Mach OS X
- Article 53 of 53
- iCreate, March 2006
OS X 10.4 is Apple's fastest system yet, but older Macs might not be getting the full benefit of Apple's latest tune-up. Here we explain how to turbocharge Tiger
Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | All 4 Pages
There is also software to improve hard drive performance. OS X stops disk fragmentation, for instance, a common problem on Windows machines that slows down just about everything. It also has a caching system designed to do just that, but this doesn’t always produce the best results. Programs such as Tiger Cache Cleaner ($9.90, http://www.northernsoftworks.com/tigercachecleaner.html) can increased the cache of files that OS X stores in memory. This can be very useful if you have plenty of memory and there are certain files – OS X’s or your own – that get accessed frequently. Many applications, including Internet Explorer, also have caches that perform similar tasks so if they give you the option of increasing cache sizes, take advantage of them.
Disk journaling, a nice feature designed to avoid disk corruption in the event of your Mac crashing, does reduce disk performance slightly. If your Mac is particularly reliable, use the Terminal command “sudo diskutil disableJournal /Volume/diskName”, to disable journaling on drive “diskName” – you can just drag the drive onto your Terminal window to make this last past magically appear without any typing.
Our last hard drive turbo tip is to use Disk Utility to repair permissions on your startup drive. As well as fixing all sorts of common problems, this can improve performance as OS X no longer has to work out what to do when applications start trying to access things they should be able to but can’t.
There is one final turbo tip though. We’ve covered all the real ways you can speed up your Mac but if you can’t speed up your Mac any further, speed up your Internet connection instead. Most of the waiting you’ll face in Safari, for instance, comes from the speed you can get data down your Internet connection. Faster Internet=faster Mac (seemingly). If you have an Internet connection that’s 5Mbps or better, Apple’s Broadband Tuner (http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/broadbandtuner10.html) can make it even faster. And if your Open and Save dialogue boxes seem a bit slow, turn off iDisk syncing.
On older Macs, OS X 10.4 may not run as well as it should. If you follow our advice, though, Tiger can be… great! (Sorry. We just had to.)
Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | All 4 Pages