How to Speed Up Your Mac on a Budget

If you’ve been using your MacOS notebook or desktop for some time you may have noticed that things are slowing down: screen refresh, on-disk operations, programs open & close.  This is eventually happens to all computers as we clutter the system with additional files and programs.

Most people don’t look forward to upgrading their Mac and all the cast and hassles that come with it.  Instead, you may be able to improve your Mac’s performance by taking a few, inexpensive steps proven to speed things back up.  Here’s how:

Clean up your hard drive

Cleaning your hard drive is by far the best and easiest way to speed up your Macbook. Go through your hard drive and clean out everything that’s slowing it down.

What exactly is slowing it down? Caches, logs, apps, widgets, language packs, plugins, hidden trash, and large files. Get rid of these things to increase the speed of your Mac. It’s true that you can do this all manually, but finding all of these items and removing them takes time. Plus, you have to know where to look.

One of the top rated tools on the market is Dr. Cleaner.  Dr. Cleaner is an all-in-one free app that offers Memory Optimization, Disk Cleaning and System Monitoring to keep your Mac optimized for the best performance.

Here’s a list of the impressive features Dr. Cleaner offers.

Memory optimizer

Identify Apps that use a significant amount of memory as candidates for removal.

One-click memory optimization—instantly reclaim memory from closed apps and free up resources.

Disk mapping/file management

• Views your entire disk by file or folder size so you can determine which files or folders use the most space.
• Dr. Cleaner scans all your disks and creates a clickable map of the files on your disk, color-coded by file type showing detailed information on each file.

Managing large files

• One-click scan for big files including your cloud-based drives (customizable size from 10 MB and above)
• Apply multiple filters of size, date, name and type
• Dr. Cleaner create “safe house” for your large files thereby preventing them from being unintentionally deleted.

Duplicate finder

• Quick scan for duplicate files–Dr. Cleaner has the fast and accurate scanning technique that covers your entire folder system.
• Smart selection–duplicates are selected not only by file names but also by their contents. Files are shown in detailed previews. Dr. Cleaner can also help you “decide” which copy to delete by presenting “Auto Select” button.
• Easy and safe decision — duplicates can be sorted by file type and listed in their full route for you to track. You can decide which way to clean these files – either by putting them in to Trash or deleting them permanently.

A better way to manage your apps

• Auto-clean leftover files of deleted apps
• Easily manage all apps installed on your Mac
• Clearly and easily view all app information installed on your Mac by name, size, and last opened date

System requirements:  OS X 10.10 or later, 64-bit processor, 29 Mb of hard disk space.

Manage your startup items

Obviously, a clean startup helps speed up a Macbook that’s running slowly. No wasted time waiting for Chrome, Firefox, or Safari to load. Instant access! Well, when your Mac boots up, it runs a lot of unnecessary apps that slow your Mac down.

Take control of your Mac again! Go to your System Preferences > Users & Groups and then click on your username. Now click on Login Items. Select a program you don’t immediately need when your Mac starts up, and then click the “–” button below.

Taking care of these startup programs is an easy way to help add speed to your Mac.

Turn off visual effects

Most Macs are now capable of running Mac OS X Mavericks without any trouble. But some people prefer to keep the dock static to prevent slowdown. Click System Preferences > Dock and uncheck the following check boxes:

• • • Magnification
    • Animate opening applications
    • Automatically hide and show the dock
    • Turn off accessibility

Now click on Minimize windows using and change Genie Effect to Scale Effect.

Update your software

Make sure you perform a software update for Mac OS X and all the apps installed in Mac. Click on the Apple icon in the menu bar and choose Software Update (or open Software Update in the App Store).

If you have apps purchased outside of the App Store, they will need to be updated separately. You’ll usually find Check for Software Update from the program name in the menu bar.

You should also make sure that Mac OS X keeps itself up to date. Click on System Preferences > App Store and ensure that Automatically Check For Updates is ticked. You can also tick Install App Updates,which will automatically ensure that apps are updated.

Is Coin Miner draining your Android device?

The TrendLabs Security Intelligence Blog has identified the Coin Miner mobile malware back in the Google Play store. The malware takes over a device and uses its resources to mine a selection of different cryptocurrencies. Users will often not realise what is going all. What they will see is poor battery life and degraded performance.

The apps are using several techniques to bypass security. The blog states: “These apps used dynamic JavaScript loading and native code injection to avoid detection. We detect these apps as ANDROIDOS_JSMINER and ANDROIDOS_CPUMINER.”

What apps were used by Coin Miner?

This attack is a change to the way coin mining solutions take control of machines. As the report states: “We’ve previously seen tech support scams and compromised websites used to deliver the Coinhive JavaScript cryptocurrency miner to users.” This move to using apps is different and given the success of other app based malware, could be more effective. Those users who jailbreak their devices to install anything are particularly at risk here, especially with the ANDROIDOS_CPUMINER attack.

The first of the two mining apps, ANDROIDOS_JSMINER takes advantage of two apps:

• Recitiamo Santo Rosario Free: This app helps users to recite the Holy Rosary.
• SafetyNet Wireless App: This is aimed at people enrolled in government assistance programs in the US who would otherwise not be able to get online.

Once installed, the apps download the Coinhive JavaScript library and start mining cryptocurrencies. The apps run in a hidden browser window making it difficult for the user to know they are there. However, they do cause very high CPU utilisation. On most devices this will manifest itself as the device getting warm or even hot when held.

The second mining app, ANDROIDOS_CPUMINER turns any app into a trojan. Apps are modified and then repackaged. When a user downloads the app, often from an unofficial app store or from illegal software site, they will be quickly infected. TrendLabs discovered one such app was the Car Wallpaper HD: Mercedes, Ferrari, BMW and Audi.

TrendLabs says that it detected a total of 25 instances of ANDROIDOS_CPUMINER in addition to the ANDROIDOS_JSMINER infected apps.

What does this mean?

The explosion in cryptocurrencies and the need to mine them early to make a serious profit is driving these attacks. It is highly unlikely that we will see any let up in the number of attacks over the next year or even longer. Criminals are also getting smarter and looking for new ways to infect machines.

The big question here is what value is realistically being gained from using mobile devices? While they are getting more powerful the problems that need to be solved are also getting harder. This means that the return on investment for the hackers is questionable. Of course, it could be that once they realise this they will change their approach and use infected devices for other purposes.

In the blog post the authors state: “These threats highlight how even mobile devices can be used for cryptocurrency mining activities, even if, in practice, the effort results in an insignificant amount of profit. Users should take note of any performance degradation on their devices after installing an app.“

Is Coin Miner draining your Android device? was last modified: October 31st, 2017 by Ian Murphy

via enterprisetimes.co.uk