Top 4 Ways to Keep Your Mac Humming

We all hate them—the spinning beachballs. We all get them too. Today I’m going to provide you a list of four easy things you can do to keep your Mac humming along, and not feel like a glugged-out Windows system.

Of course, if you want, then the easiest way to make your Mac feel like Windows is to run Windows on it, but that’s taking the easy way out. Let’s look at some other ways that don’t involve quite as much polluting of your Mac.

Bear in mind though, that these are dependent on the specs of your Mac, especially your Mac’s memory (RAM). Tiger likes 1GB of RAM. Panther doesn’t mind it either. The problems described will be a lot worse and happen a lot sooner if you run your Mac with insufficient RAM. Upgrading your memory could go on this list, but for this list, I’m sticking to simple things you can do from time to time.

Let’s do this countdown style. So here they are, the Top 4 Ways to Will Your Mac, or if you follow each one’s instructions, the Top 4 Ways to Keep Your Mac Running Sweet.

Number 4: Use Fast User Switching
Fast User Switching is good in theory – provided you follow the theory of it letting you log in, do what you need to do, and log out again. It’s when you leave a user left logged on in the background that you’ll notice a performance hit.

This one I only discovered recently, but was amazed how much the system slowed down with even one user logged on in the background .

Recommendation: If Fast User Switching is enabled, log off inactive users where possible.

Number 3: Have heaps of applications open at once
OS X can be forgiving of bad habits and handles many applications open at once very well, so it can take a while for this one to hit. It’s easy to get in the habit of not closing applications because you might need them again soon or later. Often though it’s later. Sometimes days later. I find when things start to get sluggish, I have over 20 applications open and closing a few helps. Even so, I’ve rarely got less than a dozen open.

Also, some applications are more resource hungry than others, so get to know which ones are, and only keep them running when needed. You’ll be able to tell because you’ll notice the performance drop when they are open.

Recommendation: Close applications that you won’t be using again for a while.

Number 2: Use a web browser
Those suckers seem to be built for killin’.  They’re the most effective computer killing software known to man (besides Windows viruses).

Okay, this is not entirely true. Some research has identified the problem is not so much the browsers, as rogue websites. I found one that I visited each week, that chews up 20MB of virtual memory every few minutes – and it doesn’t matter which browser I use.

Also, opening many browser windows or tabs chews up resources. It’s not uncommon for me to have dozens of web pages open. So closing web pages you no longer need, or don’t have the time to read yet, can help.

Beware too of applications that have web browsers built-in, such as the excellent NetNewsWire, as these can drain resources for the same reasons.

Recommendation: From time to time (maybe once a week), quit your browser and restart it.

Number 1: Never reboot
Okay, so I know that one’s going to test my fire insurance, but have you ever read the forums after a minor upgrade of OS X? You get so many: “Maybe it’s just me, but my system feels a bit zippier after installing this update. Shame I had to reboot though - my uptime was 273 years.”

Believe it or not, even Macs need to be rebooted. Occasionally. Sure you need to reboot Windows PCs regularly - daily never hurts, but it doesn’t hurt to reboot a Mac either… every few weeks.

Recommendation: If your system’s sluggish, and the above don’t help, then don’t be afraid to reboot.

These are four things that I have found work for me. If anyone else has simple tasks they regularly perform to keep their Mac running sweet, let us know.