New Mac...10.6.8. to 10.9.5...turning off processes?

[Nibiru]

Hey all!

So I finally bought a 2012 2.6 quad core i7 Mac Mini. I can't believe I waited over a year to pull the trigger on this beast. However, I need all the help I can get.

I moved from a 2008 MBP running 10.6.8. with a 7200rpm boot drive and only 4 gigs of RAM, to what I have now, which has an SSD boot drive and 16 gigs of RAM. I opened Activity Monitor to see how much RAM I had available after opening iTunes and was surprised to see I was already using nearly 6 gigs. I also noticed there were all kinds of background processes happening, which helped me remember that a long time ago, in trying to get the most out of my 2008 MBP, I had discovered (on this site) all these Terminal Commands that would turn off things like the Dashboard, which I never ever used or will again.

My question: Are people still using this practice with Mavericks and or Yosemite? In addition, should I be installing Yosemite in the first place? I've been stalking this site quite a bit about this topic, and honestly feel like Mavericks is a safer bet at this point. Mostly due to the fact that 3rd party software developers haven't caught up yet. Tell me if I'm wrong. I also think I remember reading that Yosemite uses more RAM as well. As far as DP, it sounds like Yosemite is working great for many, yet may are adamant about Mavericks. Oh lord what is the truth!

Any insight is so greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[HCMarkus]

I'm on Mountain Lion… still trying to decide if if I should make the move to Mavericks.

With 64 bit DP and plenty o' RAM, extraneous processes may be less of an issue than they were in the past. Mr. Halloran may have some thoughts on the subject. Regardless, enjoy your new Mac!

[Nibiru]

I hear that. I wish I could've installed ML instead. Thank you!

[mikehalloran]

A general answer to the question is that there are many things that you can turn off.

First figure out how many are really processes and how many are apps that are still running. Press option-command-esc to bring up Force Quit Applications. This is the quickest way I know to see how many are actually running. Since ML, re-boot will restart apps that you had open before and if there were no open windows, you might not know (My wife always has this problem -- she never remembers that closing a window never quits most apps). If you see apps that shouldn't be open, quit or force-quit them.

There are many services that run in the background. Dashboard widgets are a good example. You can delete the ones you don't want such as Weather -- or keep it.

Others will require you to bring them up, open the Preferences and tell it to stop running. Google is your friend, here. Someone will have posted or written an article showing the hidden or non-intuitive way to turn some annoying feature off. A few involve right-clicking on the dock icon and finding the Preferences list there. Others require you to go to System Preferences and navigate to a panel within a panel. Perhaps you have no use for iCloud... you can turn it off.

Unlike earlier OS, I can't think of any standard feature that requires a Terminal command to enable or disable except Show/Hide Hidden Files–and you should never use that unless you are trying to solve a specific problem. It's too easy to see a hidden file or folder, think, what's that doing there? move it and require a reinstall of the OS or Time Machine restore. Yes, there are plenty of processes that require Terminal but not for this.

Google this phrase and you will find a number of links that address this issue with specific instructions:

how to turn off annoying Mavericks features

There are a number of similar pages for Yosemite, too.

[mikehalloran]

I hear that. I wish I could've installed ML instead. Thank you!

ML has many of the same issues.

[Nibiru]

Thank you very much Mr Halloran!

I really appreciate your help! I've managed to find a few sites that helped me turn off Spotlight, App Nap, and a couple others. Found a nice app called Keep Drive Spinning that seemed to have fixed my 3 brand new G-Drives from spinning down. Since having these drives connected to my 2012 Mac Mini before telling them to NOT spin down, my brand new refurb 2012 was shutting itself down. I'm gonna start a thread asking of anyone else has experienced this. Seems like Keep Drive Spinning has kept this from happening. Have no idea why either. Anyhooo, thanks for your help!