speed things up?
 

Is there a way to free system resources to speed up applications that r taking a while to load up? X 10.3

Don't quit the apps in the first place -- that's what I do :).

In particular, what's loading slowly, what machine do you have, how much RAM is installed, what third party extensions or "run at startup" items do you have installed, and how many applications do you typically use at once, and what are they?

Without the above info, it's tough to give any good advice, other than the first sentence, which is more or less what I do.

-rob.

Imac G3 320mb ram (i know its not much) X 10.3 400 mHz. Neo office is the one that is taking like 2 minutes to open when I select it from the dock. I have the standard apps + neo but, I am not sure what is in the startup block? Dont know how to tell?

Open "System Preferences" (there's a link on the Apple menu). Click the "Accounts" icon under "System". Select your username from the list on the left and click the "Startup Items" tab on the right. The items shown are started when you log in. It's not always obvious what these items mean, though - they may be "background" items that you don't necessarily see in the Dock.

If you're sure there's an item you don't want, select it and click the little minus sign below. This will stop it running automatically when you log in.

These items aren't likely to be slowing the system down considerably, though. Rob's advice is sound - simply don't close programs that you use often. Starting them up takes time as the system needs to read the information from the disk - if you're opening a large app, this can take some time. (I love Firefox, and it's stellar once loaded, but on my poor old PowerMac G3 it takes an age to load. So I don't ever quit the app.)

If you're a Mac newbie and have no idea what we're on about - i.e. not closing an app but leaving it running in the background - let me know. The Mac does this a lot differently to Windows. I'll explain if you like.

Hope that helps you out. I feel your pain... My PB is a 400MHz and I currently only have 192Mb of RAM. 512Mb is in the post...

j.

Sorry, to sound thick, but I'd like that explaining to me. If an item is running, or hidden is it not taking up any (or at least minimal) system resources? Since I switched from Windows to Mac, I always quit any applications I'm not using. Is this just one of my many hangovers from my Windows days?

More or less, yes. On my old G4/733mhz machine, I used to routinely leave 15 to 20 apps running. A few had odd issues, like Word used to take 40% of the CPU even when idle, but a couple quick fixes (disabling live word count, primarily) fixed that issue. With my Dual G5, I could probably leave 40 applications open at all times -- but I don't need that many, so it's usually more like 25.

When they're running but not active, they (at first) take up some real RAM, but usually little to no CPU time. Over time, as you leave it idle, the real RAM is given back to applications that actively need it -- the idle application's RAM needs are switched to virtual memory. This doesn't happen right away, but it happens as the OS determines it needs more RAM for something else. At least, that's my best layman's understanding of how OS X's virtual memory works.

What does this mean, operationally? If you launch XYZ and leave it running for a week, but never use it ... you'll find that it takes a few seconds for XYZ to become alive again when you do re-activate it. That's because the system will be reading XYZ out of virtual memory and swapping it back into real memory. But once that swap's done, XYZ will work as it usually did (and the system will begin freeing RAM from other less-used apps).

From a CPU consumption standpoint, the best thing you can do is run Activity Monitor while you have a bunch of apps open, and sort by CPU usage. Check the apps near the top of the list, and for the ones that aren't active, try to figure out why they might be taking so much CPU time -- do they do something like Word's active word count that's always running? Can you disable it? If an app is in the background, using a lot of CPU, and you can't reduce it, then go ahead and quit it. You'll value the CPU speed more than you will the few seconds of launch time.

One other thing to check on in Activity Monitor is RAM usage -- some apps may have slow memory leaks (memory required increases over time, even if you don't use the app). If you leave them open for days and weeks, you may notice that they're taking a TON of RAM (sort Activity Monitor by RAM usage to see this). If so, just remember to quit those apps every so often, and it'll free up the RAM again.

RAM: Buy more. As much as you can afford and/or as your machine can handle. 320MB is a more or less bare minimum nowadays. The more you can put in, the more apps you can leave running and you'll also get a nice speed bump as paging to virtual memory won't happen as often.

