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20 ways to speed up your Mac

How to squeeze maximum performance from your Mac…

October 5th | Tell us what you think [ 6 comments ]

It's easy to squeeze more speed from your Mac. Here's how

Computing power has increased massively over recent years, and for Mac users the switch to Intel processors brought new heights of speed and performance to even the most entry-level Macs.

Thanks to the longevity of the average Mac, there are many thousands of older PowerPC machines still in use, dutifully chugging away day after day. And even for newer Macs, applications like working with images, music and video always run more smoothly with more power under the hood.

Upgrading the processor, although technically possible on some newer models and with more difficulty on older Macs, tends to be expensive and complicated. The good news is that other parts of your Mac can be upgraded, and components tend to be cheap and user-accessible.

In addition, there are simple steps that you can take in order to optimise your system for better performance. Sometimes this involves a little spring cleaning, other times a combination of hardware and software upgrading. Whichever you choose, it's easier than you think to speed up your Mac. You could even feel like you've got a brand new machine.

1. Clear the clutter

OS X requires around 20% of the space on its boot drive, typically called Macintosh HD, to be empty so that it can write virtual memory and other temporary files to the space. If a boot drive is very full, your Mac will slow down badly, even if it is a high spec machine, as the system thrashes the drive, overwriting what little free space is available.

A good working practice is to keep very large media files like video, image libraries or iTunes libraries either on a secondary internal drive in the case of a tower, or on a laptop or iMac, on an external FireWire or USB 2.0 hard drive.

2. Use faster drives

Portable Macs come with 5,400rpm hard drives and towers with 7,200rpm drives as standard. Faster spin speeds generally mean faster operation since data can be retrieved from the drive in less time. On a tower like a G5 or Mac Pro, replacing the startup drive with a faster model like a 10,000 or even 15,000rpm drive will have a positive effect on overall performance and should make the system snappier.

Using faster secondary internal drives is good but more important for heavy applications like working with video. Fitting a 7,200rpm drive to a portable Mac will also yield better overall performance at relatively low cost.

3. Add more ports

If you find yourself running out of ports, invest in a USB 2.0 or FireWire hub to expand the number available. Make it a powered one and it will supply current to compatible devices as well. On all but tower Macs and MacBook Pros, there's no getting around the bandwidth problem – even with a hub, you're throttled by the bandwidth available on the internal bus.

On a Mac with PCI or PCMCIA capability, you can add a card internally with more ports, which provides a signal path directly to the motherboard and so gets around the bandwidth issue.

4. Upgrade your RAM

RAM is one of the most fundamental things affecting the performance of a computer. OS X really needs about 1GB of memory to itself to run smoothly, and the more RAM you have, the better. Use the About This Mac menu to see how much is installed, and the System Profiler to see exactly how many sticks are present.

About 2GB is healthy for a normal system, and for heavy work with Photoshop, Final Cut or GarageBand you'll need more than that. Different Mac models have differing RAM capacities, with older Macs able to hold less, especially laptops.

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vulpine

October 7th

6. @typicaldigguser...

Methinks you should read armyofaardvarks post again; you clearly misunderstood him.

As far as your comments, I really have to wonder; you claim XP is buggy, yet XP is the most stable version of Windows ever (after SP2 especially) and complain about Vista's slowness on a 2 year old machine... which probably only barely meets Vista's recommended specs, yet you claim OS X is worse. Why? Have you even tried OS X?

Instead, what I see is a Windows zealot afraid that Windows is becoming irrelevant with its loss of market share and (assuming you're telling the truth about the 20 years thing) are totally afraid of even trying to change. The Mac is a far different machine from what it was 20 years ago, just as Windows is far different. If you can handle the changes in Windows, most certainly you can handle the changes in the Mac; it's only different from what you're used to.

Now, on a separate note for speeding up your Macs:

In my own personal case, I noticed an issue with USB hard drives. For some reason, and it may just be the first-gen Aluminum iMacs, a USB slows down the bootup process greatly. Most of the time it would take two minutes or so and sometimes it would take over five minutes, if it booted at all! On disconnecting the drive, bootup dropped to around 30-45 seconds.

I also noted that as long as that drive was connected, I would experience other USB issues such as my gaming keyboard dropping offline or other devices suddenly inaccessible, even though the drive was connected through a different port from the hub.

Ok, maybe it's just the drive... a 500G Simpletech. But the drive has a good rep in general and I have to admit that most of the time it seemed to work ok as my Time Machine drive. But since I disconnected it, all of my USB glitches have gone away.

Even so, I have to say I've been very pleased with my iMac and with 4GB of RAM has been able to handle all my needs very well. I haven't seen the need to drop Spotlight and I uses Dashboard rather extensively. To me, they haven't demonstrated any kind of speed hit.

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typicaldigguser

October 6th

5. i'm with both spatula42 and armyofaardvarks.

i've been a devoted PC and windows user for sometime. i also like to use linux and the mac is not a good platform at all. even though windows XP is ridden with bugs and vista is laggy on my 2 year old computer, i still have a high opinion that macs aren't good computers because i don't like them and for the past 20 years i've always told people that macs would no longer be relevant in the marketplace.

but whenever i hear that macs are gaining marketshare and are selling more units then every other manufacturer besides DeLL and HP in the US... it makes my blood boil and ticks me off so much. i also tell as much people as possible not to get an iPod and get a Zune. i also think that everyone should use windows mobile, symbian and android based phones because i think they are all better than the iPhone. oh, that's another thing. whenever i hear that the iPhone is selling better and better it just makes me so mad.

so spatuala and ardvark. thank you for giving us the thoughts of all of us PC and windows enthusiasts all these years. lets keep it up. if we keep putting more energy into telling people that windows and windows mobile are better - then people will stop buying apple products. as long as we keep trying it'll eventually happen. i'll see you guys on the paul thurott forums! later!

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