Strategies to Improve Mac Performance

Mac is termed as the securest and fastest computer ever, due to its unmatched quality hardware and incomparable processing speed. Therefore, it is obvious for a Mac machine to perform significantly well when it is all new. Also, it has been experienced by the users that the same system slowdown problem subsides in Mac that is a fair occurrence on other platforms, such as Windows and Linux. The performance of the Mac machine primarily relies on its hardware configuration and the way it is used. Though it is not a big deal to increase Mac performance, you need to work on a few things in order to make your Mac machine healthy again. You can make different strategies, which you can track in order to maintain your system’s performance. You can either follow the strategies suggested below.

 

Efficient use of Memory

Computers have two types of memories (i.e. Primary and Secondary memory). Primary memory refers to the RAM that executes the system as well as user programs, whereas Secondary memory is the hard drive that facilitates permanent data storage. The hard drives must have at least 10% of their capacity as free memory to work efficiently. Keep additional 4 GB memory as free if you use the Internet on your Mac. Go to Activity Monitor to get the complete details of the memory.

 

Solid State Drives

Solid State Drives, abbreviated as SSDs, are another type of physical storage devices that facilitate faster and efficient data storage. SSDs have embedded integrated memory chips, CPU, and battery cards that make its structure diverse as compared to that of a typical hard drive. If we see, SSDs provide high virtual memory performance, zero latency, and up to 2.5x faster data transfer speed. Therefore, to increase Mac performance, it is recommended to upgrade to SSD. 

Up-to-date Software

Make sure the applications installed on your Mac system are up-to-date. Latest versions of the software provide better functionality, bugs fixes, and even improved security features. Click Apple icon and choose ‘Software Update’ from the context menu. Also, install system updates, if found. 

Authorized Applications

When you download a Mac application from the Internet, perhaps you Google a relative keyword and search the indexed results. Make sure the application you download is developed by Apple or by other authorized developers. 

Avoid installing too Many Applications

Applications installed on the Mac utilize system resources as well as the physical memory, thereby keeping the resources busy. Therefore, more the number of installed applications, more will be the resource utilization, resulting in poor Mac performance.

Improve Mac Performance Significantly

Moving to Mac may resolve many of the performance issues you have been suffering from time and again being on Windows PC, but one issue will get you panic-stricken everywhere you go, i.e. 'system slowdown'. Several internal activities, such as running applications, corrupt disk permissions, and high system resource utilization contribute to Mac slowdown. An ordinary user does not even know what is taxing the system performance and thinks of upgrading the hardware configuration. 

Upgrading the hardware certainly contributes to speeding up Mac however, the choice is not suitable for every user. Below are some internal activities, which you need to monitor and make some alterations to improve the Mac’s performance. 

System Requirements

The very first way to make a Mac machine run faster is that system hardware configuration should meet the minimum requirements for the Mac OS version. Make sure the Mac you are running has right hardware configuration installed. If not, then upgrade to the required configuration. 

Disk Permissions

Every Mac disk has a set of associated permissions that must be undamaged to make the Mac work properly. Make a habit of manually repairing these permissions after a certain time interval regularly. It is recommended to repair these permissions in recovery mode. Therefore, restart the Mac while pressing and holding Option key. Click Recovery HD, open Disk Utility, and select the boot drive. Click 'Repair Disk Permissions' and let the process complete. 

Activity Monitor

Go to Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder and monitor the running processes. Note the processes with high CPU utilization under CPU tab at the bottom section of the window. Select the processes with high CPU utilization and click Quit Process button in the menu bar. Make sure you know about the process being killed. 

Browser Extensions

Web browsers automatically download extensions, plug-ins, and toolbars that consume system resources. Disable these browser extensions and clear the cache to speed up the browser. Open Safari, click ‘Safari’ main menu, choose ‘Preferences’, and click ‘Extensions’. Click one by one all installed extensions and uninstall them. 

Login Items

Login items in Mac are just like Startup items in Windows that execute every time the system boots up. These items consume large Primary memory (RAM) and processor resulting in poor startup. Remove login items to speed up the boot process. Go to System Preferences-> Users & Groups and select ‘Login items’ tab. Select an item and click minus (-) button given in the bottom section. 

Hardware Upgrade

Upgrading the hardware (i.e. RAM and hard drive) may result in significant improvement in the system performance. Large primary memory makes process execution faster and efficient. Moreover, it is recommended to use SSD instead of HDD for better storage and performance.

Follow the steps discussed above to speed up Mac and say good bye to spinning beach balls and abnormal startup.

