Two Ways I Sped Up My Mac Without Spending a Penny

Yosemite’s successor (aka OS X 10.11) will be announced next week at the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). While I welcome the arrival of the new OS, it remains to be seen if my early 2008 Mac Pro will run it. Whether it runs the new OS or not, I will continue to rely on my Mac Pro for quite some time. It’s my Millennium Falcon.

While I have just begun work on my first ever PC build, I have no immediate plans to jettison my Mac Pro in favor of the new PC.

That being said, my beloved Mac Pro hasn’t been running “up to snuff” lately. It was stuttering in places and RAM utilization was maxing out, even after quitting applications that were no longer being used.

I ran my usual battery of utilities (CleanMyMac3 and DiskWarrior 5). No problems were found. Then I took apart my Mac Pro to give it a thorough cleaning with my DataVac electric duster.

I couldn’t figure out why my Mac was acting so slow. And then I looked at my setup. The culprit was staring right at me, and I didn’t even realize it.

In addition to running three displays (via two video cards), I also have TotalSpaces 2 and Spaces in Mission Control active. With Total Spaces 2, I had 8 virtual desktops, each with wallpaper changing every 5 minutes. Memory consumption was going towards maintaining these virtual desktops and the load was being taxed even more with rotating desktop wallpapers.

The solution to restoring my Mac Pro’s performance involved removing Total Spaces 2 (thereby eliminating virtual desktops all together) and turning off
the “Displays Have Separate Spaces” option in Mission Control.

With three “real” desktops, there really wasn’t any need for me to maintain virtual ones. Going one step further, I switched all my colorful desktop backgrounds to a simple solid gray color – rotating wallpaper slideshows require additional processing.

Now my Mac Pro is running fast once again. And it didn’t cost me a dime. To paraphrase Han Solo, “She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts.”

-Krishna