Mac too old? Mountain Lion just might be slow… Besides that option, try some of the cleaning and optimisation apps that are available in the App Store, such as iBoostUp Premium (£6.99). Older Macs can definitely run Mountain Lion, but you might as well give your computer the best chance it can have and carry out those all-important upgrades. Of course, really old Macs are not able to run Mountain Lion in the first place, but there are lots of Core 2 Duo-based machines out there with the minimum memory and not much hard disk space.ĭon’t be surprised if your machine struggles slightly if you’ve already had it for 3 or 4 years and have never added extra memory or upgraded to an SSD solid state drive.
TRASHME MAC INSTALL
Having the latest Mac with an Intel Core i7 CPU is all well and good, but most people who install Mountain Lion are bound to have a slightly older machine that can’t run things it as silky smooth as a top spec brand new system. Set all your app preferences (such as Mail) to sensible values that don’t negatively impact performance
It’s wise to carefully think about application and system settings before you alter them, or search on the Internet to investigate what the optimal settings might be.
Likewise, applications such as Mail should be carefully configured to check for new messages at a sensible frequency – there’s no point to checking your POP email (such as Yahoo)) every 5 minutes, as this task is just consuming your computer’s valuable resources.
TRASHME MAC UPDATE
For example, if you’re running a CPU meter app in the main menu bar, it will take up many more processor cycles if the update frequency is set to the maximum, rather than setting it to update every few seconds. There are lots of ways to mess things up by choosing options incorrectly or simply failing to adhere to the recommend or most appropriate settings. Pretty much every application on the Mac has a setting that controls how it behaves – either in System Preferences or it’s own preferences (accessed by COMMAND + ,). Most Mac apps can simply be deleted, but there are also a few apps on the Mac App Store (such as TrashMe which costs just £4.99) which can ensure that old apps really are deleted – including all their various settings and preferences. Once again, it’s always a good idea to keep your digital life highly organised and make sure that old applications are properly removed. Besides this issue (which relates to the disk space problem already mentioned), is the problem that over time application settings and files also build up, causing potential conflicts as old setting files are overwritten or applications need to spend more time looking for content all over your hard disk. Over time we all build up lots of files, photos and videos that we seldom use.
TRASHME MAC ARCHIVE
The lesson here is to make sure you have as much free space as possible, and possibly archive your old files to an external disk, a cloud service, compress them or simply delete stuff that you don’t need anymore. Once you’ve installed lots of new apps, disk space can quickly be eaten up, and the more files you have the longer it can take to find files, index them (for Spotlight searches) and defragment them (which is done automatically by OS X). Do you have enough disk space for applications, movies, photos, the OS X and more…? It’s even worse if you’re low on memory too, because your computer may not have enough disk space to use as virtual memory, thus compounding the problem.
TRASHME MAC UPGRADE
It’s much more cost-effective to upgrade memory once you’ve bought your Mac, but note that the new Retina Display models cannot be upgraded because the memory is soldered onto the motherboard and cannot be removed.Īpple states that 8 GB of disk space is needed to install Mountain Lion, however if you’re running out of space then you might notice a significant slowdown in the general performance of your Mac. One last tip – don’t buy memory modules from Apple because their prices are extortionate compared with companies like Crucial. Insufficient memory will cause your Mac to use “virtual memory” on the disk which is slowĪ lack of RAM isn’t limited to Mountain Lion only – whatever version of OS X you’re running, it’s advisable to install as much memory as possible as an after-market upgrade, or worst case buy your new Mac with lots of RAM to begin with. Memory upgrades are surprisingly easy to do and mean that your Mac won’t need to use hard disk space as “virtual memory”, thus ensuring everything is running optimally and speedily.
RAM prices are now as cheap as chips, so 4GB should be the absolute minimum to have installed – however 8 GB or even 16 GB (on the newer Retina Display Macs) is definitely recommended if you can afford it. Boost your Raspberry Pi performances with these 6 simple tips - Overclocking, SSD & more
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