Why is my mac so slow, I am a bit of computer clean/tidy freak and often run ‘purge’ along with applejack and Ccleaner on it, I dont have that many apps installed, there is over 100gb free space on it (of 500gb) and I dont have thaat much running usually, say Adobe InDesign, Itunes, Safari, and sometimes Photoshop, as soon as i have all those running it kills it! constantly getting the multi coloured loading wheel. In my opinion its always ran slower than what i would expect from a machine of that spec…

2.3ghz i7 processor
4gb ram
macbook pro from 2011

See this image below, why is my internet using so much ram? i have perhaps 15 tabs open, is that considered a lot? Fair enough photoshop is using a lot of ram but to be honest it was only a 5mb file that i had photomerged together :S

In fairness you are asking a lot. If the tabs in Safari are active, it can suck up a lot of RAM. Indesign also requires a fair bit, Photoshop can too if you are rendering.

You only have 4gb of RAM, enough to run any one of those applications. Not all of them together. My bro-in-law is a graphic designer, runs an iMac with 16gb of RAM and says Indesign could do with more.

If you think your Mac is crap, try a indesign on a PC with the same spec.

YMMV.

‘I’ve only got 4GB of RAM – 15 tabs open and the full adobe creative suite running, and my hard drive is nearly full, why is my computer so slow?’ 😕

I dunno? – it shouldn’t be like that surely?, i use a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo late Unibody Macbook wi 4gb ram and 500 GB SSD samsung hard drive and for a 3 (or 4?) yr old machine it positively blasts along, never done anything to it, it’s never sat down on me and it just seems to work flawlessly despite having Traktor/Ableton/170GB + of 24bit sound samples and music along with photoshop and numerous music production plug ins.

I have never purged it,cleaned out history or what not, i do empty the various bins/trash every now and then but everyone does that.

why is my computer so slow?’

Because it’s a late night troll

Not enough ram. 8 or 16 gb is cheap enough
No scratch disk for photoshop either (it will use ram as scratch first but you have none spare).
The other bottleneck is the spinning hard drive

It’s paging. Fit more RAM or use less.

I found my new MBP performance disappointing compared to my old W7 self built PC until I put 8GB and a fast SSD in it. Now it nips along very nicely indeed.

Just slam more RAM in it. Its dirt cheap to do and makes a huge difference. I always bump mine up to the maximum from new. If you’re going to spend the money a new Macbook Pro costs anyway, why wouldn’t you?

8Gb of Ram for a MBP is £35

I would stick some more ram in but I have a 3 year warranty with apple and if you replace the ram yourself it voids said warranty… same with HD…no?

8gb ram is your friend! Oh and an SSD will speed everything up too.

but I have a 3 year warranty with apple and if you replace the ram yourself it voids said warranty… same with HD…no?

No.

Think it might be on the latest retina ones.

Think it might be on the latest retina ones.

Possibly, but previously it’s always been described as a User Serviceable Part in documentation, and apple even have a PDF describing how to do it.

Not seen any info from the newer ones though so it may well have changed.

In work i’ve still got a core 2 duo with 4 gig in it… use indesign, illustator photoshop and quark at the same time all the time and kick the arse out of them, as well as loads of other programs..

Itt does slow down over a day to unworkable levels, but still runs decent enough until such point.. just tend to restart when the it gets too much for the memomory, twice a day usually, when i start and around lunch time.

It’s definitely memory issues as people say, so in lieu of restarting all the time, max it out.

btw bin safari and stick chrome on it, safari is mince.

I think retina is non user serviceable – RAM etc soldered onto the board to help reduce the size. Bit like the MBA. Worth double checking but I remember this being one of the reasons for picking a standard MBP

Absolutely RAM. On an iMac with 16GB, having just quit After Effects, Premiere and AME, with Safari (6 tabs), iTunes, Mail, Messages and Twitter still running, I still only have 10GB free.

Maybe download the free trial of iStat Menus and see what that tells you in terms of system usage.

my mate’s studio mac running pro tools, plug ins etc has 128 Gig ram, he says he needs more… 😯

I have 12Gb in my Mac which is fine (although more is always better!) Trying to run Adobe CS with only 4Gb is a bit silly IMO if you want to be productive. Also as has been said SSD helps a lot.

Trying to run Adobe CS with only 4Gb is a bit silly IMO if you want to be productive

that’s a nonsense statement.

And to think I used to do serious photoshop work, with layers, filters, etc, on a Mac PowerPC with 1Gb of RAM… 😀

Not enough RAM.

Upgrade to a 500gb SSD + 16gb RAM and it will fly.

Trying to run Adobe CS with only 4Gb is a bit silly IMO if you want to be productive
that’s a nonsense statement.

It’s all dependent on the size of files you work on. I regularly have photoshop files that are 2-10gb in size (80mpixel camera files in 16bit and many layers) and need as much ram as possible and forget not having a separate scratch disk.
But If the files you work on are smaller than the amount of available ramor scratch disk then you will not take a hit on performance.

I think the OP is right, my 6 year old Toshiba Tecra is faster than my current MBP. So much so I am getting shot of the mac ❗

I think the OP is right, my 6 year old Toshiba Tecra is faster than my current MBP. So much so I am getting shot of the mac

Depends how old the MBP is as well. I would suggest you need to take a look at the system utilities and see what’s going on and utilizing processor time and RAM.

Just as an aside, make sure you have some anti virus on your macs… Sophos is free!

that’s a nonsense statement.

depends how busy you are I suppose! Personally I don’t have time for my machine to “slow down over a day to unworkable levels” (twice!) YMMV

As everyone else has said it’s all down to ram. I’m running adobe photoshop, illustrator and parallels all at once on a Mac mini and it is fine as I dropped in 16gb of ram. Cheap as chips and makes a massive difference, buy fom Crucial and they have an app that tells you what you can upgrade to.