A notable number of users who have installed iOS 9 on their iPhones, iPad, and iPod touch have discovered that iOS 9 has caused performance to suffer, with annoying lag, choppiness in interactions, delayed response from the user interface, and just general performance degradation. That lag can be notable enough to make the device feel … Read More
The Mac received a great many changes with OS X Yosemite along with a notable visual redesign, but some of those changes and various transparent effects may be taking a toll on some users Mac performance with errant WindowServer behavior. This is typically demonstrated with the WindowServer process spiking into heavy CPU use for seemingly … Read More
Whether testing performance of an application, Mac OS X animations, or just out of general curiosity, you can measure the refresh rate in Frames Per Second of onscreen actions and animations on the Mac by using a free developer tool from Apple called Quartz Debug. Part of the Graphics Tools package of Xcode, Quartz Debug … Read More
OS X Yosemite runs great on most new Macs, but some older models may experience some sluggishness or stuttering from time to time. The reason for that feeling of reduced performance can be due to a variety of issues, and most of them are really easy to resolve with surprisingly little effort.
Many advanced Mac users spend a lot of time at the command line of OS X, accessed through the Terminal app. While generally the Terminal is fast and efficient, sometimes it can slow down over time, or suffer from some performance degradation due to user preference settings. If you feel that Terminal app is being … Read More
Though the All My Files folder is undoubtedly useful, Mac users with limited system resources along with tons of files may notice some sluggishness when using the feature. That can translate into CPU spikes and the perception of a generally slow Finder and Mac, because new windows in the file system default to opening into … Read More
Many Mac users who come to the platform from the world of Windows have become accustomed to defragging their PC hard drives from time to time, and thus the inevitable question arrises: do you need to defragment a Macs hard drive? The answer is usually no, you don’t need to defrag a Mac as part … Read More
Most users are satisfied with iOS 7 performance, but some iPhone and iPad owners have discovered the major update has impacted the speed of their devices. If you feel like iOS 7 has made your hardware slower than it was before the update, there are some changes you can make that will likely speed things … Read More
If you need to know the disk performance of an external drive, you can easily go about testing the read and write speed of any such drive by using several third party apps. We’ll cover two, the first is aptly named Disk Speed Test, and the second is called Xbench. Either will work to determine … Read More
All modern Macs are pretty fast these days, but sometimes we all need a performance boost to get things done as efficiently as possible. That’s what these simple tricks are aimed at, they will help you speed up any Mac and get the absolute best performance out of the Mac OS X machine by having … Read More
Have you noticed that when you’re browsing through folders on the Mac that icons are actually previews of images and even live playable videos? This sure makes the OS X Finder snazzy looking, but in some situations where tons of images and video files are contained within single folders, it can have the unwanted side … Read More
It’s a fact of modern life: Macs can run slowly for seemingly no reason, but chances are there is a reason the Mac is running so poorly and we’ll cover the most common reasons, how to know if each reason is causing the slow down, and most importantly, how to fix it. If your Mac … Read More
Photoshop CS6 is arguably the best release of the image manipulation app from Adobe in a very long time. It’s feature packed and generally quite fast, but not everyone is pleased with it’s performance on some hardware. With that in mind we’ve compiled a list of tweaks, adjustments, and tricks to speed up Photoshop. Some … Read More
Many Mac users have an external hard disk for Time Machine backups or other media storage purposes, and if you leave it connected to the Mac all the time you’ve probably noticed an annoying side effect: the drive will spin down when it’s not in use, only to be spun up again unnecessarily at random … Read More
Does your Mac feel like it takes forever to boot up when you turn it on? Does your Mac seemingly take forever to reboot? If your Mac is feeling sluggish when booting or starting up Mac OS X it’s probably a result of a few things. This walkthrough will address how to speed up reboot … Read More
If you have an older Mac that feels slow and sluggish from time to time, follow these simple tips to regain some long lost speed. We’re going to keep it simple with real tips that will speed up a Mac that are not overly complex or complicated. Nothing here is too technical or time consuming … Read More
Macs are notoriously trouble-free and easy to maintain, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore system maintenance entirely. Here are four simple Mac maintenance tips that will help you keep your Mac in tip-top shape, running at its best.
