Slow starting bitcoind
You very probably have a massive wallet.dat file.

This happens with Instawallet's bitcoind, it takes an hour to start up, it spends this time loading the wallet.

If you want to make sure :


Stop bitcoind
Open up a Terminal, and type :
$ tail -f ~/Library/Application\ Support/Bitcoin/debug.log
Press ⌘K to clear the scrollback and window
Start bitcoind


You should see some output when the client starts, if the problem is actually with loading the wallet the output should stop for a while on 'Loading wallet'.