I was running out of disk space and was scouring the web for solutions. I found this very useful article. Read on.
All apps will be affected... in the sense that it will also be trimmed down when you use the app Monolingual to cut down the other languages and native codes. From my understanding, it is safe to do this as long as (a) you need not speak other languages and (b) your apps are all coded for the Intel chips (not Rosetta based). Be very careful - MS Office 2004, if you have it, is still running on Rosetta so I would not recommend removing non-Intel native codes! Deleting some files in the app support folder was pretty straightforward: just find the folder of the app and trash 'em. Also, I removed all printers and dial-up modem drivers (except Lexmark, Epson & HP). This is something I cannot recommend since this is purely based on trial and error and I have not seen any recommendations online from other users. I will post any negative effects when I see them. So far, my mini's running smoothly.
When using mono lingual, leave office alone. It'll mess up your updating if you've deleted languages.
When I used Monolingual to remove everything except US-English, I freed up just under 4GB worth of space. In contrast, moving my iTunes TV Shows out of the Home>Music>iTunes Music Folder and onto an external gave me 126GB free space.
I did it cos I only had 5GB of space left. Now I have about 25GB free. But that comes along with burning some of my videos to DVDs. I'm not sure but I'd say it gave me about 5 to 8 GB of free space. For the speed, I didn't do much testing really but I noticed my boot up time is a little quicker now and Vuze runs a bit faster.
guys,newbie here! are there other ways to speed up my macbook? it 3 mos old and it works like a windows that the more apps installed the slower its performance..even start up and shut down takes time.. please help. thanks
Installing more apps shouldn't slow it down. Running a lot of apps together will slow it down. Check Activity monitor and see which apps are running. Find out how those apps launch automatically. One way is through each app's preferences. Another is checking System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items. Remove unwanted apps. Hacks may have their settings pane in System Preferences. If no apps are running and it is still slow then OS X may be corrupt or the hdd fragmented. The easy way is to backup in Time Machine. Format and install OS X. Use MIgration Assistant to restore personal files. Do not restore from Time Machine. This might reinstall the offending files or file structure.
Installing more apps and disregarding how much hard disk space it consume can also contribute to machine slow down.
Macjanitor also works to remove junk and temporary files. Got mine from download.com One more thing, do not clutter up your desktop with too many icons or files/folders. Unlike Windows where each icon consumes only 1KB of RAM to display, OS X treats each icon as an open window. Obviously, the more open windows you have, the slower the machine performance. Personally, I don't place more than 4 icons/files/folders on my desktop. If I need more, I just make a folder and move all the stuff to it. On many of my machines, I have only ONE icon - the hard drive. For power users who need more machine, add RAM.
According to many authoritative sources I've read, you don't need to do it. When you save a file, OS X searches for the nearest contiguous hard drive space that can fit it, and saves it there. When you install software, notice the last part of the process that says the system is optimizing performance. That is a defrag process.
If your hard disk is filled over 85% its capacity then your Mac will also slow down (actually works the same way with all types of computers with a platter hard disk). You can remove unnecessary files or you can upgrade to a bigger and faster hard disk. Or you can do both!
