure you don't sound like a newb (Don't feel bad, we were all newbs at one point). RAM only means physical memory, and it doesn't come on a card, it is usually referred to as chips or sticks.

Ultimately though, yes, you want more RAM. You always want more RAM. Even when the machine is at its maximum supported quantity, you still want more RAM. The more you have the more things your system can do at once without having to go to the hard drive which is always good. Also, not sure if OS X still does this, but I have heard that it keeps all the stuff on the desktop in RAM at all times so you can access it very quickly. So, the more stuff you have on your desktop, especially big files, the more of your RAM will be occupied with that.
 
ktalebian said:
Hi, what are some good tips, and/or programs (free most favorably) that help you speed up your Mac?
Click to expand...

The most important: Make sure that you have enough RAM. RAM is very, very cheap at the moment. Check out what you can add for $50 from Crucial or some other reliable company.

Less important: Don't let your hard drive get completely full. The first gigabytes can be read or written faster than the last ones.

Start "Activity Monitor" and have a look around. Check if you have any programs that use a lot of CPU time and don't do anything useful. There are webpages that just eat CPU time (usually for animations) and slow down everything, and that slow down can happen even if the web page is hidden by something else and you cannot see it.
 
RAM will not help speed up the initial folder or app opening. RAM can only help with processes or functions that have already occurred since the restart. RAM is an area of your computer where data is kept. It is much much faster for the computer to access the RAM than it is to access the hard drive. Having extra RAM simply means you can keep more data in this faster medium. However, since RAM gets reset or cleared after a restart, extra RAM will not help speed up the first time you run anything.

Sorry, if I wasn't so sleep deprived I could probably put that more eloquently. In short, extra RAM will not help fix the problem you have outlined whereby folders are slow to open initially but fine with subsequent openings.

What apps are you running? Do you have any system hacks or theme changers installed?
 
You should almost never be shutting your computer down anyway, so folder openings should always be super speedy as a result. Except in specific situations, you're supposed to put your computer to sleep instead of shutting it down.
 
Agreed. There's no real reason to shut your machine down other than for system updates. Sleeping the machine uses barely any power and ensures the maintenance tasks are run correctly.
 
mad jew said:
Agreed. There's no real reason to shut your machine down other than for system updates. Sleeping the machine uses barely any power and ensures the maintenance tasks are run correctly.
Click to expand...

I have found that stuff starts going a little flaky after about a month up. YMMV of course.
 
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