The Messages app for Mac is incredibly useful in that it allows Mac users to seamlessly communicate over iMessage with other Macs, iPhones, and iPads, and it allows Mac users to send text messages to Android users too, but the latest versions of Messages on the Mac are known for randomly using high amounts of … Read More
Knowing the number of CPU cores a particular Mac has can be useful for performance optimization, stress testing, compatibility, and to otherwise make informed decisions about system performance on a Mac. For example, maybe you want to make sure you have multiple cores available to run a virtual machine, or you want to spawn a … Read More
Intel Power Gadget for Mac is a processor monitoring tool that allows computer users to monitor the performance of an Intel processor in real-time. Intel Power Gadget will show you power and energy information in watts, the clock speed frequency of the CPU in GHz, the temperature of the CPU, and CPU utilization. It’s a … Read More
If you want to completely peg CPU to stress test a Mac, turn no further than the Terminal. Using the command line you can easily max out all CPU cores and induce huge load on a Mac, making it easy to determine things like what temperature the processor reaches under heavy load, if fans are … Read More
Activity Monitor can be used for more than just managing tasks and killing processes, it can also turn the Mac OS X Dock into a live system monitor where you can keep an eye on processor usage, CPU history, network activity, disk activity, or RAM use.
Apple looks to be experimenting with quad-core ARM CPU’s, possibly for future iPhone, iPad, and even MacBook Airs, as references in Xcodes default compiler reveal. This was first discovered by ArsTechnica, who proposes three possible scenarios for why the CPU support exists: Quad-core processor could be included in next-gen iOS devices like the iPad 3 … Read More
Have you ever wondered specifically what processor was being used on a Mac, including processor type and CPU speed? It’s actually quite easy to retrieve CPU information from the command line in Mac OS X, though the commands to use to get the processor information may be unfamiliar to many. We’ll show two ways to … Read More
Apple may be looking to move their laptop lineup from Intel processors to ARM CPU’s sometime in the next few years. According to a report on SemiAccurate, the move away from Intel is a “done deal” and that the transition to ARM processors will likely happen to Apple’s desktop lineup as well. ARM processors currently … Read More
Here’s a nice trick if you need to continuously observe your Macs system usage, including disk usage, CPU, and load average. The great thing about this iostat trick is that it updates constantly, allowing for realtime monitoring of system performance, which can be extremely helpful for performance testing and tracking down various processes or activities … Read More
Want to know how fast a Mac is? You can check a Macs processor clock speed, chip type, and CPU architecture a few different ways, but we’ll cover two quick methods to determine the clock speed of a given Mac. First, a super easy glance at processor speed through the GUI, and second, a more … Read More
