Chapter 25

Ten Ways to Speed Up Your iMac

In This Chapter

Adding memory

Using spoken commands

Defragmenting your drive

Banishing the Desktop background

Using column mode

Customizing the Dock

Using keyboard shortcuts

Customizing your Finder windows

Launching recent applications and documents

Using the Go menu

Even an iMac with an Intel Quad Core i7 processor can always go just a bit faster … or can it? There’s actually a pretty short list of tweaks that you can apply to your iMac’s hardware to speed it up, and these suggestions are covered in this chapter.

You can also work considerably faster within Mavericks by customizing your Desktop and your Finder windows, which makes it easier to spot and use your files, folders, and applications. That’s in this Part of Tens chapter, too.

Finally, you can enhance your efficiency and make yourself a power user by tweaking yourself. (Sounds a bit tawdry or even painful, but bear with me, and you’ll understand.)

Nothing Works Like a Shot of Memory

Okay, maybe shot is the wrong word, but adding additional memory to your iMac (by either replacing or adding a memory module) is the single surefire way to speed up the performance of your entire system. That includes every application as well as Mavericks itself.

With more memory, your iMac can hold more of your documents and data in memory, and thus has to store less data temporarily on your hard drive. It takes your iMac much less time to store, retrieve, and work with data when that data is in RAM (short for random access memory) rather than on your hard drive. That’s why your system runs faster when you can fit an entire image in Adobe Photoshop in your iMac’s system memory.

At the time of this writing, you can cram up to 32GB of memory in a 27" iMac model, and 21.5" models can be configured with extra memory as well when you order from the Apple online store.

Only 27" iMacs can be upgraded with additional memory after purchase.

Hold a Conversation with Your iMac

Many Mac owners will attest that you can significantly increase your own efficiency by using the Speakable Items feature, which allows you to speak common commands within applications and Finder windows. Your voice is indeed faster than either your mouse or your fingers! Common commands in the Speakable Items folder include “Log me out” and “Get my mail.”

To enable Speakable Items, choose System Preferences⇒Accessibility, click the Speakable Items entry in the list at the left, and then select the On radio button next to Speakable Items. Remember that, by default, the speech recognition system is active only when you press and hold the Esc key.

Vamoose, Unwanted Fragments!

Apple would probably prefer that I not mention disk fragmentation because Mavericks doesn’t come with a built-in defragmenting application. (Go figure.) A disk-defragmenting application reads all the files on your drive and rewrites them as continuous, contiguous files, which your machine can read significantly faster.

To keep your hard drive running as speedily as possible, I recommend defragmenting at least once monthly. You can use third-party applications like Prosoft Engineering’s Drive Genius 3 (http://www.prosofteng.com) to defragment your drive.

Keep Your Desktop Background Simple

It’s funny that I still include this tip in a chapter dedicated to improving performance. After all, I recommended using a solid color background in my first books on Mac OS 8 and Windows 98! Just goes to show you that some things never change.

If you’re interested in running your system as fast as it will go, choose a solid-color background from the Desktop & Screen Saver pane in System Preferences. (In fact, there’s even a separate category that you can pick called Solid Colors.)

Column Mode Is for Power Users

One of my favorite features of OS X is the ability to display files and folders in column view mode. Just click the Column button in the standard Finder window toolbar, and the contents of the window automatically align in well-ordered columns.

Other file display options require you to drill through several layers of folders to get to a specific location on your hard drive — for example, Users/mark/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music, which I visit on a regular basis. In column mode, however, a single click drills a level deeper, and often you won’t even have to use the Finder window’s scroll bars to see what you’re looking for. Files and folders appear in a logical order. Plus, it’s much easier to move a file (by dragging it from one location on your hard drive to another) in column mode.

Make the Dock Do Your Bidding

Just about every Mac owner considers the OS X Dock a good friend. But when’s the last time you customized it — or have you ever made a change to it at all?

You can drag files and folders to the Dock, as well as web URLs, applications, and network servers. You can also remove applications and web URLs just as easily by dragging the icon from the Dock and releasing it on your Desktop.

I find that I make a significant change to my Dock icons at least once every week. I find nothing more convenient than placing a folder for each of my current projects in the Dock or adding applications to the Dock that I might be researching for a book or demonstrating in a chapter.

You can position the Dock at either side of the Desktop or even hide the Dock from sight entirely to give yourself an extra strip of space on your Desktop for application windows. Click the Apple menu () at the left side of the Finder menu bar and then hover your pointer over the Dock item to display these commands.

It All Started with Keyboard Shortcuts

Heck, keyboard shortcuts have been around since the days of WordStar and VisiCalc, back when a mouse was still just a living rodent. If you add up all those seconds of mouse-handling that you save by using keyboard shortcuts, you’ll see that you can save hours of productive time every year.

You’re likely already using some keyboard shortcuts, like the common editing shortcuts +C (Copy) and +V (Paste). When I’m learning a new application, I often search through the application’s online help to find a keyboard shortcut table and then print that table as a quick reference. Naturally, you can also view keyboard shortcuts by clicking each of the major menu groups within an application. Shortcuts are usually displayed alongside the corresponding menu items.

Hey, You Tweaked Your Finder!

Here’s another speed enhancer along the same lines as my earlier tip about customizing your Dock: You can also reconfigure your Finder windows to present you with just the tools and locations that you actually use (rather than what Apple figures you’ll use).

For example, you can right-click the toolbar in any Finder window and choose Customize Toolbar. By default, the OS X Finder toolbar includes only the default icon set that you see at the bottom of the sheet, but you can drag and drop all sorts of useful command icons onto the toolbar. You can save space by displaying small icons, too.

With the introduction of Mavericks, Apple debuted Finder tabs, which I wax enthusiastic about in Chapter 4. Opening multiple tabs makes a Finder window just about as efficient as it can possibly be for operations such as moving files, quickly navigating between locations, and comparing items in different locations.

The Sidebar — which hangs out at the left side of the Finder window — is a healthy, no-nonsense repository for those locations that you constantly visit throughout a computing session. For example, I have both a Games folder and a Book Chapters folder that I use countless times every day (it’s important to balance work with pleasure, you know) and I’ve dragged both of those folders to the Sidebar.

Keep in Touch with Your Recent Past

Click that Apple menu () and use that Recent Items menu! I know that sounds a little too simple, but I meet many new Apple computer owners every year who either don’t know that the Recent Items menu exists or forget to use it. You can access both applications and documents that you’ve used within the last few days. Consider the Dock and Finder Sidebar as permanent or semipermanent solutions, and the Recent Items menu as more of a temporary solution to finding the stuff that you’re working on Right Now.

Go Where the Going Is Good

To round out this Part of Tens chapter, I recommend another little-known (and underappreciated) Finder menu feature (at least among Macintosh novices): the Go menu, which is located on the Finder menu bar.

The Go menu is really a catch-all, combining the most important locations on your system (like your Home folder) with folders that you’ve used recently. Plus, the Go menu is the place where you can connect to servers or shared folders across your local network or across the Internet.

Pull down the Go menu today — and don’t forget to try out those spiffy keyboard shortcuts you see listed next to the command names. (For example, press +Shift+H to immediately go to your Home folder.) And if a Finder window isn’t open at the moment, a new window opens automatically. Such convenience is hard to resist!

Hold down the Option key when you click the Go menu and you’ll be able to choose your personal Library folder (which is normally hidden) from the menu. This comes in handy when you have to troubleshoot problems with applications that save files or store configuration data in your Library folder.