Ableton Forum

Here is a page and a an app for mac that might get ya a little more cpu
http://looprock.com/?q=code/upbeat
When enabled it performs the following operations:

Disables Dashboard:
-defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES
-/usr/bin/killall Dock

Disables indexing on all volumes:
-mdutil -i off /Volumes/*"

Lowers processing priority of Dock.app
-/usr/bin/renice 20 `/bin/ps -x |grep -i Dock.app|/usr/bin/grep -v grep|awk {'print $1'}`"

When disabled, it does these steps:

Enables Widgets
-defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO
-killall Dock

Enables indexing on all volumes
-mdutil -i on /Volumes/*

have you used it? How well does it work?

If Dashboard is inactive, all it does is occupy some VM space that might or might not be an issue in intensive VM traffic situations. Spotlight indexing only happens when new files are introduced, and it's also very seldom it causes hits. So maybe you get sometimes a couple of percentages of help, but it's all so marginal, especially when Ableton Live is running.

I think a better performance technique is to turn off Safari and Mail.app that tends to easily run in the background and to periodict updates, and they take more VM space. The easiest, for live situations, is to have a clean login account that only has Ableton Live (and anything else for the live situation) operational.

--Kent

and azureus, that is one resource-hungry pig

Forgot to mention, with a custom login you could even specify what apps to startup when doing a login, so you should have everything in place for live, even custom preferences, window positions, skins, and so on... --Kent

I'm new to Mac (but am quite intimate with bsd/linux) and it has been pretty sweet learning a new OS. These sound like great recommendations. Kent, you mention turning off Mail.app, etc...How can I see what is currently turned on (besides ps axu in a terminal heh) and how do I turn it off? I already know how to configure what apps start up, but is there an equivalent of like windows services or something?

The dock shows what is running (has a small black dot on the bottom of each icon). You could also see running apps in the Force Quit.. dialog (from the Apple menu icon, select this menu item), but that's mostly used for forced quits (kill -9 stuff).

If you hit Command-Tab you get a list of icons representing running apps, and with subsequent Command-Tabs calls you could go through each process.

You could use ps alx and grep for any process that has a name with .app in it. Anyway, the Dock is the easiest way to see running apps, or Command-Tab.

ps alx is good for finding other processes running, even if top is better, as you could see with top how much resources such processes are taking. Also take a look at the Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor in case you want to have a more graphical view of process usage.

--Kent

Also, I assume many know this, via the Dock you could tell what apps to start at startup, assuming the application icon is in the dock, originally. Select the icon and hold down the mouse buton, and it will be revealed. --Kent