How to speed up Android Studio on a Mac

Question

I am trying to develop some native Android apps using Android Studio (latest) on OS X Yosemite. Currently Android Studio is simply unusable: it is too slow. I am not referri

Answer 1

Something I discovered was having Dictation turned on for the keyboard in System Preferences seems to cause a general loss of action (keyboard entry was dropping characters, clicks seemingly being dropped, window moves not working, etc.).

Disabling dictation cured all my general UI performance issues. This was done through Apple Menu | System Preferences | Keyboard | Dictation Tab | Off