Accelerate your Mac!
If your Mac seems a lot slower now than when you first bought it, it’s not your imagination. Over time, your Mac can become bogged down with extra background tasks, run out of free RAM and disk space, and encounter a wide variety of other issues that lead to slow performance. With expert advice and a little detective work, you can find and fix these problems—returning your Mac to its original, peppy self.
Don’t depend on random tips that may or may not help. In this book you’ll learn how to find and address the exact causes of slow behavior, with before-and-after tests to confirm your results. You’ll discover how to optimize CPU and RAM usage, eliminate disk bottlenecks, improve network performance (including web browsing and email), speed up peripherals, perform strategic software and hardware upgrades, and much more.
This book covers 10.9 Mavericks or later, including 10.13 High Sierra.
In this practical, hands-on book, Joe Kissell shares the results of his extensive research:
Learn the Basics: Separate fact from fiction when it comes to commonly recommended performance tips.
Diagnose Speed Issues: Use benchmarking and other diagnostic tools to pinpoint speed problems and test your fixes.
Try Quick Fixes: Discover the most effective techniques for overcoming random, temporary speed problems.
Lighten Your CPU’s Load: Track down apps that are bogging down your processor and teach them to behave.
Increase Available RAM: Turn off or manage processes that are using too much memory so there’s more to work with.
Improve Disk Performance: Fix disk errors, avoid running out of space, and eliminate inefficient disk access.
Boost Network Speeds: Speed up Wi-Fi and Ethernet network access, DNS lookups, web browsing, and email.
Monitor System Resources: Use Activity Monitor and other tools to keep tabs on your Mac’s CPU, RAM, disk, and network usage.
Upgrade Your Hardware: Learn when and how to install additional RAM, a new hard drive, an SSD, or other hardware upgrades.
What’s New in the Second Edition
This book contains a large number of minor changes, but only the following major changes since Speeding Up Your Mac: A Joe On Tech Guide, version 1.1:
Updated the book for compatibility with macOS 10.13 High Sierra and the latest Mac models available as of December 2017
Added iStat Menus to the list of utilities in “Use Live Monitoring Tools”
Mentioned a way to speed up Time Machine in “Adjust Backup Software Settings”
Clarified details about how much space you should leave available on your disk in “Determine How Much Space You Need”
Revised “Use Optimized Storage in Sierra or Later” with better details and new advice
Updated various topics in “Speed Up Your Browser” to cover the latest browser versions
Revised “Monitor Network Activity” to use Little Snitch, rather than the now-discontinued Private Eye, as an example
Added a mention of mesh/hub-and-spoke Wi-Fi routers in “Signal Strength”
Explained the importance of using the right kind of Ethernet cable in “Check Your Wired Ethernet Connection”
Revised “Use a Faster DNS Provider” to reflect the fact that namebench is no longer being developed (and has problems under High Sierra)
Added CursorSense to the utilities covered in “Adjust Acceleration”
Updated the sidebar “Is My Storage Upgradable?” and the topic “Add a Second (or Larger) Display” to cover recent Mac models
Rewrote most of the chapter “Speed Up Your Peripherals,” which now contains complete information about USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt 3
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