All 6 Reasons For Mac
Today’s the day, Mac users: the latest version of macOS, called Mojave (and officially it’s version 10.14), is now available. It’s not a major revamp of the operating system (it’s been a while since the Mac has had one of those), but it does add new features that can help you be more productive with your Mac.
That being said, you may be hesitant to upgrade. After all, what you’re using now works fine, and why risk the potential for problems? We hear you, and if you don’t want to upgrade right away, you’ll be fine. But in case you’re on the fence, here are a few reasons why you should upgrade to macOS Mojave now. MacOS Mojave Dark Mode is easier on the eyes The first new feature Apple discussed at the 2018 Worldwide Developers Conference, the first feature that the highlights, and the first feature I’m covering here is Dark Mode, which uses darker colors for user interface elements like the toolbar and menus.
Reason 6 Torrent
Being first implies a sense of importance, but to some, Dark Mode may seem like an odd feature to highlight first. “Yeah, so the Mac uses dark stuff. So what?” Think about how you use your Mac (or computers in general). When you’re looking at a computer screen, you’re basically staring at a light source. And if you’re like me, you do almost all of your work all day long while staring at this light source. With a traditional Mac UI, you’re usually using windows that are predominating bright white, and staring at the light for a while can cause eye fatigue.
IDG A familiar Light Mode window in. MacOS Mojave. IDG.and a new Dark Mode window. Dark Mode feels a lot more comfortable to me, though I don’t feel more or less fatigued at the end of the day.
(That’s probably due to the fact that I make it a point to take quick “vision” breaks every 30 minutes or so.) Some people think Dark Mode helps you focus on what you’re working on; I can’t say I agree or disagree, I don’t notice a difference in where my attention is at. But while I’m working, being in Dark Mode feels more pleasing, and I now have a preference for it. I’m also looking forward to more apps offering Dark Mode interfaces. MacOS Mojave Continuity Camera Before Continuity Camera, it took a bit of effort to get a photo or scan on to your Mac. With Continuity Camera, the process is a lot more efficient. IDG You can scan images directly into Notes. IDG Using an iPhone X to scan a receipt in Notes for Mac.
In apps that support the feature, all you need to do is click in the area where you want your image to appear, and then go to the File menu and look for an option to import a scan or photo from your iPhone or iPad. Select it, and an indicator appear in your Mac app and your iOS device’s camera automatically launches.
You can then snap a pic or “scan” your document, and the result is automatically inserted in your document. Unfortunately, this feature doesn’t allow you to select a pic that’s already on your iOS device for placement in your document, but maybe that’s for a future update. Continuity Camera works right now with Mojave’s bundled apps, like Notes, Mail, Messages, and in the Finder. It also works with Apple’s Numbers, Pages, and Keynote. Look for third-parties to add this functionality soon.
MacOS Mojave improved security features Security isn’t a glamorous topic, but there are a few now security features that make Mojave an attractive upgrade. Because of what I do for a living, I’m often downloading and trying new software, sometimes from developers with whom I’m not familiar. So I run a few utilities to keep an eye on what’s going on with my Mac.
One of the utilities I use is, which flashes an alert any time an app wants to access the Mac’s FaceTime camera and microphone. IDG macOS Mojave now lets you know if apps are trying to access your Mac’s microphone, camera, and other items. An OverSight-like feature is now built into Mojave that can alert you when an app wants to accessalong the camera and mic, as well as iTunes device backups, Time Machine backups, your Mail database, your Message history, your Safari data, and other data. Even better is that Safari in Mojave has improved Intelligent Tracking Prevention.
What this does is that it blocks attempts to track the websites that you visit. If you trigger one of these tracks (often by clicking on a comment button, or when you Like something on Facebook), Safari posts an alert to let you know that you need to allow tracking to continue on. Mojave also has more features for managing password, such as the ability to create strong passwords, the ability to automatically enter in a security code that you get vis SMS, and password auditing. These are great features, but as a longtime 1Password user, I don’t think I’ll be giving it up for Mojave’s built-in features.
