Mac|Life - November 2011

AdVICe LIne

My Mac is running so slowly,
and I don’t know why.

Seeing beach balls? Don’t get your eyes checked. Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities) shows all the currently running applications and processes, updating in real time.

Click the %CPU column to see how much of your Mac’s processor capacity is being chomped up by each process at any given moment.

The processes with app icons next to them should be recognizable as applications. If your CPU hog turns out to be iPhoto importing pics or i Tunes syncing your iPhone, just wait until it’s done. But if it’s an app you’re not even using, go ahead and quit it, either from the Dock or by selecting it in Activity Monitor and clicking Quit Process. A dialog will offer to Quit or Force Quit; quitting is better unless the app is unresponsive.

Processes with no little icons and less-recognizable names are background processes, and you shouldn’t go quitting them willy-nilly—never quit anything until you know what it is. Instead, Google its name to figure out what it does. For example, if your external Time Machine drive is being indexed by Spotlight with the process mds, mds will use a ton of your CPU while Time Machine is working. Don’t quit the mds process; instead, exclude that drive from Spotlight indexing (System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy).

If you notice that i Tunes is using the lion’s
share of your CPU because you’re rocking out
with the Visualizer on, turn off the Visualizer
(Command-T). If your browser has a million tabs open and
you’re playing Flash videos, either close most of the tabs or
cut way back on CPU-hogging Flash usage with a blocker like
Click ToFlash on Safari or FlashBlock for Firefox. If you’re a
You Tube junkie, visit youtube.com/html5 to join the HTML5
trial and view available videos that way.

Firefox hogs a lot of CPU power playing Flash videos, and that Visualizer in i Tunes does too.

Activity Monitor shows that out of our Mac’s 4GB of RAM, a little over half is active. So we’re okay.

I upgraded to Lion, and my Finder sidebar lost track of all its links. Lions are prissy cats. Ever since we upgraded to 10. 7, several strange glitches have been haunting various Mac|Life staffers. One of the most problematic is a general funkiness with the Finder, specifically when trying to click on aliases in the sidebar. If, when you click on the sidebar, nothing is selected, go to Finder > Preferences > Sidebar and check and uncheck a box. For some reason, this will restore sidebar links. While you’re in there, don’t forget to uncheck any boxes you might not want littering up your Finder sidebar!