How to Fix a Frozen Mac | Stop Mac freezing

How can I fix Mac freezing ? Is it possible to fix Mac running extremely slow ? These are the questions which are generally being asked by Mac users, facing beach ball in all the processes.

Mac machines are usually considered smarter than Windows and that is the reason why Windows users migrate towards Mac OS. There is no doubt they enjoy more interesting features in Mac but the craze gets little diminished when Mac gets slow.

More than 30% of disk space on Mac is filled with junk files

After deep analysis, it has been concluded by many experts that accumulating trashes, leftovers and other useless applications consume too much space in drive and become one of the culprits of slow Mac.

A good software should be used to cleanup Mac drive and delete all these unwanted temporary, duplicate files, leftover and unnecessary applications completely.

Defrag Mac to speed up performance

Another cause of slow Mac is fragmentation of files in Mac disk which delays the reading speed of drives. The more frequently you edit a file, more are the chances of fragmention. Although fragmentation is a very uncommon term for Mac users but the problem also occurs in Mac specially when we deal with large size files. When there is no adequate memory available to store a file as a whole, it is broken down into several chunks and stored at different locations in drive.

The OS X file system can handle the situation but, when the level of fragmentation goes higher we need to defrag Mac with some effective Mac defragmenting software like Stellar Drive defrag. You can get the free download and see the status of fragmented drive.

I would say its very easy to fix the problem of slow Mac. You just need to analyse the real cause and fix it.

What makes my Mac slow | Causes of slow Macbook

Its not very easy to notice the gradual fall in Mac speed. When you use some other machine, you realize the difference in performances of both of them and ask “What is the cause of my slow Mac”. Your machine runs as though a weak ant is carrying some heavy shopping.
Well is is not the end of a happy Mac life. Things can still be peaked to day one experience of a new Mac. I am trying to prove of confidence with following tips.

 

Check if Preference Files are corrupted

The Preference files are more prone to corruption and it can lead to a make programs go weird or run slowly. If a particular application is running slow on your Mac then try to fix it by deleting its preference files and relaunch the app. But, first backup your old files just in case you lose some settings.

Mac going heavy with Caches, Log files and Temporary Items

It hardly takes few minutes to delete unnecessary files like Caches, Log files and Temporary files via Clean up Mac tool like Stellar Speed Up Mac. I would strongly suggest to invest these few minutes to save hours.

Too Many Widgets on Dashboard

Please note that widgets consume memory which you can check with Activity Monitor. You can remove these memory hogging widgets and save memory which would otherwise be used for some important tasks.

Clean your Cluttered Desktop

Too many files and folders on desktop can slow down your mac. Just keep the important ones here and put the rest into folders in your home directory.

Permission Conflicts

Fixing the permissions issues with applications can speed up Mac performance upto a noticeable extent. The permissions of files determine which users or applications can access them. Permissions can be corrected using built in Disk Utility. You just need to select startup disk and click the First Aid tab, then click the Repair Disk Permissions button.

Is your drive about to full

The users should note that the OS automatically uses a part of free space on your hard drive as Virtual Memory so it is recommended to maintain adequate free space (about 10% of total size) in hard disk.


The above tips are tested and recommended by Mac geeks to speed up Mac OS X performance. I hope the tips would definitely help you to fix slow Macbook issue.

Low Free Space in Mac Disk can Cause Slow Mac

You might be confronted with unresponsiveness, spinning colored beach ball, and many other similar slowdown issues on your Mac machine, even after you have a good hardware configuration. Well, the issue might not be the hardware, but probably the overfilled hard drive. The amount of data stored on a hard drive is one of the factors affecting the overall performance of a computer whether it is Windows or a Mac machine.

Actually, Mac OS X treats whatever free space the hard drive has as Virtual Memory playing a significant role in favour of its performance. Therefore, more the amount of virtual memory on a Mac drive, better will be the performance. You can check the complete data storage detail of the drive.

• Go to Apple icon and select About This Mac
• Click More info button and then System Report button
• In the opening window, click Serial-ATA in the left pane
• Now, see the information i.e. Capacity and Available free space for every Mac volume.

Alternatively, you can refer to Mac’s inbuilt disk management tool i.e. Disk Utility for precise description, such as Capacity, Available and Used space, etc. for each volume.

• Launch Disk Utility
• Click and note down these statistics for each volume shown below the source hard drive one by one.

Compute the percentage virtual memory using the formula i.e. (free space/capacity)*100 for each Mac volume. If the percentage virtual memory in any volume comes out to be less than or equal to 10%, you need to do something to free up the memory. 

Creating Free Space on the Hard Drive

Freeing up the memory does not direct the user to delete a definite amount of data from the concerned volume, but shift to any other volume containing large amount of free space. However, shifting some data to any external data storage device, such as an external hard drive would be more appropriate.

