Ableton Forum

Hi. If you are a Mac user who is running Tiger and have noticed the slowness, heres a solution that has worked for me.

First of all, there are two apps that run constantly. Spotlight and Dashboard. Spotlight is constantly scanning your hard drive...this takes up alot of CPU and can also make your fan run alot more often.

Download this little app to SHUT IT OFF!!!

http://www.fixamacsoftware.com/software/spot/

Now, the same goes for Dashboard. Yes, widgets are cute, but they are essentially useless, and like Spotlight, you can't shut them off. That is, until you download this.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18261,performance

It will reside in system prefs and you can turn it on or off there.

Since taking advantage of these two I have regained the speed I used to enjoy. I hope y'all find this usefull. If you are still using Panther or Jaguar, dont bother upgrading to Tiger unless you have a REALLY fast Mac!!

Oh and please dont let this turn into another ridiculous flame war about Mac vs PC.
Find what suits you and go with it, make music, have fun and quit hanging around this damn forum all day!!

I love you.

Cool, thanks for the tip! I am still on 10.2.8 but not for long..gotta get me a spankin' new intel imac soon!

that is good advice for people who are running 10.4 on an older model mac.

But for recent purchases, it wont make a lot of difference in cpu. you can do a lot, and still reside right at 1% usage on maxed out 1.67 powerbooks

in terminal sudo yourself to root and edit the /etc/hostconfig file

set the SPOTLIGHT=-YES- to -NO-

reboot.


....

in terminal

To turn Dashboard off:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

To turn Dashboard on:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO

You have to restart the Dock after making either change for it to take effect:

killall Dock

--

or simply delete the dashboard app.

Yes, it has helped me on my G3 700 Mhz Ibook, but I have a buddy who just bought a 1.5 G4 Powerbook..he was having major probs running Ableton....now, granted, the guy was bitch slapping his hard drive with these huge sets and TONS of FX, but since following my advice he is not having those probs anymore. Anecdotal evidence, I know but thats all I got!!.

Peace.

i could maybe see this on older machines, but honestly, we are talking like 1-2% max on my powerbook. im not right on the edge of performance in any way. if i was, i would either change my set-up, or carry a G5 around.

I hate to admit it, but I actually use dashboard enough to keep it around. Plus, it doesn't really take up extra CPU power; just memory, which I have plenty to spare.

However, I'm willing to sacrifice spotlight, which I do use from time to time. But spotlight definitely tends to get in the way sometimes and cause disk crunches when using live. I just wish there was a way to get rid of that stupid icon in the menu bar, too. Anyone know how to do that?

This post was just what I needed, cheers!

thas cool, although i do find widgets to be very, very, very useful

To remove Spotlight from the menu bar, remove the file "Search.bundle" from the folder /System/Library/CoreServices, but keep it around somewhere in case you change your mind. When you reboot the computer Spotlight will not load.

To re-enable put "Search.bundle" back where it belongs.

Full Text:
http://www.tuaw.com/2005/05/13/tiger-ti ... rn-it-off/

cheers

Thank you!

Damnit, I use dashboard heaps! I use the Turbo widget to switch my CPU into "Full Speed" (very handy for any sort of CPU intensive task). I also use the Temperature Monitor widget for keeping a tab on the heat side of things... not to mention the Australian Weather widget.

Disabling Spotlight is probably a good idea - I use that too though! And as for Dashboard not using any CPU.... well it depends on what you have on there I guess. My weather widget must use some (probably negligible) CPU since it updates itself in the background. Not sure about the Temperature Monitor though.... although these things are negligible, they are just one more thing to add a potential glitch, which is always annoying....

forgie wrote:Damnit, I use dashboard heaps! I use the Turbo widget to switch my CPU into "Full Speed" (very handy for any sort of CPU intensive task). I also use the Temperature Monitor widget for keeping a tab on the heat side of things... not to mention the Australian Weather widget.

You know, you can just switch your CPU power with the battery icon in the main menubar. Likewise, there is a free temperature monitor that can sit in your menubar as well.

sqook wrote:You know, you can just switch your CPU power with the battery icon in the main menubar. Likewise, there is a free temperature monitor that can sit in your menubar as well.

Yeah I know you can do it through the battery menu, but I like saving the 5-10 seconds required to do so

Thanks for the link for the Temp Mon. My menu bar is already pretty full with MenuMonitors showing network, hard disk and CPU activity.... then there's NetBarrier X3, volume, airport, battery, clock, spotlight.... there isn't much room left on a 12" iBook!