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Despite your best efforts, your Mac is running a bit slow, hard disk space is filling up fast and applications are getting sluggish. Don't worry, it happens to everyone. While there is no definitive cure-all, there are some basic things you can do that might help, reclaim disk space and speed up your Mac.
Before you get started keep in mind that none of these tips will change your aging G4 iMac into an Intel Quad-core speed machine. One of the best ways to speed up any aging computer is upgrade the hardware -- invest in a larger hard drive or more RAM.
In the past, the case design in many Mac make it very complicated to upgrade the hard drive (more recent models are much easier to upgrade), but even if a new hard drive amounts to open heart surgery you should still be able to add more RAM without too much trouble.
The other things to do before we get down to specifics is to run Software Update and make sure that you have the latest version of OS X and other Apple supplied applications.
== Recover Hard Disk space ==
When your hard drive gets too full drive (and by full we mean past the 90% mark) it can slow down your Mac. But don't start deleting your precious family photo albums, here's a few things that you may not know about that eat up space on your Mac drive.
# Delete unused language packs. You probably aren't using the Farsi language localizations on your machine and even if you are, then you can probably still get rid of French or German. Check out the freeware app [http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/ Monolingual] which makes getting rid of unused language files a snap.
# Take a hard look at your applications folder. Do you really need all those shareware apps you aren't using? If not, get rid of them and free up a little space.
# Download [http://www.derlien.com/ Disk Inventory X] which will give you a nice graphical overview of what is using space on your drive. If it is indeed those precious family photos, consider moving them off to a USB or Firewire external drive
== Speed Up Slow Applications ==
When most people complain about their Mac being slow, what they're referring to is the applications running on their Mac. There are too many applications to cover everything, but here's a few common culprits.
# Safari -- Safari is fast and lightweight, but it can get bogged down if your browsing history is excessively large or Safari is storing a ton of Autofill entries. One easy way to reset nearly everything at once is the select Safari >> Reset Safari, which will clear all your caches.
# Dashboard -- Dashboard widgets are handy tools, but the eat up RAM, sometimes even when you aren't suing them, which means there's less RAM available for the applications you are using. Head into your Applications Folder, select the Utilities Folder and look for Activity Monitor. Activity monitor is a great way to see what applications are using the most memory. If you see a lot of Dashboard widgets high up on the list, consider disabling them.
# Universal binaries -- If you're using an Intel Mac make sure that all your applications are universal binaries. Older copies compiled to run on PowerPC machines will be noticeably slower on Intel machines.
== General System tips ==
# Clean Our Your Startup Items -- If you Mac is slow starting up, open your System Preferences and click accounts. Select your username and see what's listed in the startup items. Sometime applications will inject themselves here without asking (or even if they asked you may not want them anymore). Getting rid of some startup items can speed up your boot times.
# Cleaning up your desktop -- If your desktop is covered with dozens or even hundreds of icons you may see a performance hit. Mac OS X treats each desktop icon as its own window which incurs a small memory hit. For most people this won't be an issue but if you have hundreds of icons it might help to move them off to another location.
# Fonts -- although they won't produce a huge performance gain, getting rid of any corrupt fonts will make your Mac more stable. Open up Font Book, select all the fonts in the Font list and choose File >> Validate Fonts. Font Book will open a new window with icons to show font's status. If a font is corrupt, select it and click on the Remove Checked button. Font Book can't actually repair corrupt fonts, for that you'll need a commercial utility like [http://www.insidersoftware.com/FA_pro4_osx.php FontAgent Pro] ($100).
== Things that Won't Help No Matter What the "Pros" in Forums Tell You ==
# Repairing File Permissions -- The uneducated Mac users favorite cure-all, which in fact does next to nothing. Unless you're having problems logging in or using certain system files, this won't do anything for you. It certainly won't speed up your Mac.
# Updating Prebinding -- Prebinding is updated when apps are launched (and when new ones are installed), there's no need to do it by hand.
# Speed up Safari by reducing the "page load delay" -- David Hyatt, lead programmer for Safari, [http://webkit.org/blog/94/amusing/ says], "the preference in question is dead and does absolutely nothing in Safari." Trust him, he created it.
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