ITunes on MBP very slow to close.

Question

Does anyone know why it takes minutes for iTunes to close; but shuts down immediately when I double click on it.

Answer 1

In later generations of the PowerBook and all MacBook Pro's Apple has built-in a new feature called safe sleep. This allows two things:
1.) It allows you to swap out the battery while maintaining your work as all data present in the RAM gets written to the Hard Drive every time you close the lid of your notebook computer.
2.) In case your computer runs out of battery while in sleep mode, the data you were working on is saved on the drive and the session can be restored the next time you turn on your computer.
Disadvantages of SafeSleep:
1.) Increased risk of Hard Drive failure as when data is being written the Sudden Motion Sensor is disabled and cannot park the head of the drive in case the computer is moved before the sleep light starts blinking.
2.) Increased time to sleep as the data must be transferred to the drive. A real pain if you have lots of memory (e.g. 4 GB)
SafeSleep can be disabled by typing the following command into terminal:
$ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
$ sudo nvram "use-nvramrc?"=false
You may need to run these commands every time you plan to put your computer to sleep. These commands will reduce the time it takes your computer to sleep dramatically.
Regards,
Rahil Khandker.