Video tutorials to "Speed Your Mac To The Max"

[Fahad]

Here I'm going to post links to video tutorials in our website which will help you dramatically speed up your Mac without spending money.

1) Remove Start Up Applications: How to remove/add start up application in Mac OS X

2) Disable Mac OS X Spotlight: How to disable spotlight

3) Remove any unwanted or extra application or menubar applications

4) Secure Empty The Trash: how to secure empty the Trash in Mac OS X

5) Turn off extra/unwanted Mac OS X services such as Bluetooth, Universal access etc.. depending on your needs: Turning Off Mac OS X Services

6) Upgrade to the latest OS: If you are running Intel Macintosh then Upgrade to Snow Leopard

7) Remove extra Languages: Monolingual - Remove Extra Mac OS X Languages

8) Disable secure (encrypted) virtual memory: Disabling Secure (Encrypted) Virtual Memory
9) Keep your Mac Cool: Keeping Your Mac Cool/Cold

10) Keep your Hard Disk Clean (not full): not so hard so I guess it won't need tutorial

11) Run OnyX: Titanium Software

12) Run Disk Permissions: How to repair disk permissions using disk utility in mac os x

13) Keep your Desktop Clean: also won't require a tutorial

14) Remove unwanted Apps from Dock by just drag and dropping them off

15) Choose right default application for files e.g (you don't want to use Photoshop to preview images): Switch 101- How to change default program.

16) Check Software version: If your using Intel Mac, make sure that your application is not running Rosetta "PowerPC binary converter"

17) Remove Dock Animation: System Preferences > Dock then un-check: "Animate Opening Applications"

18) Remove Unwanted Widgets From Dashboard or Disable it (see tip number 19)

19) Disable Dashboard: Disabling Dashboard In Mac OS X

I will add more soon or when I find more things until then see you and share your thoughts because your awesome.

[MacUser]

as usual great mozymac tutorials

[Fahad]

thanks for posting, waiting for your results

[GrandMasterBit]

nice links, been there for some of them

[Omi]

I don't think all of these will make a difference, But some of them will make the difference when you need it. E.G. doing graphic/processor intensive task, and then you do something that uses animations and EEK!

One I recommend, is upgrade to the latest version of Flash always. Flash is a bitch and never really works well, but the latest version apparently works better than older ones

-Omi

[Fahad]

A lot of people are reporting that the disable secure virtual memory makes noticeable speed boost!! and less real memory usage

[ebonweaver]

My comments on these tips:

1) Remove Start Up Applications: Certainly killing auto launch apps that you don't actually need will improve system performance, this has always been true of any system. Beware of removing things that you might actually need however, some peripherals need their little services or your printer or scanner no longer works.

2) Disable Mac OS X Spotlight: This will save very little resources on any intel based system, and is arguably ill advised. If you disable spotlight then your system is not indexed and instead of a file search taking a fraction of a second it could take hours. The trade off of likely imperceptible performance increase in exchange for killing the efficiency of searches is not worth it to most people.

3) Remove any unwanted or extra application or menubar applications: effectively the same advise as point 1, though they live in different places. anything running will be hogging some CPU and memory space.

4) Secure Empty The Trash: This will not improve performance, and the empty function takes a log time because it's writing zero data over the files. It is however a good security tip if you work with sensitive data you need to ensure is shredded. A normal empty trash just marks the file as not needed so it's space can be written over. You can however recover such files before they are overwritten, so if undelete is more important than time consuming secure delete this is not for you.

5) Turn off extra/unwanted Mac OS X services such as Bluetooth, Universal access etc.. depending on your needs: Turning off bluetooth when you are not using it is a very good security tip, don't leave it running after you do a phone sync or use your mouse or something. In fact, don't use bluetooth in public places if you want to be safe. Disabling things like Universal Access can save some minor resources, but it can also cause some applications to unexpectedly no longer work. Tweaking system services is a power user passtime.

6) Upgrade to the latest OS: If you are running Intel Macintosh then Upgrade to Snow Leopard. If you're not running on an intel machine, consider upgrading as your computer is getting on in years.

7) Remove extra Languages: Monolingual : This will make the system and applications load faster as there are less data files to process, and it saves an inconsequential amount of drive space given drive sizes these days, but if you are on an old drive with limited space every bit helps. Be VERY careful with the app, because if you use it wrong you will destroy your system.

8) Disable secure (encrypted) virtual memory: Certainly this makes things a bit faster as the memory is not being encrypted on the fly while being written to disk. However, this is ill advised if you work with sensitive data.

9) Keep your Mac Cool: didn't view, but overheating is always bad

10) Keep your Hard Disk Clean (not full): yes as you run out of space it can't optimize the files in the background and eventually it can't do anything. You also run out of scratch space for things like Photoshop

11) Run OnyX: Titanium Software good little utility to make some system maintenance easier

12) Run Disk Permissions: How to repair disk permissions using disk utility in mac os x Learn to love Disk Utility. Use it to repair permissions any time you perform Software updates to make sure everything is clean. Use it to verify disk to ensure there are no drive errors. Speaking of drive issues, SMART Reporter is a great free utility to run in the background that will alert you if it detects drive problems. Not a replacement for Disk Utility, a good addition.

13) Keep your Desktop Clean: This is more organizational as it has nothing to do with performance, with one caveat. When you reboot and log in the first time, the default is that every file renders a live preview of the file contents. While cute for things like pictures, it's utterly pointless for Word documents, and it makes the login slow. The same goes for any folder where it tries to do this, also the default. If you turn off icon previews in the view settings, this will radically improve the responsiveness of opening folders as it just shows a generic icon for the type instead of reading every single file's contents. It will also save some memory from the caching, though I'm not sure if it's system or video or both that's tapped for this.

14) Remove unwanted Apps from Dock by just drag and dropping them off: again this will save space, but that's all really. The memory used to render 3 more icons on the doc is insignificant.

15) Choose right default application for files e.g (you don't want to use Photoshop to preview images): Switch 101- How to change default program.: Truth

16) Check Software version: If your using Intel Mac, make sure that your application is not running Rosetta "PowerPC binary converter": Yes upgrading software to the latest version to have best performance with 10.6 on intel hardware will maximize performance and minimize your wallet

17) Remove Dock Animation: System Preferences > Dock then un-check: "Animate Opening Applications": again negligible, but the rabid rat terrier bounce annoys many

18) Remove Unwanted Widgets From Dashboard or Disable it (see tip number 19): Not having the widgets active is what saves here, they do nothing if available but not "on" Likewise, if you reboot and don't activate dashboard, it's not actually in use. You'll note the first time you activate it is when everything loads up. From then on they all run in the background eating up a little bit of your system. There are a lot of useful widgets, but if you use your dashboard for cute fluff and game things expect your system to suffer for it.

19) Disable Dashboard: I'd be surprised if this was favorable over keeping it clean per tip 18, because there are a lot of very useful widgets out there. But if you never use it, sure, get rid of it.

Cheers!

[Fahad]

Thanks for you comments ebonweaver

[YMB]

I used to do this when I open Aperture but once I upgraded my RAM my Mac became normal and FAST! ... So I'm not using this techniques anymore =D

Anyways ... thanks a lot =) Maybe I will need to do this when I will use heavier Applications =P

[Fahad]

I used to do this when I open Aperture but once I upgraded my RAM my Mac became normal and FAST! ... So I'm not using this techniques anymore =D

Anyways ... thanks a lot =) Maybe I will need to do this when I will use heavier Applications =P

Or larger Aperture libraries, by the way how many GBs of RAM do you use?