Neo Office: Depending on which one you're running, I understand why they're slow. The X11 version has to launch X11 first, which can take a bit of time on a slower machine. The Java version ... well, Java apps on the Mac load slowly, and that's all there is to it. I use jEdit, a Java-based text editor, quite a bit. It takes 10 seconds to launch the first time, and about five seconds on subsequent launches, even on my G5. To put that in comparison, huge, monolithic Word launches in about two seconds; Firefox takes three, etc. Java apps are just slow to load...

-rob.

It doesn't sound "thick" (you English?) mate, don't worry. Apple does a lot of things differently to Windows, it just takes a little while to learn it all and get used to it.

So, here goes. We'll use TextEdit as an example. Open your Applications folder (and leave it open, for now) and double-click TextEdit. It'll open, appearing in your Dock with a black arrow by its side. The black arrow signifies that the program is currently running; you'll see other applications on your Dock that aren't open, and they won't have a black arrow. (See Note below.)

Now, unlike Windows, a Mac program can run even if it has no "active" window that you can see. Say in Word on a PC, you have the main Word window and within that you have your document. You can close your document (File... Close) and the main (empty, grey) Word window stays open; then you go File... New and a new document opens immediately. It's like that on the Mac, except you don't see the empty, grey window. To see this, close the TextEdit window that you have open. You can do this by clicking the red X at top-left, pressing Apple-W (the quickest, and my favourite), or by selecting File... Close. You've closed the active TextEdit window, but not TextEdit - notice the arrow is still there in the Dock? Notice the top-leftmost menu item reads "TextEdit"? It's still the active program. It's still loaded. There's just nothing to see; when there's nothing to see, Windows shows you an ugly grey window. The Mac shows you ... well, nothing! :rolleyes:

While TextEdit is still the active program (i.e. its name shows in the menu, top-leftmost), you can press Apple-N (again, my favourite) or click File... New to open a new TextEdit document. Just like Windows.

To actually close TextEdit, you can't just get away with clicking the red X. I suspect this is the thing which foxes most Windows converts; in Windows, the idea that the X closes the program is fundamental. Forget it. To close a Mac program, you must either press Apple-Q (guess what... ;) ) or click the program's main menu option (i.e. TextEdit at the top-left - this option isn't in the File menu) then choose Quit YourApplication. That little arrow on the Dock just fades away...

You can still use Apple-Q if you have a window open within the application - the OS will just ask you if you want to save first, as in Windows.

What you can also do is hide an application. Open up TextEdit again and type some stuff in the window. To hide an app, press Apple-H or choose "Hide" from the app's main menu option. It just disappears, but it's still there in the background, doing whatever it was doing. Clicking its icon on the Dock brings it back to the foreground. (Note that this is slightly different to minimising to the Dock with the yellow button. I think I prefer to hide apps - but maybe because I have a slow machine and a small screen. Hiding is quicker and more screen-effective for me.)

So, back to the point. I'll use my real-life as an example. Firefox (a brilliant replacement for Safari or IE) takes ages to load on my machine 'cos it's pretty big. So I open it once when I log in, then never close it. If I'm not browsing, I hit Apple-W a bunch of times (just keep pressing until there's nothing left...) to close my windows then I get on with whatever else it was I was doing. Firefox is still open, it's just not doing anything. When I need to use it again, I click the icon - now, rather than having to read the whole application in from disk again, all Firefox has to do is open a new browser window for me. Yes, this does mean that Firefox is open in the background and consuming resources while I'm doing other things - but if it's not actually doing any work, it doesn't really make much difference. Maybe some of the program gets switched out of memory and on to the disk, but it's still always quicker this way.

So, log in and open Neo office. Do your thing, and when you're finished close the red X in whatever window is open. That's it. The icon will be there on the Dock, arrow and all. Next time you need it, click the icon and do whatever you have to do to get a new window. It should appear almost instantly.

Give that a try. I hope all this makes sense - if you've got any questions, anything you'd like clarified, let me know.

j.

