How to interpret Etrecheck report and improve MacBook Pro performance?

Thank you in advance! Report attached



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MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 14.6

Posted on Mar 27, 2025 8:44 PM

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Mar 27, 2025 9:36 PM in response to charliemcevoy

Start by uninstalling the junk.


Antivirus software: Apple, Bitdefender, and CrowdStrike


That entry should be exactly as follows:


Antivirus software: Apple


... and nothing else.


Rule 1 of Macs is don't install junk.


If you are required to use Google products, get a Chromebook.

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Mar 28, 2025 6:50 AM in response to charliemcevoy

Not exactly. To draw a malware analogy Chrome is the infection vector through which Google infests a Mac. Chrome is their browser product, but we cannot install Chrome without installing Google. Conversely, if you want to rid your Mac of Google you have to follow Google's uninstallation instructions for Chrome.


The manifestation of that infestation is that you can quit the Chrome app, but Google's background tasks will continue. Its effects can readily be seen in Activity Monitor, or in the EtreCheck report you posted. Those tasks can be both unpredictable and burdensome, which makes it difficult to correlate to a Mac's poor performance. It may be working fine one day, only to perform poorly the next day or hour or moment. And it only gets worse over time since a Mac's hardware resources are fixed while Google's intrusiveness constantly increases, through automatic software updates — one of which by the way had the unfortunate effect of "bricking" a Mac — a mistake they quickly addressed without explaining what they were doing by modifying a Mac's operating system to begin with.


Google is resorting to increasingly desperate measures to get people to install it on Macs because it is their business model to collect, upload, correlate, retain and sell personal information. It's almost the polar opposite of Apple's business model.


That's the reason for advocating a Chromebook, because Chrome and other Google products will work more efficiently without having to circumvent macOS's inherent security features. You'd be wasting money on a Mac.

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How to interpret Etrecheck report and improve MacBook Pro performance?

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