I prefer 1Password’s management tools, even though it means I’m not being efficient about my password usage. MacOS Mojave Quick Look for quick image edits As the family documentarian, it’s my job to take pictures and videos of family events. But I don’t just shoot and then file away the results; I look at the pics and videos and edit them. Usually, they’re easy edits, but it feels like a hassle to preview a file to see if it needs to be edited, and then open those files that do in an app. IDG Crop a photo directly in Quick Look.
No need to open an app. Mojave makes Quick Look most robust, providing simple editing tools so you don’t even need to open an app. Now when you preview an image (select it and then press the space bar), you can click on the Quick Actions icon between the Rotate icon and the Open in Preview button, and a set of editing tools appears. You can rotate in 90-degree increments and crop images, and there’s even a set of markup tools you can use to write notations. For audio and video, you can trim clips. If you are perusing through dozens and dozens of photos and videos, the new Quick Look Quick Actions helps a ton with simple crops and trims. It can be a real time saver.
MacOS Mojave News, Stocks, Voice Memos, and App Store If you frequently use the News, Stocks, and Voice Memos apps on your iPhone or iPad, then you’ll probably find good use for them on your Mojave Mac. With the News and Stocks apps, your preferences can be saved to iCloud, so your topics, channels, watch list, and more are syncs between all your devices. Voice Memos can save your recording to iCloud so you can access them on any device. Apple The new News app in macOS Mojave.
Of these apps, I’ll get the most use out of the News app. It seems that people tend to rely on social networks to get their news, but with social networks, the people you follow are the arbiter of what shows up on your feed—and for a lot of people, that’s preferable. I like to have more control over the articles that are fed to me, and that includes topics that may not necessarily jibe with that of the people I follow. The News app allows you to set your sources and subjects, so you can get a feed that’s customized to your interests. Apple has also redesigned the App Store, so it’s easier to find apps.
The company is also putting a more effort into your ability to learn about new software, by featuring App Store editors’ picks and curated app lists. Group FaceTime: Coming soon to macOS Mojave If these reasons aren’t compelling enough for you to upgrade to Mojave now, there’s a feature coming soon that will make you want to upgrade: Group FaceTime. When it becomes available—Apple says it’ll be here later this fall—you’ll be able to do a group chat with up to 32 people using a Mac, iPhone, or iPad. If this feature was available now (and it worked well), it’d be the number one reason why you should upgrade to Mojave. Apple Let’s hope Group FaceTime comes to the Mac sooner than later. More macOS Mojave features Here are several other new features in Mojave if you’re looking for more reasons to upgrade now.
(Last updated: Nov. 14, 2017 Editor's N ote: This post has been revamped and updated for accuracy. ) If you recently noticed that your Macbook or iMac takes longer to start up, or frequently gets that annoying rainbow loading wheel, then your Mac could be running slower than it should be. Should you care? A slow computer not only wastes your time,. 'So why is my Mac running so slow?' You may be wondering. I've covered 26 possible reasons in this infographic.
Each cause is either backed up by industry research, or based on my personal conversations with geeks in Apple Genius Bars. Uptime Too Long Two years ago, my mid-2012 Macbook Pro was so slow I couldn't turn it on ('black screen'). I had to line up at the Apple Genius Bar on Chestnut Street in San Francisco.
After handing over the machine to a support geek, the Apple Genius returned it to me ten minutes later with the screen on. The reason: I hadn't shut down my Mac for a few weeks!
I was too lazy. Every time I finished working, I simply closed the Mac, putting it in sleep mode. This is not good. The truth is even though your Mac is sleeping, the hard drive is still running. While running, processes build up, causing your Mac to slow down, or even freeze as I experienced. Lesson learned: shutdown or restart your Mac on a regular basis to clear out defunct processes.
Too Many Login Items at Startup Login items are applications and services that launch automatically every time you start up your Mac. That having overloaded login or startup items can both have detrimental effects on boot time. Too Many Applications Open At Once You open a web browser, play Spotify in the background, and launch a few other applications so you can get your work done. Chances are, your Mac starts to respond slowly. Why?, former Editor of MacWorld, if you have multiple programs running, you may find memory (RAM) and CPU space being devoted to applications other than the one you want. When too many applications are competing to use your system resources, your Mac will run slowly. Note: macOS leaves applications running in the dock.
