Making sure every app is a universal binary!

The biggest slowdown you can get on your Intel Mac is PowerPC applications.  There are still a few that have not yet been updated to the universal binary version (Microsoft Office is the best example).  Most applications are, however, now updated to run natively as a universal binary on both PowerPC and Intel macs.  The problem is that not all your applications might be one hundred percent up-to-date.  Keeping Apple apps up-to-date is easy with Software Update, but I know how much of a challenge it is to keep the hundreds of other apps up-to-date.  You can easily see if the application is PowerPC or Universal by selecting it and pressing "Command-I" or choosing "More Info".  Doing this one by one is really long and when I have done it, I thought that there must be a better way.  There is!  To quickly see every application and which one are running the Intel or the PowerPC binary:

1. Go to the Apple menu and choose "About this Mac".

2. Click on "More Info".  It will open the "System Profiler".

3. This is the place where you can get all the info about the hardware of you computer.  There is also a section called "Software".  In this section, click on "Applications".

4. You will get a list of every application installed on your system.  It also displays the version number so that you can check to see if it is up-to-date.  At the right, the "Kind" is displayed.  The kind will either be Universal, PowerPC or Intel.  If you are on an Intel Mac, you'll want to search to see if there is an update to the PowerPC applications to make them Universal.  If you find an updated version that replace a PowerPC binary, you will notice a considerable speed increase!