As most modern OS’s go, Mac OS X is generally pretty intelligent with how it prioritizes processes. That said, if you want to give any running task an extra kick in the pants, you can use a free tool called Process Renicer. Launching the app gives you a task manager of sorts where you can double-click on any running process and then adjust it’s “nice” value to increase it’s CPU priority. The app is basically just a GUI frontend to the command line tool ‘renice’ which is generally for advanced users.
Giving any task a lower nice value will up it’s priority, and giving it a higher nice value will lower it’s CPU priority. This sounds paradoxical, but that’s just the way it works.
Most users won’t need an app like this, but if you want to push along a video conversion for your iPhone or something similar, you can do so. Remember that if you adjust the nice process downward dramatically, your CPU load is going to go through the roof and ignite your fans.
