iMac 27-inch (late 2012) slow processing and delays

When you see a beachball cursor or the slowness is especially bad, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.

Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.

Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

What sort/brand of RAM is in your Mac?

Mac's are very picky about the brand of RAM as well as the actual RAM specs.

Do you have any "cleaning" and/or antivirus software installed on your Mac?

It would help us to help you if we could have some more technical info about your iMac.

If you like, please go ahead and download, install and run Etrecheck.

Etrecheck was developed as a simple Mac diagnostic report tool by a regular Apple Support forum user and technical support contributor named Etresoft.

Etrecheck is a small, unobstrusive app that compiles a static snapshot of your entire Mac hardware system and installed software.

This is a free app that has been honestly created to provided help in diagnosing issues with Macs running the new OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

It is not malware and can be safely downloaded and installed onto your Mac.

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Copy/paste and post its report here in another reply thread so that we have a complete profile of your Mac's hardware and installed software so we can all help with your Mac performance issues. Thank You.

Adware CAN be hidden.

Do you run antivirus software?

If you do, then you need to properly uninstall it by doing a web search for finding the developer's instructions for uninstall their antivirus software.

Antivirus software is not needed on OS X and can negatively impact OS X performance.

Do you have a long list of apps launching at login/startup?

How many apps do you run simultaneously in the background? Especially given the fact you have installed the maximum 32 GBs of RAM?

Do you run any Google apps?

Ditch ALL Googlewares. They are ALL a serious resource hogs on the OS X system.

The additional benefit is that you'll stop Google from mining your data when you surf the web

https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95319?hl=en

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375081?hl=en

If you do not like Apple's Safari web browser, download, install and try Mozilla FireFox, instead.

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox

The current, up-to-date version of FireFox is fully compatible with OS X and is regularly updated by the great developers of the Mozilla group.

I have, also, stopped using the Google search engine regularly (due to Google's privacy policies or lack thereof) and I now use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine.

Do you run any backup software?

Do you run any banking software, like Trusteer Rapport which is known to run poorly on a Mac and, also, affect OS X performance.

Please run the etrecheck report as you may have items on your Mac that is causing your issues that you may not even be aware of.

One of the internal drives is failing, or there is some other internal hardware fault.

Back up all data on the drive immediately if you don't already have a current backup. There are ways to back up a computer that isn't fully functional—ask if you need guidance.

Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store, or go to another authorized service provider.

If privacy is a concern, erase the data partition(s) with the option to write zeros* (do this only if you have at least two complete, independent backups, and you know how to restore to an empty drive from any of them.) Don’t erase the recovery partition, if present.

Keeping your confidential data secure during hardware repair

Apple also recommends that you deauthorize a device in the iTunes Store before having it serviced.

*An SSD doesn't need to be zeroed.