Speed up your Mac – for real

24 October 2015, 05:00

One of the regular tutorials you might expect to find on a site like this – and that I certainly see a lot when out browsing the web – is how to speed-up your Mac.

All kinds of nonsense is discussed in such tutorials. 99% of it is pure placebo and theatre, and often leads to a poorer quality experience of your Mac as well.

Apple is a clever company full of clever people and OS X is already optimised. It isn’t like Windows, where Microsoft has to make technical compromises to ensure compatibility. Apple knows exactly what hardware is going to be used, and they know exactly how to get the best out of it. You’re not going to improve on this.

That said, there is ONE tip that I would share that makes for a faster Mac. Actually, make that two, although the first involves spending money.

Tip 1: Fit an SSD and max-out your Mac’s RAM. I wrote about this for Macworld a while ago. It’s quite stunning the speed boosts you’ll get.

Tip 2 (and this one is both free and easy): Keep your desktop clean of icons and folders. Don’t store files there. Don’t put image files or movies there. Don’t use the desktop as a download dump.

I can’t emphasise the importance of Tip 2. Do it regularly and your Mac will be a LOT healthier. Here’s a script I featured on the site a few years ago that will tidy things up for you. Dead simple.

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