Screenshots to the rescue

My MacBook Air is six years old, and lately it’s been running clunky. Slow to wake up. A fan that kicks on like it’s bracing for takeoff. That little spinning wheel showing up more than I’d like.

The next thought was simple: I need a new computer.

And looking turns into shopping fast. A few clicks and Klarna will happily mail a new Mac to my door — all it asks is four easy payments.

Then, for once, the inner critic made some sense.

I don’t need a new computer. I have a newer Lenovo I use for creative work. I have a solid setup at the office. This MacBook Air isn’t my main anything — it’s the laptop I use when I’m working from home.

There was also a bigger number sitting in the background: we’re saving for our son’s high school graduation trip. And every “four easy payments” is money that doesn’t go toward that.

So instead of buying, I asked a different question: why not use AI to help me work through the kinks?

I sat down with my friend Claude and we troubleshot the thing together. I took screenshots, uploaded them, and followed the advice. I learned a few new things.

Turns out the machine was mostly fine. I learned how to use the Activity Monitor to shut down processes that were slowing it down. There was a video wallpaper quietly looping the Los Angeles freeways all day, plus a pile of background apps I’d never told to launch — but that fired up every time I opened the lid.

We turned off the auto-launchers. Swapped the moving wallpaper for a solid color. Restarted. When we finally checked under the hood, the processor was more than half idle. Memory was healthy.

No villain. Just a tired laptop carrying stuff it didn’t need to carry.

Sound familiar?

Because that’s the part that stayed with me. The computer didn’t need replacing. It needed attention. It needed someone to clear out what was running in the background that I’d stopped noticing. And once we did, it ran like itself again.

I think about how often I do the same thing with my own life. Something feels heavy or slow and my first instinct is to add — buy the new thing, start the new system, reach for the upgrade — when what I really need is to clear out the background noise that’s been running this whole time without my permission.

The new computer wasn’t the answer. Working with what I already had was.

And the win felt good. Just me, a handful of screenshots, and Claude.

What’s been quietly running in the background of your life — the noise you’ve stopped noticing — that you could clear out instead of adding something new?