Even if you have clicked the red 'X' button to close the windows of those you don't need, they are still running in the background. Files and Folders Stored On the Desktop Sure, saving icons and items on the Desktop makes it handy for you to access without extra clicks. But a cluttered Desktop can seriously slow down your Mac, according to. The files and folders on your Desktop take up a lot more system resources than you may realize due to the way OS X's graphical system works. Fact: an overused Desktop can seriously slow down your Mac!
Plus, a cluttered Desktop can make you feel disorganized. However, for those users who process visually, using an Alias (or shortcut) on your Desktop gives you the icon without the system demands of that file or folder. Too Many Widgets on Dashboard Mac Dashboard services as a secondary Desktop for hosting widgets - simple applications that allow you quick access, such as a calculator or weather forecast that you use daily. But having too many widgets can slow down your computer as well. Just as running multiple applications does, widgets on your Dashboard can take up quite a bit of RAM (source: ). Try to remove widgets that you don't often use. Hardware 6.
Lack of Memory (RAM) This is probably the most critical cause that leads to a slow Mac. As indicates, it's the first thing you should check. An application you're using may require more memory than your computer has easily available. Underpowered Processor A faster processor or one with more processing cores doesn't always mean better performance.
You may need a more powerful processor. Apple doesn't always allow you to choose the processing power you want. If you use your Mac for heavy tasks, like encoding videos or dealing with 3D modeling, then a less powerful processor can certainly contribute to a lag in the Mac's performance.
Failing Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or Solid State Drive (SSD) A hard drive failure not only endangers the data you've stored on the Mac, it also makes your computer sluggish - or even worse, it won't work at all. According to, if your Mac regularly slows down or crashes, your drive may be on its way out. Also, reveals that if there are bad or failing sectors on the drive, which can substantially slow down read speeds. Outdated Graphics Card If you regularly use your Mac for gaming, you may find the overall experience a bit choppy. This is probably because your Mac is equipped with an older GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). That you consider installing a new, faster GPU. To see what graphics card your computer has, check ' About This Mac' - ' Graphics'. 10.
Limited Storage Space You may have stored many huge video files, along thousands of photos and music tracks on your Mac computer - many of those can be duplicate and similar files (that's why I recommend to clean the duplicates). Nothing slows a Mac more than having too much on a hard drive, according to. An Apple geek, 'The first 50% of the drive is faster than the second 50% due to larger sectors and longer tracks which the heads have less to move and can gather more data at one time.' Migration between PowerPC and Intel As a Mac fan, you probably know there are two kinds of Macs based on microprocessors: PowerPC and Intel. Since 2006, all Macs have been built on Intel cores. If you used an older Mac and decided to migrate data from a different mac CPU type, e.g. From PowerPC to Intel or vice versa, and it was done improperly, the result might be a slow Mac.
(Credit to, a Mac tech support geek.) Third-party Software/Apps 12. Web Browsers Full of Junk Files Every day you use a web browser (e.g. Safari, Chrome, FireFox), you generate junk files such as caches, history, plugins, extensions, etc.
With the passage of time, these files can take up a lot of storage space as well as impact the speed of your web browsing. For example: by cleaning the junk files (together with other two simple tricks), was able to make her 1.5-year-old MacBook Air run like new. Slow Internet Connection Sometimes when your web browser is slow to load the pages you want to view, you may blame your Mac. But most of the time you'd be wrong. More often, it's simply that the Internet connection is too slow.
There's a variety of reasons why you may be experiencing slow internet speeds. It could be an older router, weak wifi signal, too many other devices connected, etc. Virus Yes, the OS X operating system is more secure than Windows. But hey, it can get viruses as well. According to, as Apple Macintosh computers gain market share and are used by more people, virus are becoming more common than they used to be.
