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performance

Does that SSD Trim, and why is it important?

Trim enables an SSD to erase pages of unused memory so they’re ready for reuse. It saves time, and greatly improves write performance. How to the best out of Trim.

November 13, 2025 Macs, Technology

Last Week on My Mac: What do those CPU frequencies mean?

Given what we know about the base M5, is it really a significant improvement on the base M4. What features should we be looking at?

November 2, 2025 Macs, Technology

Updated CPU core frequencies for all current Apple silicon Macs

T T Read More

How operating frequencies of CPU cores used by the latest base M5 chip compare with those from previous families in the M series, and what that means. Complete with updated tables for all current chips.

October 30, 2025 Macs, Technology

Updating CPU frequencies for Apple silicon Macs

A call for help: can you help complete this table of all the CPU core frequencies of M-series chips? M3 Ultra and M5 values are requested, please.

October 28, 2025 Macs, Technology

Command tools, threads and QoS

T T Read More

Why is tar so slow to create a tar.gzip archive on a fast Apple silicon Mac? Is it being run at low QoS on the E cores? An explanation.

September 10, 2025 Macs, Technology

Intel Macs can be much slower computing SHA-256 hashes

Computing SHA-256 digests is a common and demanding task, particularly in security. A late Intel Mac is shown to be much slower at doing that than M-series Macs, and this considers why that might be.

July 23, 2025 Macs, Technology

Encryption and checking hashes slows faster SSDs

Does software encryption (APFS Encrypted) result in significant overhead when using faster SSDs with a faster Apple silicon Mac? What about computing SHA256 digests?

July 17, 2025 Macs, Technology

Comparing in-core performance of Intel, M3 and M4 CPU cores

T T Read More

How much faster are the P cores in M3 and M4 chips, compared to late Intel Macs? How do they compare when running threads at low QoS, such as those of macOS background tasks?

May 16, 2025 Macs, Technology

What is Quality of Service, and how does it matter?

How apps and processes set their priority, and on Apple silicon that determines which type of core they can be run on. What you can do to alter that.

May 9, 2025 Macs, Technology

Take control of disks using APFS

Speed up your hard disk by partitioning it so that its innermost 20% remains unused. Reserve space for the SLC write cache on an SSD by limiting the size of volumes.

March 18, 2025 Macs, Technology

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