“At some point or other you may start to feel that your Mac’s speed isn’t quite what it used to be,” SocialBarrel writes. “While you may be told that is normal the is only partially true – yes, it is normal that a Mac often ends up slowing down as time goes by, but that doesn’t mean that there is nothing that you can do about it.”
“There are a number of ways that you can boost the speed of a Mac – both by addressing the root cause as well as improving it,” SocialBarrel writes. “If your hard drive is full because of junk files and unnecessary apps it will start to slow down and affect the performance of your Mac as a whole. Fortunately, all you need to do to fix that is remove all the junk files from your Mac and uninstall any apps that you no longer require.”
“Too many processes running in the background can also take up valuable resources on your Mac and slow it down. To rectify that you should check what processes are running and remove the ones that aren’t required,” SocialBarrel writes. “Add more RAM to your Mac. Many older Macs may start to slow down because they have insufficient RAM to run newer apps.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good tips. You can improve your Mac’s performance with a little maintenance and housecleaning from time to time. More RAM (max. RAM, in fact) is always recommended.
I am running a 2010 Mac Pro….(the big silver box). I love it, yet would really like an upgrade on the mac pro….
Getting rather frustrated with Apple at this point. A new Mac Pro (over the 2010 model) would be a definite speed up!
MacRumors two top stories:
“Apple Given Didi Chuxing Board Seat Following $1 Billion Investment”
“Mac Sales Continue to Slide Amid Lack of Updates”
I think it should be obvious where Apple’s priorities lie.
Attaching external displays to a Mac Mini or other “low end” macs can result in GUI lagging too..especially if it has a mobile GPU that grabs RAm..and you haven’t maxed out the RAM (or less than 8Gb).
I run a 75″ 4K TV off a Mac mini and it works great….just as quick as the connected 19″ monitor. I run this thru the HDMI and never have any issues…
Look at the resolution that TV is actually running. The UHD tvs do some scaling themselves. Attach yet another monitor (not a tv)..say, a 27 incher, and it will be taxed. I’m sure it’s fine, but going through HDMI is exactly stressful for the computer…but keep in mind it will use your RAM to drive anything more than the card can handle.
I have a 2012 27inch iMac and have a 27 inch Dell and 4K Dell (20) running through DisplayPort. It feels the 4K monitor for sure despite having a good video card that doesn’t piggy back off the RAM. I tried this with one of our Mini’s and it couldn’t handle it in the long run (running taxing software).
Deleting files from a hard drive does not make it faster. Where do people get this idea?
That isn’t what they said. Freeing up space on a nearly full hard drive … that can help. This is especially true if you are RAM limited. Your computer uses RAM and HD space to deal with various tasks…and limiting the amount of “workspace” your computer has for caches, etc, will bog things down. Keeping 20% free is a good idea.
On my late 2011 macbook pro, the hard drive was not full, although getting really slow with lots of spinning beachballs. replaced the drive with a SSD hard drive and see dramatic improvements. Old hard drive may have been close to failure. Looking forward to a new updated Macbook Pro. Time to upgrade!!
Upgrading to SSD is a sure way to give an old (or new) computer new life. I installed an SSD on my old 12 inch PowerBook and was amazed.
I just yell at mine, “Hurry the f*** up, you dilapidated old piece of SH**!!” It doesn’t make it go faster, but it improves my mood.
That’s what my wife says to me, and it doesn’t speed me up either, but it does seem to improve her mood.
So Macs are just like Windows boxes now?
On my 2010 Mac Pro with maxed out memory, doing about anything with iTunes causes spinning beach balls. And it’s not due to some slow external hard drive — the iTunes files are installed on a 7200 rpm drive in an internal drive bay.
The problem with lagginess is Apples’ software. I think Apple needs to think different again instead of releasing “good enough” freebieware to its fashionista fan base. Adding layers of bloat and rearranging the deck chairs on Mac apps hasn’t accomplished anything, and it certainly hasn’t wooed a huge wave of new converts to the platform. Performance matters, and on the Mac it hasn’t improved much since Cook took over. If it doesn’t change, then why pay the Apple premium? Competitors offer “good enough” software too, but it can run on hugely faster hardware than Apple gives you for a lower price. There are limits to loyalty, and Cook is testing it.
Try running win 10 on a 6 year old PC. I agree iTunes is crap, but there are so many factors in play that determine how smooth it runs (#of songs in library, various settings, etc). For example, it is really just a database…one that simultaneously displays local content and content in the cloud, while also syncing playlists, play count, favorites, album art, etc). The more you have in it, the more it has to do.
Switch to an SSD drive and you’ll see a BIG difference.
I did that to a 2006 Mac Pro (first gen with a Xeon CPU). I hardly noticed any slowdown… Even though that machine can’t handle the max transfer speed of the drive.
Still rolling with a 13″ 2010 MacBook Pro. Every time Apple release a new OS it gives it a new lease of life… macOS Sierra kicks ass on this machine.
I suspect this will be the last version of macOS that I’ll be able to use on this machine, but I’ll keep hold of it and buy a new Mac when that day comes.
This MacBook Pro has been bulletproof.
The problem is that new versions of the OS assume you have an SSD and not spinning hard drive. The best way to improve performance of an older Mac (I have MBP 2010) is to swap in an SSD.
It is like getting a new Mac for $249 ( 1TB)
See:
https://jmmxtech.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/how-i-got-a-new-macbook-pro-for-325/
I totally agree with all the folks about SSD’s. I have a 2012 iMac and a couple 2012 MAC mini, and when you swap out the slow HDD to a SSD the improvement is immense !!! Like getting a totally new ‘puter. iFixit’s on.You Tube can show you how easy it is ….I did the swap outs myself and the difference is nothing short of incredible!!! Highly recommended along with maxing out your RAM!
Put an external USB 3 SSD drive as the boot drive on a Mac mini to get a nice bump in performance. The internal HD is slow.
My main complaint is that Apple makes MacBook Pro with no easy way to upgrade RAM or SSD. When I bought mine last year, I had to order it with maximum RAM and skimped on the SSD size and got the 128 GB drive. Enough of this slim, light, beautiful MacBook mess. To me, it’s very helpful to be able to upgrade RAM and drives.