Take Control of Speeding Up Your Mac by Joe Kissell is one of a triumvirate of step-by-step manuals to keep your OSX based computer running as advertised — or as close to that as possible. Like his other two volumes on maintaining and troubleshooting your Mac, Kissell takes a systematic approach to examine the areas of software and hardware that can result in slower performance of your computer than need be. The volume is thorough and comes with many recommendations on applications for download to resolve issues and restore performance along with hardware tips that can boost existing performance.
The volume is designed for a wide audience from novice to expert and offers advice and explanations. Definitions are provided where necessary for beginners and further commentary augments the discussion where mavens may want to explore the implications of recommendations further. The book is of value even if you consider yourself fluent in many of the practises you would expect to master — partly necessitated by underlying changes to OSX over time which impact on performance, but also call for particular means of address. It’s an easy volume to scan and handily organised.
More of a suggestion than a complaint, but as many of the approaches to slowdowns are sytematic, it would improve the scanability and use as a maintenance volume to have greater use of low diagrams or graphics that would help to strcuture the speed up remedy process. As it is the author relies on a largely textual and narrative approach, where many may find a point-form augmented with graphics to aid in the ‘digestion’ of the knowledge. As I say a suggestion, as this in no way impairs the delivery, I just sense it might be clearer was the judicious use of some decision diagrams considered. Recommended.
