Anybody else have their iMac slow down over time?

I tried to download Memory Clean, but it requires OSX 10.7 or later. It did seems to run better after I cleaned the OS cache with Onyx, but it still gets bogged down when I open about 20 tabs. When you look at the detail of what Onyx is doing, it becomes apparent that the OS caches everything. For example, it caches Fonts, so if you looked at a website with a weird font 6 months ago, it seems like that would still be cached 6 months later. This probably explains why cache cleanup helps.

My Mac is faster after major cache cleanup yesterday, but it still gets slow with around 20 tabs (of inactive data). When I close some tabs, performance is restored (this was NOT the case before cleaning the cache). With 16Gb of memory, I always have a lot free, so I'm still surprised that cleaning cache made a difference -- maybe some of the cached data was corrupted. I still have 9Gb of memory free when it slows down currently at about 20 Firefox tabs, so it's not short of memory. Firefox is using up most of the CPU, Flash is usually the next highest CPU user, but it seems like the browser is the CPU hog (this was also the case with Safari).

I reset the browser (which kills all browser data), which helped only briefly. I then reset the OS cache with Onyx, and that helped a lot but it still gets overwhelmed with a fair number of browser tabs open.

 

MacKeeper has helped keep my 10.6 OSX Mini running at speed. It's $40/computer, malware and virus updates included.

 

I am shocked to hear that because MacKeeper has a pretty bad reputation (this thread discusses it with some supporters and some detractors: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4276731?tstart=0). I've refused to use it on principle because the developer is super aggressive about finding hacks around the Mac's anti-pop-up filters. Macs block 99.9% of pop-up ads, but MacKeeper is virtually the only product that is constantly finding loopholes to hack in pop-up ads. Some are just popup ads, but others are starting the install where you have to click "cancel" to get out of it.

I'm glad it's working for you, and maybe it's actually legit, but that product I won't go near and I am always extra careful to avoid their pop-up download traps. There are comments in the thread above suggesting that MacKeeper in the App Store (which would give it some legitimacy), but I don't see it listed when I search for "MacKeeper".

 

agreed ... mac ends up storing a great amount of data in ram presumably for use "on the fly" ... but ends up slowing itself down ... strangely, it does not appear to free itself ...

and flash too ...

 

you're brave ...

i wouldn't touch it with a bargepole ...

 

cocktail is an actual good app; I use to run it when I was more serious about OSX

 

As long as the rest of your hardware is fine, backup your data and reinstall OSX. If the computer is still being sluggish, you need to replace your hard drive. Having your memory tested to make sure none of them are failing isn't a bad idea either.

Typical lifespan for desktop hard drives is 3-5 years.

 

Thanks. I haven't heard of drives wearing out, but it's something to consider. I know some of the 1TB iMac disks had a recall. Mine has a 2TB, haven't seen anything about these. I will probably have somebody reload the OS or wipe the disk and install Mavericks, I have too much important data on this computer to risk screwing it up.

After cleaning all the cache, the computer runs better most of the time, but it still overloads with about 20 tabs open. It's still not right IMO, but at least now I can work effectively now by killing tabs. Before it used to get slow and never recover.

 

I dont think it was said, but OS X disc has Disk utility which you can "repair" aka scan for any hdd issues; on PC I use Spinrite (more cumbersome), not a fan of chkdsk

 

I "switched" to Mac a few years ago. Waste of time.

Have switched back. Took FOUR DAYS to sync my iPod Classic on Mac (22k tunes).

Windows does it in an hour or two.

Mac is a religion - not a computer.

Jedi

 

so true ...

 

Hard drives are one of the last components in a computer to have moving parts, and as with anything with moving parts, they wear down after some time. All hard drives have a MTBF (mean time between failures), enterprise hard drives are higher than desktops, and it's not IF your hard drive will fail, it's when.

Once the software is reloaded and the same issue persists, that's when you want to check the hardware, and remember to always backup!

 

An update on the Mac. I think the Onyx cleanup too is the real deal in terms of restoring performance on Macs. I tried it on my son's Macbook Pro, which was slow with some kind of space game he was running. I first doubled the Macbook Pro memory to 8gb and it didn't improve performance at all. I just tried the Onyx, and the Macbook Pro runs much faster and he can now run the space game on the highest resolution without delay. Some of the other cleanup tools that were mentioned in this thread probably also work, but Onyx works well and they still have a version that runs on my OS version 10.6.8.

If anyone's Mac has been slowing down, you might want to give Onyx a try. I'm pretty leery about downloading anything outside the App Store, but this tool is mentioned in so many threads that I felt comfortable and downloaded it here: Titanium's Software ? Index page . Like all of these "cleanup" tool they recommend backing up data first as a precaution.

 

Snow Leopard(10.6.8) was the last version for 32-bit a lot of the latest Apps don't even run on that. It is being left unsupported and stuff ... if your hardware supports (e.g dual core minimum) consider updating to at least Lion or later, the latest Lion (10.7.x) is pretty good and most bugs are fixed. I recently had to upgrade to ML (10.8) I'm a developer and Apple made me do it as they stopped accepting Apps compiled with a lower OS ..

 

Just get an SSD. People buy SSD's for a reason. It makes a huge difference and will likely get rid of most of those nagging performance issues.

 

Max is 900 gig, but between the price of the SSD and the install on an iMac you can just about buy another iMac.

The iMac is kinda hard to install anything, google it for the examples.