Are you thinking of buying a new Mac? Before you do that you need to understand the reasons why your Mac may have slowed down. Even a brand new machine after a few years will give you trouble with similar performance issues. Hence, it is important to understand the core Mac problems you may face and how to solve the issues? Once the cause is known, fixing the problem would be easy and simple.
SLOW RAM
One of the primary reasons for Mac to respond slowly to requests is low RAM. Your applications have to wait in a queue to get access to your system resources because of an overloaded RAM. A list of applications along with their CPU and memory usage can be seen in the Activity Monitor. It is a feature that Mac provides for users to keep a check on their applications. Some applications are unable to release system resources back to the processor after its use. These bad apps lock the system resources to prevent other processes from accessing them. Such apps can be found in this utility by scanning the % CPU usage. Uninstall apps that are hogging system resources to free RAM.
LOW DISK SPACE
Another reason for slow system performance is Mac your startup disk is full. When the Mac processor runs out of RAM it uses the free disc space as its virtual memory to perform effortlessly. Your new Mac processor will work really fast initially. Learn more about Mac processor benchmarks. Low disk space prevents the processor from allocating virtual memory. Use utilities to periodically check your hard disk for unused files. Software such as Clean My Mac uses efficient inbuilt programs to locate system files that occupy huge space.
CLUTTERED DESKTOP
A cluttered desktop could be one of the main reasons why your Mac is loading sluggishly and slowly during login. Removal of loose files from your desktop and save them in folders would help in uncluttering the desktop. Rename your folders according to personal, official, movies, music and presentations for easy access. Cleaning the desktop will help Mac login faster than usual.
CHEK YOUR STARTUP
There are many apps that are loading during login that you don’t require. You need to check your startup items to see what apps are loading and causing the machine to slow down. Many software installers automatically load their apps during start-up which can turn out to be an overhead for the Mac processor. These apps are not required by the users to start during login. Users can improve the speed by removing unnecessary apps that get loaded during the startup process.
START AND SHUT THE MACHINE REGULARLY
Finally, it is good to restart your Mac once in a week to ensure system resources are released. If you do not shut down your Mac completely after using, it will lead to many apps using RAM or other system resources even after the apps have been exited. Restarting the Mac can free locked up resources and also clear temporary files loaded in the memory.