Go through each Mac volume individually and prepare a note of the data in use, items currently not in use or rarely used, and of course, the data never used yet stored.

Keep only those items in each volume, which are currently in use, frequently used, and the least priority items rarely used yet essential. Keep a backup copy of each document, file, and folder at any secure location.

Similarly, go through the installed applications on your Mac machine and keep only those which are currently in use and frequently used.

Tip: Keep at least 10% of the total capacity as free in each volume.

Improve Mac Performance using Optimization Software

“I am faster than my Mac”, “My Mac is low like hell”, “Mac takes longer time to boot up” etc. Are you facing any of these or a similar performance issue with your Mac? If yes, this article is going to enlighten you about the factors affecting the performance of a Mac machine and their respective resolutions.

Just like in Windows operating system, Mac OS X also meets slowdown issues and the users often complain regarding its poor performance. That annoying spinning colored beach ball appearing frequently denotes that system needs optimization. It sometimes does not disappear and bother you to kill the running process or perhaps for a force shutdown by pressing and holding the power button. This may eliminate the situation causing a long dead session of spinning beach ball; however, you may be on the edge of losing your data due to file system corruption.

As several optimization software for Mac are available on the Internet, you can try them. Moreover, try a few common below mentioned tips to resolve the issues, and hence improve Mac performance:

Remove Startup Items

The startup actions created by a few newly installed applications on a Mac machine execute every time it boots up and utilize system resources, such as RAM, Processor etc. These activities minimize startup speed of the Mac machine. Remove these startup items by going to System Preferences-> Accounts and clicking the ‘Login Items’ tab. Next, select the application name and click (-) button to remove it.

Desktop Cleanup

Desktop is loaded every time you turn a Mac machine ON. More the number of docks and icons located on the desktop, longer will be the time consumed in system startup. Moreover, resources utilization would be even higher and may grow into deadlock. Remove these objects from the desktop to get an accelerated startup.

Upgrading the Hardware

RAM (Random Access Memory) is the primary memory in a computer that is responsible for executing each process you initiate. RAM upgrade is much cheaper and reliable as compared to upgrading a processor. A Mac machine must have 2GB minimum RAM or upgrade it to 4GB if you run memory-intensive applications, such as Adobe Photoshop, Dream Viewer etc. 

 

As hardware upgrade is not much suitable for every user, choosing an efficient speedup software to improve Mac performance would be a better option. These software thoroughly scan complete Mac hard drive and automatically eliminates the causes of poor performance of Mac.

Fragmented Data Causes Mac Slowdown

‘Slow start up’, ‘Spinning beach ball’, ‘Slow hard drive response’, and ‘Mac freezing’ are a few commonly experienced issues with Mac machines. Do you know why such issues arise? At the user level, one might not know what is taxing the processing of the machine; however, delving deeper certainly lets the user know the causes of the issue.

Computer slowdown is an uncommon issue and almost every user has experienced the situation. Regardless of the causes of the situation, people try doing the things they do know to speed up their machines; however, only a few get the issue fixed. Those who were using Windows previously are inclined to defrag their hard drives. Now, when they find a similar slowdown issue with the Mac machine, it is obvious for them to think whether the memory is fragmented or do they need to defrag Mac drive also. If yes, then how because Disk Utility does not contain any defragmentation tool. Refer to below mentioned facts associated with the defragmentation issue:

• If your Mac machine has an SSD instead of a hard drive, defragmentation is not needed.
• The HFS file system is intelligent enough to bind small files in a batch; therefore, a user does not have to defrag Mac drive frequently.
• Hard drives offer different data read/write speeds when blank and partially filled, and become excessively slow when too much filled.

With time and excessive use, a Mac machine slows down automatically due to a slew of data transactions (such as add/remove data, read/write data, system files upgrade etc.) producing fragments in the memory.

What You Need to take Care about?

When the boot volume on a Mac machine is overfilled (i.e. up to 80% or more), you meet with such slowdown issues. In addition, an overfilled volume or hard drive is susceptible to corruption. Therefore, make sure you do not let it fill more than 50%, which is an ideal state.

How to Remove Fragments

Data access from the fragmented memory is often slow, and sometimes the Mac machine is frozen; therefore, Mac requires defragmentation. Defragmentation is the process of re-arranging the physical memory blocks that are occupied in a contiguous logically sequenced stream. All recently emptied blocks are grouped together in order to reuse them.

However, you can also find numerous defragmentation tools for Mac on the Internet if you want the Mac to speed up instantly.