Well, this week was the “Great iPhone6 Release”…I have a few friends who probably haven’t put the device down since UPS or FedEx dropped it at their door yesterday. Hopefully, you’re not like that poor guy who dropped it (literally) as he was taking it out of the box (iPhone6 Guy).
Anyway, the iPhone frenzy put me into thinking about Apple products this week. Additionally, a client of mine requested some assistance with “speeding up” a slow Mac. “You know, I don’t normally work on Mac’s, right?” says I. “I know, but I trust you more than I trust me to figure it out” says she. So, off to Mac-land I go.
What I found is that despite Apple’s ‘you don’t have to do maintenance on our products’ stance, there really IS some maintenance that should be done on Apple desktops and laptops should they start becoming sluggish. With just a few minutes of attention, a VERY SLOW computer turned into a productive machine again.
What did we do? Well, a little Googling brought some tools to light. All of them are free or built in to Apple products.
My favorite place to start when faced with a technology issue is CNET…and wouldn’t you know that the first article I read was published by them: Five Tips for Cleaning and Speeding Up Your Mac
Item #1 on CNET’s list was my first stop.
A MacWorld article was next on my hit list: Favorite Mac Cleanup Tips
Items #2 and 3 were the tips we tried.
Our third stop was WikiHow.com: Speed Up Your Mac
From WikiHow, we took Item #2
After all the ‘dead wood’ was cleaned out, we made sure that the programs were all up-to-date (use the Settings area).
Some of the other tips in the articles sound useful, but we didn’t try them and still had success.
FINALLY, the BIG TEST: Turn the machine off all the way and back on.
Our apps opened up 80% faster than they had before we started! SUCCESS!!!
So, for those of you who are feeling your Mac is letting you down because it’s getting sluggish, take a few minutes to try these tips and see what happens. You have nothing to lose!
Happy iPhone6, everyone!!
2 Comments
Ahhhhh, yes – the great “Macs DO slow down” without some attention.
I now own THREE Macs: 4-year old MacBook Pro, 2 year old Mac Pro (the giant silver tower), and the brand new Mac Pro (the sleek, black cylinder). The new Mac Pro is too new for any clean ups or updating, but the other two have needed help, just as you described.
And just because the Mac go to sleep and wake up SO quickly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t close them down all the way at times… maybe once a week.
Thanks for the input, Sandy! Always great to get your posts.
Charlie Seymour Jr
http://CharlieTheMarketer.com
So true, Charlie about actually SHUTTING DOWN any kind of equipment which has an on/off switch. Weekly is a good guideline…but sometimes even once-a-month will do (think printers). Just have to dump memory out and start over fresh…that’s really what you are doing when you shut down…plus, it forces the computer to ‘reconfigure’ itself to the standard settings you’ve set…also good for ‘speeding up’.