Alright, I need help. I've only got a base model Macbook so I can understand that running Adium, Photoshop, iTunes and Firefox at the same time might cause it to slow a little... but even after I close them all and reopen one it slows right down again. Why is that? I closed everything that was open, checked the Utility Monitor and the CPU was around 2%, I had 700+MB of free RAM (although it also says 'Swap Used: 179MB' which I'm led to believe is a bad thing) so I figured it was alright to open something back up. Opened Photoshop... everything went slow. Closed Photoshop and opened Firefox... everything went slow ...and please, no comments on how crappy Macs, Firefox or Photoshop may be, I know they're not supposed to do this.
"Not supposed to" does not mean one of those things is not the culprit, I'm looking at my Firefox RAM usage right now and it's currently using 967MB. iTunes is at 299MB and Handbrake (while ripping a DVD) is using a scant 150MB.
Oh yeah I know it's probably one of those things, I'm just not sure how I can fix it. Surely just closing the program down should clear everything but it doesn't.
After googling this I'd suggest trying the following instructions and seeing if it helps. Thankfully I have 4GB of RAM so Firefox using up close to a gig doesn't seem to be an issue on my iMac. http://www.simplehelp.net/2006/07/11/how-to-lower-the-amount-of-memory-that-firefox-uses/
I recommend installing AppleJack and then running that on it. When I've had mysterious problems in the past, AppleJack inevitably clears it up. Install it and then you need to boot into single user mode (hold down command+s at startup) and then at the command-line prompt that comes up, enter: applejack auto restart Then go make a cup of coffee as it will take a while. The initial reboot after that will take longer then usual because the Mac will have to rebuild it's caches. See if that helps. Highly recommended to have AppleJack on your system.
