It does take a bit of money in order to do this, but for as low as $100 (give or take), you can seriously speed up your iMac and make it perform like a brand-new computer. While the above methods don’t require spending any money at all, one change that you can make to your iMac that will seriously boost its performance is upgrading the hardware.
It certainly won’t give your iMac a huge speed boost, but it can help make windows open and close a lot quicker. This will get rid of that fancy swoosh minimizing effect of windows and change it to something more basic.
Click Done at the bottom to save the changes.
Click each of the red delete buttons next to each widget to remove them from the Notification Center.Click on the Today tab if it isn’t there already and then click Edit down at the bottom.Click on the Notification Center icon all the way in the upper-right corner of the screen in the menu bar.The new widgets in Notification Center are awesome, but if it’s a feature that you probably will never use, it’s a good idea to just go ahead and disable all of the widgets so that they’re not constantly using up resources, especially if they’re just going to be sitting there. Overall performance increases and the speed at which apps and Finder windows open is a lot quicker. Many users have had success by simply just disabling the transparency feature. While you’re there, you can place a checkmark next to Increase contrast to make folders and windows easier on the eyes. Place a checkmark next to Reduce Transparency.Tone Down the Fancy EffectsĪll the stuff that makes OS X Yosemite look pretty is probably just slowing down your old iMac, but you can disable most of it: If this isn’t something you’re comfortable doing yourself, we’d suggest leaving it alone or grabbing a friend who can help you perform a clean install.
Sure, you could use a cleaner utility like CCleaner, but nothing works better than an old-fashioned clean install.īe warned, though: Performing a clean install of OS X requires you to make a bootable install drive using a USB flash drive, and using with Terminal. After a while, you have a ton of apps that you never end up using, and those apps create a bunch of temporary files that take up space and slow down your machine. Personally, I always do a clean install every year or so, because it’s nice to start fresh. This also means that no apps are installed and no files are stored - just the default apps and files that come with OS X. A fresh and clean install means your computer’s hard drive is completely erased and OS X is installed to factory settings.
Honestly, the best and easiest way to get maximum performance out of your old iMac is by starting fresh and installing a clean copy of OS X. However, it doesn’t have to be that way, as there are a few tweaks you can make to OS X and your old iMac to make it perform better overall, from toning down the eye candy to disabling a handful of resource-hogging features, and even updating some of your iMac’s hardware. Apps were slow, the boot-up time was abysmal, and overall performance was simply lacking. We’ve heard of many issues affecting users who installed OS X Yosemite on their Macs and had an awful time with it. While OS X Yosemite can run on older Macs as far back as 2007, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it runs adequately.
In fact, if you take advantage of several software tweaks and upgrade the hardware, you could essentially make your old iMac perform like new again.Įven with all of the improvements and new features in OS X Yosemite, older iMacs still suffer. OS X Yosemite was released back in October to much fanfare, and while many users were excited to install the new operating system and try out the new features, there were quite a few Mac users who had a less-than-stellar time with OS X Yosemite Plus, with added use and files piling up in OS X, performance can take a hit, but you can luckily rejuvenate an older iMac and give some of its old fire back. Whether you’ve had an old iMac just sitting around or bought one for really cheap, here’s how you can breathe new life into it and get more out of an old iMac.Īs technology advances and software requires better and better hardware, older Macs begin to naturally slow down.