OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Coming Soon!
Not yet, tho. Snow Leopard will bring little in the way of new features, concentrating on slimming down the code, and building in more reliability and speed.
Can’t wait for speed?
Computerworld.com has a new article. Don’t wait for Snow Leopard: 10 ways to slim down and speed up your Mac now has a lot of great info to help you speed up your Mac. I’ll outline the high points… for more detail, please read the article.
Warning! Several tips in this article require modifying system or application files. Have a complete, solid back-up of your system, just incase you have any problems later on, or need to go back to the original system. USE WITH CAUTION! OK, warning over. These are for the most part pretty benign suggestions, so if you have a slow Mac, or if you want to learn more and become more involved with your Mac… go ahead!
1. Get rid of the languages you don’t speak
Macs come with more languages than I can count. This includes modifications for every part of the interface, so it takes up some space. A reduced footprint makes it easier for the OS to work, potentially speeding your Mac… if you have a fairly full hard drive.
You can remove languages manually, or use several utilities to do so. WARNING! Microsoft Office has been known to have update problems when languages are removed. There are ways around this, and Office updates can be broken anyway. If you need space, and don’t have funds or time for a new drive, go ahead.
2. Cut out the non-native code
PowerPC Macs use different code than Intel Macs use, so Apple provided Rosetta, which allows an Intel Mac to emulate a PowerPC on the fly to run software that hasn’t been updated for Intel machines.
This uses extra processor “horsepower”, and eliminating PowerPC-native apps can give you a lot of performance benefits. Update your installed software to the latest, Intel-native versions and make sure 3rd party software, including preference panes and plugins, are also updated.
Universal Binary apps mean that code for both chips are included, and of course, eliminating the PowerPC (or Intel) code will slim down your system.
If you have a mix of Intel and PPC machines and copy apps back and forth, skip this tip… the result is PPC-only and Intel-only applications.
3. Trim down iLife media libraries
If you have tons of tunes, photos, and movies, think about trimming them down or moving the libraries to external disks. When your system hard drive is about 80% full, it will typically begin to slow down. At 90%, behavior is likely going to be problematic. Keep at least 20-25% capacity as free space, and you’ll see better performance. This article has suggestions for utilities and techniques you can use to slim iLife libraries.
4. Clean out logs
Leopard generates a lot of log files. These are great to determine what is going on with your Mac. So do many apps, but the value is limited, and older logs really have little utility. The maintenance scripts that Leopard automatically runs will archive and compress log files, but eventually the total can grow quite large.
If you don’t need to keep logs going back months or years, ditching the log files will give you back some space. Read the article for tips on barbering your log files.
5. Delete unused applications and tools
Of course! This is too easy! Have you done it? Me neither.
Get rid of unused apps (even if they came with your Mac) to recover disk space, and in some cases (Preference Panes, Dashboard Widgets, etc) you will reduce processor load as well. The article will show you where to look for these unused items, and provides a couple of utilities to help. AppZapper is a great way to get rid of preference and support files when you want to trash an app.
6. Reduce log-in items
Log-in items load during your boot or login process, and increase the time it takes. Processor load increases too, as you have these apps open the whole time your Mac is running. Some are irresistable, but the fewer you use, the faster your log-in and the faster your Mac.
I have way to many, but that’s my problem. If you want to manually load them instead, open System Preferences and click on Accounts. When that opens, click the Login Items tab, and select the item you want to remove and click the minus button below the list. The article has a screenshot and advice on restoring login items if they are necessary for a particular app to run correctly. There’s a caution there…
7. Do without the 3-D effects and animation
The finder and Dock use a lot of processor power, particularly for animations. Several utilities will revert the 3D Dock to the older 2D style, and you can turn off the translucent menu bar in the Desktop & Screensaver pane (System Preferences). Folders in the Dock can be folders rather than Stacks (control-click on the folder and choose “Display as Folder”). Finder animations can be disabled with Tinker Tool, a great free utility for customizing your system.
8. Remove the fonts you don’t use
If you have fonts installed on your Mac that you will never use, they take up a little space that can be saved by trashing them. Not worth the bother. Your system has to read all installed fonts when it boots up, though, and a lot of fonts can create slow start-ups.
Applications typically read all install fonts when they launch, so the time spent waiting for Word or Photoshop to come up can be reduced by having fewer fonts installed. Older and slower Macs will see more improvement that the hot new Mac Pro you just bought (in your dreams), but if you have tons of fonts, proper management will speed you Mac.
Font Book (included with Mac OS X) can remove or disable fonts. If you want to keep your fonts, but improve performance, disable fonts you rarely use. Your Mac will essentially forget to look for disabled fonts, speeding things up a little.
Read the article for a screenshot and directions on disabling fonts. It’s easy, but you really should read the article!
9. Find and remove large files and folders
This one is a no-brainer, right? Except for when a large file is created by an app and stored someplace you don’t choose… temp files, documents moved from the old Mac to the new one, several times, “stuff” you haven’t looked at in years are all candidates too.
Since you may not know or remember where this stuff is, several utilities (read the article) can help you find large files and folders.
Once you find ‘em, move them to an external drive, a DVD or make a compressed disk image or archive them as a .zip file.
10. Increase RAM
Im my opinion this should be tip #1. Macs are available with minimal RAM, barely enough to run the OS. Apple makes a good profit from extra RAM in their build-to order machines, so the prices are enough higher that many buy the basic systems. Never fear! Memory is incredibly cheap now, and most Macs are pretty easy to update. I do it for my clients all the time, and they usually remark “Is that all it takes? I could do that!” And they can, next time.
Please feel free to contact me for more info re: any of these tips, or any other Mac matter you would like to explore. There is always something new to learn… which is why I love my Mac!
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