So, how is your Mac doing? This week, I've already had two clients of mine with the same issue: Slow Mac! In this episode I walk through why your Mac might be running slow, and how to resolve it so you can have a new fresh Mac back on your desk... or lap ;-)

Hi, I'm Kia

I'm a Tech Minimalist and founder of MacJunky. I work remotely while travelling in a classic Chevy K5 Blazer with my dog Woof! and sharing the journey.

Transcript

Today's topic is actually about your Mac.

You probably know me as the MacJunky. I am the MacJunky . I have been for 28 plus years and I love working on Macs.

There are things, however, my clients often, asked me. And it's actually happened twice this week. I've had two clients with exactly the same issue...

The computer is running slow. It's not starting. And I'm seeing the beach ball all the time.

Now there are several factors. A person like me really needs to see the computer to actually find out what it is... what's actually going on.

However, often, at times. It's more likely to be your operating system than the actual hardware. So the software, rather than the hardware. And what I mean by that is that... how I usually explain it, let me go that way.

How I usually explain it is that you have a car every year you actually go and take it and get it inspected. And with that inspection or service, they change, things. And one of the things is oil. They change the oil, they don't just add oil. Hopefully they don't add oil. Some garages do do that and it's not good.

So you change the oil because the engine needs clean oil every year. Some people say more often, but let's just say every year, your computer is basically the same thing.

Apple updates the operating system all the time, every year basically. And they do incremental, updates as well. Like the point updates.

Now the point updates is not a problem. You can just do those, as long as there's not a security issue, when you follow people like me, we basically post about that stuff.

It's not really an issue doing a point updates. The major updates that they do every year is something that your computer probably needs. I say probably because what happens a lot of times is that people will upgrade their system. So they go from... in fact, today's computer, I've got, it's a MacBook pro from 2014 or... yeah. Something like that

And he's still running a really old original., operating system on that and what he, what he hasn't done. He has an upgraded it. So that car effectively has the same oil for the past eight years.

Now if a car is running on oil that's eight years old, t's not going to work out too well. Right?

And your computer is basically the same thing. You can keep upgrading it, but if you don't swap out the operating system, like do a complete clean install, every now and again, you're gonna be asking for trouble.

And again, I've had an iMac and a MacBook pro that's doing the same thing

Now, usually I look at the operating system, see how old it is and how old the computer is and so on.

But I do obviously test things like hard drives and... sometimes RAM actually causes slow down, which is weird. that the hard drive.

If it's an SSD, generally they don't usually cause that many problems it's usually hard drives. Becasue again, a hard drives is a spinning disk and it's a physical spinning disk.

So if you've had that for eight years running every day, 24/7, maybe... and spending all the time, they do get slower. They do kind of lose their life and it's, you know, eight years. It's a long time.

So have a check of your Mac, see what operating system it's running, see how old the computer is, whether you see the beach ball of death every now and again. whether the computers that are annoying you and making it really slow.

And if you have any problems, you know where to contact me, the MacJunky, right?

Anyway, I'll put link down below. There's a chat feature below as well. If you need to get in touch with me as always Keep IT Simple and I'll see you tomorrow.

Ciao. Bye bye.