Note: You can choose to have a program stay on your Dock even when it's not running; that's part of what the Dock is for. Again, we'll use TextEdit as an example. Open the Applications folder and find TextEdit. Drag it to the Dock (it must be on the left or top, depending on your Dock orientation) and let go. You'll see it stays there. You've created the equivalent of a Windows Shortcut. Clicking the icon opens TextEdit - it'll bounce while it opens, then the familiar arrow will appear. When you quit TextEdit the application icon will stay. If you want rid of the icon, simply drag it off your Dock.

Thank you both, I'm learning more about my Mac every day. It seems such a more sensible idea the way that Mac works. I've got 768 Mb RAM in my Mac (the same amount I had in my PC) and the speed at which it does things is so much better, but still thought that it would have such a detrimental effect having so many applications opened, now I know better. One question I've pondered for quite a while (slightly off topic I know, sorry) but is there a way of modifying how a program/alias/login item opens. On a Windows box, you can alter a shortcut so that it starts a program in normal mode, minimised, or full screen. Can this be done on Mac (Or more to the point, can I modify an alias so it starts the program but is shown as hidden in the dock?)

PS:- Sorry (again) yes I am English, my years in Manchester account for the colloquial way I type

Not a complete answer but you can hide apps at startup by using the checkbox in the Startup Items panel mentioned by jen729w (Post No.4)

As for the rest not that I know of - although an AS could do it for you.

hidden "IN" the dock or hidden "FROM" the docK?

if you want to hide applications from 'focus' (focus is the term that indicates which application is frontmost and is currently being used) after launched there is a simple method:

open your system preferences in the apple menu, choose the accounts pane, and click on 'startup items'. as you add applications that will start automatically when you log on, you may selectively check the tickbox in the left column to set them 'hidden' after launch.

the icons for the running applications will still show in the dock, but the program itself will act as if you've chosen the 'hide' command.

the second option was to hide apps FROM the dock. technically, this is a hack as it is not something supported by the os. and, as such has some odd side effects.

to run an application but not have its icon display in the dock there is a 3rd party utility called dockless. with this utility you can toggle the application's dock icon on and off. this utility works for about 90% of the applications i've tried with it.

note, however that when one hides the icon from the dock, it also removes the application's menus. so, while this utility is handy for background processes that dont otherwise need to be accessed all the time (like DNS update), i wouldnt try to use it with word or an application where menu items are a necessary part of the application.

good luck.

Never say sorry for being English! I'm from Sunderland myself, that's why I asked. You can always tell an Englishman by his superior command of our language. ;)


I get what you want to do - start an application and have it immediately hidden. I don't know of an "official" system way of doing this, but I'm pretty sure it's something that AppleScript could handle with ease. Unfortunately I don't have the first clue about AS and as my Mac isn't with me I can't even attempt to work it out. Any ideas, anybody?

j.

:)

Yay! A fellow northerner! :)

what I wanted to do was to be able to start an item (maybe not at log on) but to have it running and listed as hidden in the dock, so it has a faded icon?

I sure there's a UNIX command way to open the app and immediately hide it. Poke my brain someone! It's been on holiday too long.

Here's an AS that does it, but it is a "cheat", and won't work for anything that doesn't use command-H to hide the app. Photoshop uses something else, for example. Shift-command-H I think.

Save the script as an app, park it in the dock, whereever. Chucks up a menu with just three apps in it - add more names if you want to the line property applist: {blah,blah}. I'll try to remember where i've seen another way of doing this.

An adjustment to bramley's script is:

If 'launch' is used instead of 'activate', then the initial 'untitled' window or dialogs will be hidden before they become visible (so there is no flash of white after the splash screen).

The drawback of this script is that it would only work on applications whose AppleScript components have the property 'visible' in them (I don't know how extensive this is, but I think that it is pretty common). It worked with some applications whose AppleScript Dictionary did not even include the 'visible' property in it (Finale NotePad 2004). In fact worked for all applications I tried, except one: FireFox. FireFox did not became hidden using the above script and gave an error from if I tried the following script (If visible of process selectapp is true then set visible of process selectapp to false /endif). I tried to access FireFox's AppleScript Dictionary through ScriptEditor, but ScriptEditor would never bring it up. So I suspect there is some bug in the AppleScript component of FireFox.

