h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Every now and then it seems my iBook is taking a faint breath. I noticed it while playing a game (Midnight Mansion - http://www.actionsoft.com/midnightmansion.html). The following happens:

Sometimes, every now and again, the game freezes the time of a heartbeat (which can be rather annoying when it happens just when I'm doing a delicate manoeuvre, but that's beside the point).

Also, something which might be related: the game comes with a music which is actually a few minutes' long bit just looping. The loop used to fit perfectly, but now there is a little heartbeat of a pause at the end of the track till it starts again.

It seems that other players don't get this, which is why I suspect the computer. It's getting old now, too (three years already). Is there anything I can do? Not that it is extremely crippling either, it's just not neat.

Take a look at "Activity Monitor" in your Utilities folder to see what's running in the background. You've probably got a lot of things that are running silently in the background to do auto updates, listen for scanner button presses, check for new mail, etc. and they could cause the pauses. If that gives you an idea of what it might be - something that you installed around the time that you noticed the pauses starting - then remove or shut off that item (how to do that depends on what it is, Activity Monitor will only let you see the items not remove them). And keep in mind that a lot of what you see in activity monitor is part of your system and you *don't* want to remove it.

Also check for quicktime codecs. I found that on my old Mac quicktime would sometimes stutter after I installed some things like Perian and Flip4Mac. There's a good chance that your game is using Quicktime for music and video playback so this is a good possibility. You'll find the plugins in two locations, in the "Library" folder in your own home folder, and in the "Library" folder that is at the root level of the hard drive (not in any folder). Look for a quicktime folder, and put anything that's inside it and does not come from Apple on your desktop, then restart and see if the stuttering goes away. If you need those things you can put them back later.

Thanks for the information!

I didn't find anything particularly suspicious or resource-consuming in the Activity monitor, but I removed a few Quicktime stuff. The stuttering hasn't disappeared but it looks a bit better (although this might be just wishful thinking).