Comments on: 9 Reasons Why a Mac is Running Slow and What to Do About It

By: DJ

DJ — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 05:10:54 +0000

Or you could get an App called “Memory Clean” and that will monitor your RAM in the tool bar.

Easy to see and one click to clean the RAM. Though i believe that “purge” works just as well, but doesn’t give you a easy view of the RAM status.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 02:47:54 +0000

Lack of System Memory is a killer. Firstly run Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab. You will see a pie chart, The green slice is Free Memory – you need plenty of this. Leave Activity Monitor running so you can see what happens.
Now, run Terminal. Type “purge”, without the quote marks. All running processes are frozen while purge does its job. Eventually, Terminal will prompt for a new command, but wait a bit longer. Looking at Activity Monitor will now show a much bigger green slice.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:00:34 +0000

Some things missing from the article: Running Disk Permissions can speed things up, also clearing out old caches can help (using a program like Onyx). Also good to check the Login Items list in System Preferences as having too many programs starting when the computer does can slow things down, this is more likely to be an issue if you’re running an old install of OS X thats been through lots of different software installs over the years.

By: Cristian

Cristian — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 07:36:23 +0000

My SSD had even more space than the HDD. Deh, times achanging.

By: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 23:45:07 +0000

Because it’s a Mac, just use a linux.

By: Derryl

Derryl — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:18:13 +0000

2: Software Update

Software Update will literally pre-download certain updates in their entirety, before even telling you that “updates are ready”… so while it’s running, it’s hitting not only the CPU but your network as well.

Try something like iStat Menus to monitor your network activity — it should usually be less than 5 KB/s or so. If it spikes up to a higher value, then check to see what’s using it (e.g. Software Update, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) Oftentimes these apps are the cause of “slow” internet or sluggish disk I/O speeds.

By: shawn

shawn — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 00:00:20 +0000

It’s a sad statement really, intended to displace the blame.

The “websites” are not as fault so much as the applications used to render them. The applications have to deal with unanticipated user content, but that doesn’t ameliorate their responsibility for the memory leaks. Proper resource cleanup would minimize or eliminate the leaks. And, of course, disable Java in your browsers on OS X – it’s too far behind the known vulnerability curve so it opens up the computer to unnecessary risk.

By: shawn

shawn — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 23:54:43 +0000

This is common in Macs as Apple typically includes Seagate drives. Seagate drives are ‘faster’ than other brands, but have a usable life of only about 18 months. After that, they become painfully slow. Replacing with a true SSD (NOT a hybrid) will have the most significant performance improvement…assuming you can live with the reduced space.

By: Wheat Williams

Wheat Williams — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 03:46:03 +0000

3: Low Disk Space

Your spinning hard disk should never get below 15% empty space. The number of gigabytes free is not the issue; it’s the percentage. This is because a disk needs 15% to 10% free space for Mac OS X’s automatic defragmentation routine to work correctly.

By: Will

Will — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 11:27:50 +0000

RE: too much RAM being used.

If you’re running something big, say Photoshop or Premiere, and then close them, your computer holds their files in RAM for a while in case you’re going to open them again.

If you aren’t, and your computer is still mulling over their memory, open Terminal and type ‘purge’ and hit enter. It clears the now-unneeded wired and inactive RAM and returns it to free RAM.

By: crypto7

crypto7 — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 03:39:15 +0000

LOL! I’m so sick of lame driver issues on windoze. Thank God for mac os unix w/ a gui. Never had a kernel panic unless i plugged in some dodgy hardware w/ crappy drivers.

Best Quote Ever:
“How much faster can you render the blue screen of death?”

http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/10/ce-oh-no-he-didnt-part-lv-nvidia-ceo-says-were-going-to-ope/

http://www.dailytech.com/NVIDIA+CEO+Were+Going+to+Open+a+Can+of+Whoop+Ass/article11448.htm

By: Mashi

Mashi — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:49:45 +0000

UNIX MASTER RACE

By: djpenn

djpenn — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 22:54:07 +0000

Why UNIX good?! It speak Engrish.

For #4 you can also just open the terminal and type:

purge

Then press Enter. It’s broken in 10.8.1, but fixed in 10.8.2

By: GailS

GailS — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:19:59 +0000

Excellent info. Thanks. My mac runs slow when I have a lot of tabs open and some tracking cookies will slow down my mac (everything is back to normal after I run a anti-malware utility).

By: iSaaso

iSaaso — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:49:59 +0000

oh how is useful ?
about the fire problem there is Terminal command can be solved
/Applications/Utilities/ Terminal

sudo mdutil -E / sudo mdutil -i on /

thank you so much