Despite Apple OS X having an anti-malware system built in, known as, many attacks have happened - as noted in. Illegal or Unused Third-party Software There is a lot of bad software out there. If you download applications with unverified developers, or from non-authorized sites, chances are these applications can make your Mac slower by unnecessarily hogging the CPU or RAM. Also, according to Apple, peer-to-peer file sharing and torrent software can turn your machine into a software server, which will slow down your internet connection. Time Machine Backup in Process The Time Machine backup is usually a long procedure, especially when it's first set up. Many users report it could take hours.
For what to do when the backup takes ages. During the backup process, if you run many other tasks such as an anti-virus scan, or open CPU-heavy applications, your Mac can become bogged down to the point where you can't use it. 17. Improper iTunes Installation or Setting This has happened to me before. Every time I connected my iPhone or iPad to my Mac, it started to freeze. It turned out that I'd enabled auto-sync in the iTunes settings. Once I disabled it, the hang-up disappeared. Besides improper settings, a bad iTunes install - or one that isn't properly updated for the system - may cause slowdown as well.
From this Apple support discussion. Looking for a better alternative to iTunes? ICloud Sync Similar to iTunes, Apple iCloud syncing can also decelerate performance. It can also cause several other linked services (email, Photos, FindMyiPhone, etc.) to run slowly. See this example as reported. Apple Mail Crash Not long ago, that Mac Mail might unexpectedly quit when displaying a message that is malformed or damaged. I suffered from this twice: once was right after an OS X upgrade, the second was after I added a few more mailboxes.
Reason 6 Software
In both cases, my Mac seriously hung. How to rebuild and reindex mailboxes step-by-step in a ComputerWorld post. OS X System 20.
Outdated OS X (now macOS) Every year or so Apple releases a new macOS version (to date, it's 10.13 High Sierra), and Apple now makes it totally free. One of the reasons why Apple encourages users to upgrade is that the new system tends to run faster overall, though it's not always the case (see those I encountered). El Capitan features speed improvements from 4x faster PDF rendering to 1.4x faster application launching, according to. That means if your Mac is running a lower-end OS X, it's probably not as fast as it could be.
Corrupted or Wrong Firmware Tom Nelson, a Macs expert, Apple supplies firmware updates from time to time, and although very few people have any trouble after installing them, problems do crop up now and then. Incorrect firmware may cause a Mac to function sluggishly among other issues. Make sure you always keep the firmware up-to-date. To do so, simply click ' Software Update' under the ' Apple menu'. 22. Permission Conflicts or Damage If the permissions on your Macintosh hard drive are damaged, everything could slow down along with unusual behavior.
All 6 Reasons For Mac Download
This kind of problem occurs more often on old PowerPC Macs. To repair such permission errors, use Disk Utility. Learn more from, written by Randy Singer. Spotlight Indexing Issues Spotlight is a great feature that enables you to quickly find and access files in the system. However, every time it indexes data, it can slow down your Mac. The impact is more obvious if your Mac is booted with an HDD than a SSD.
Mac users also report issues with Spotlight indexing forever. Most likely this is due to indexing file corruption. You'll probably need to rebuild the index. How to determine when the index needs to be rebuilt. 24. Broken Preferences Files Preferences files are important because they affect every application you use, as they store the rules that tell each app how it should work.
The files are located in the 'Library' folder (/Library/Preferences/). Based on, one common cause for unusual behavior on the Mac is a corrupt preference file, especially if the symptom encountered is a program that won't open, or one that crashes frequently. 25. Loaded Notifications Using the Notification Center is a great way to keep yourself on top of everything. But if you have too many notifications enabled, it can also slow your Mac down quite a bit. (source: ) To disable notifications you don't need, go to Apple menu - System Preferences - Notifications and turn them off.
Unused System Preference Panes Any System Preference Panes you no longer use can take up valuable CPU, memory, and disk space, thus taxing your system resources. You can speed up your Mac slightly by removing those unused items. Follow for the quick guide. What's the story of your Mac? How's your Macbook or iMac performing? Is it running slower over time?
If so, do you find the reasons listed above helpful? More importantly, did you manage to fix it? Either way, leave your comment and let me know!