The following adjustment of bramley's script would open the whole group of commonly used applications (for which the script worked) and would hide each as it opens.

I remembered but badly. This thread talks of using "kill -STOP" to sorta hide apps: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=22474

I'm not sure how well the "do shell script" part would work on an arbitrary app, or whether they would get damaged. I'll do some experiments. macmath's script much better than mine. Slight variation:

Only tested on Address Book, but I think a visible property is always present in processes in System Events so should work for all apps.

The annoying thing about this script is it shows every app that exists and has ever existed on my system. Should probably clean up my app registry.

Actually, leaving certain apps open CAN slow down OS X noticeably, even if you're not having these apps do anything for you, and they're in the background. Launch Activity Monitor and you'll see what I mean. Many apps are still doing things even when they're in the background, and though most don't use much processor time, a few do--on my B&W G3, 400 mhz, Microsoft Word is always using between 7% and 15% of the processor time even when it's in the background, and with Live Word Count turned off; Filemaker Pro bounces up and down between 4% and 15% in rapid fire, continuously; the utility Default Folder X uses about 10% of the processor time on my Mac at all times, even though it does its thing mostly only in open/save dialogs. It's a bit of folklore that leaving apps running doesn't slow down OS X enough to be a problem; it's true that if you use an app a lot, you should keep it running, but if it (or the whole OS) slows down intolerably, you can often get some speed back by quitting from it and re-launching it. On faster Macs, having processor-hungry apps running all the time is less of an issue, since even if the percentage of processor time each app is using were about the same on a faster Mac as on a slower Mac (it's not), an app will run faster when it has 15% of a 1 ghz processor's time than when the same app has 15% of a 400 mhz processor's time. However, my tests comparing how well processor time is divvied up, on the oldest Mac that can officially run OS X, the B&W G3, vs newer Macs, shows that the G4 (or at least logic boards that contain a G4) is much better at this, and the first G4 where this really shines is the Quicksilver G4, where Activity Monitor will actually show even processor-hungry apps using less processor time than on earlier Mac models. I found this out when I simply moved my hard drive from my B&W G3 to a Quicksilver, and ran Activity Monitor--the percentage figures I quote above dropped considerably for each app (though I forget what the actual figures were). However, even fast Macs can bog down with enough apps running. As griffman points out above, it's both an issue of the processor time they use up, and RAM they use up--OS X's virtual memory scheme is generally OK, with some exceptions in its behavior, but it's not perfect. Also, the more windows that are open in each app, not only will that app run more slowly, but they'll affect how fast other apps and OS X in general will run. So, if speed is a problem, close (don't just minimize) all apps and windows you don't need.

Can we all chip in so jonsaw can afford to get his return key fixed?

:eek:

I'm going to guess that's an artifact of creating the message in Word, and then losing the line (or paragraph) breaks when pasting it in to the text entry box. Word sometimes defaults to using 'embraced and extended' character codes which are not actually the ones you'd expect (or want).

I nominate TextEdit (and NotePad for Windows) as the official offline editor of the MacOSXHints forums.

At any rate, jonsaw, can you edit that post some? It's kinda tough for us old folks to read.

Well, could be that evil Word thing doing it.

I did mean to put a :) in there too, but ( one, two, three ) someone had too say something! :D

As yellow has so kindly pointed out here, I am not a spring chicken any more and me eyesight is failing (in my good eye that is, not the glass one)!! :D

Don't let me worry you jonsaw, just a babbling old man....

Would if I could
 

...but for some reason, the Edit button isn't available to me for that post.

You're right about needing to use the Return key more often--I sometimes forget. You're also right about Word--I use it to compose some posts, but I sometimes forget about what it'll look like as a post--my pasted text didn't have any returns to begin with.

Sorry if the length of the messages has been hard to read, but it's usually better to have too much than not enough. Giving someone as much information about a problem from the start is usually the better approach, than going back and forth with someone about it piecemeal, when I might have had the info they needed all along.

When my eyes get bleary from looking at the screen too long, I use my browser's option to increase the font size, but that won't do the whole job when the text is a massive, dense block. Point taken.