Speed Freak Tells Your Mac What to Do First
Speed Freak is a handy desktop utility for re-prioritizing the allocation of processor resources on your Mac. The utility will allow whatever application you’re currently using to take more processor time, thus enabling it to run faster. It’s a free download for Mac OS X 10.4.
As creator Jeffrey Ulicny explains on his Big Fat Stinking software site, all applications have equal processor priority by default in Mac OS X. Speed Freak overrides this default and lets you allocate whatever percentage of your computer’s processing power you want to your current application.
A practical example: You’re running a web app in Firefox and all that Ajax is making your browser sluggish. Use Speed Freak to free up more processor time for Firefox and the web app will feel snappy again. Your download speed won’t increase, but the browser’s performance will improve. I tested it on our in-house publishing system, which always runs slowly. I noticed a considerable improvement.
Granted, you can do the same thing using basic command line utilities, but Speed Freak makes the process more accessible. Many of Jeffrey’s applications, like SyncR, iShred and Fermata provide front end wrappers to Mac OS X’s powerful engine.
Because it issues Unix commands that require specific permissions, you’ll need to run this while logged in as an admin. Also, it won’t speed up a graphics card and you can’t force virtual machines to run any faster. So, Halo on the Mac is still the same as it ever was.
[hat tip: Factory Joe]
