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The Top 7 Free Utilities To Maintain A Mac
mac360.com — Mac OS X Tiger seems to be the most stable and dependable Mac OS to date. So why are there so many Mac maintenence utilities? The Top 7 Utilities are free. Does that mean your Mac running on OS X Tiger doesn ’t need maintenance? The truth is that Mac OS X is highly sophisticated, very complex, and needs a little tuning here and there
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- muaddib420, on 10/12/2007, -9/+9one of the simplest way of keeping a Mac snappy i've found is to reboot once a week.
- EmileVictor, on 10/12/2007, -17/+20I love how us mac fanboys can use sentences like "The truth is that Mac OS X is highly sophisticated, very complex, and needs a little tuning here and there" to describe problems with Macs, while we use sentences like "steaming pile of ****" to describe windows' problems.
- Greyarea, on 10/12/2007, -1/+54True, but in fairness most of our problems aren't because we browsed a website and had our machine owned by someone in Argentina.
- oligore, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Works with my ibook, if it dosen't startup i just open it in safemode then restart
I swear it fixes anything - TheReport, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3You know I've always been told that using third party appications could potentially do more harm than good to your computer when it comes to maintenance. I find it easier to go into the terminal and just run simple commands to maintain an up to date archive like sudo periodic daily weekly monthly or sudo update_prebinding -root / -force and for those command line junkies sudo diskutil repairpermissions / besides that I think the only other third party app I would use and trust is Diskwarrior even though its not freeware that app has gotten me out of some pickles, now im just waiting for the universal version of Diskwarrior so I can use it on my Macbook Pro
- 0o0Moylan0o0, on 10/12/2007, -24/+1No one cares, macs are gay
- Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Mirror mirror on the wall who will save the servers when they fall: http://www.duggmirror.com
- Diganta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Most of all those tools are quite unnecessary.
1. Unix cron job scipts that are interrupted because the user has a laptop or
turns off their desktop systems daily. They can run this single command
line at the terminal. Onyx, Yasu, MainMenu are GUI wrappers around the unix script.
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
2. Occasionally installing poorly written software that uses a package installer sometimes messes up the disk permission ACLs. This can be reset using the built in /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app and repair permissions. Again Onyx, Yasu, MainMenu are just a GUI wrapper around the diskutil command line.
That is essentially all the maintainance one could need for OS X. Now cleaning the cache and optimizing (pre-binding) are trouble shooting tools and are NOT to be used on a regular basis.
Refer to Maintenance myths
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintainingmacosx.html
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintscripts.html
- Greyarea, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Good to see Applejack on there - darn good little util.
- Ireland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Onyx kicks ass!!
- bealzebub, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10MacOS X is a unix-based OS, which means it was originally intended to run day and night. Most Mac users turn off (or at least sleep) their Mac. Certain cron jobs don't run, and these utilities allow you to run them manually. All the other options are just a way of reclaiming disk space (cleaning caches, …)
- adrien, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5This article is dishonest. It doesn't tell you what the programs are for, and why you need them in the first place.
My experience (and that of several friends who have recently switched to Mac) is that Mac OS X will require must less tweaking and maintenance than any other OS we've used, especially Windows. (That is, for typical desktop use.)
My advice is for most people not to bother about installing maintenance software.- Greyarea, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1The only slight problem is that MacOSX is a bit binary in its failures - it's normally fine but when it has a problem it tends to be a BIG problem.
That's why I like Applejack - it runs in the single user text only mode. - krackle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'd say for the most part I'd agree with you, although for people who don't leave there computer on most of the time things can get bogged down so the ability to run standard maintenance tasks isn't too bad. It is too bad that a feature list didn't show up on that page, though, as most of those apps do much of the same thing.
The options to show hidden files is huge plus for any Unix-head as it can be a pain to always go to command-line to find a lib or header file.
The other nice tools are the ones that give you finer tuning over how your laptops sleep and wake. The internal way is a tad on the cryptic side and most people would have a clue where the settings tweaks are.
- Greyarea, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1The only slight problem is that MacOSX is a bit binary in its failures - it's normally fine but when it has a problem it tends to be a BIG problem.
- Iceduck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3What's up with this guy's hatred towards brushed metal? Who cares how a maintenance app looks, as long as it's functional.
- Kelmon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3To be honest, I don't like the Brushed Metal look at all these days. If you can have your computer how you like it then there's nothing wrong with that and, let's be fair to it, one of the highlights of the Mac OS is that it does look pleasing to the eye which is important if you are going to be using it for many hours per day. Personally, I install the UNO theme and it does a great job in giving me a nicely unified look across the OS. I also hope that Leopard will finally do away with the Brushed Metal look entirely.
Overall, Brushed Metal was great when it first appeared but now it looks a bit tired. - rickcarson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Brushed Metal is just a rehash of the old Visual Basic 3.0 days with Battleship Gray
Not everything that is retro is a good thing. Some things were abandoned the first time round because they sucked.
- Kelmon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3To be honest, I don't like the Brushed Metal look at all these days. If you can have your computer how you like it then there's nothing wrong with that and, let's be fair to it, one of the highlights of the Mac OS is that it does look pleasing to the eye which is important if you are going to be using it for many hours per day. Personally, I install the UNO theme and it does a great job in giving me a nicely unified look across the OS. I also hope that Leopard will finally do away with the Brushed Metal look entirely.
- gibler, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Hmmm, my clients at work often claim that their macs "get slow" after some months. It is really hard to get out of them what they mean by "slow". Maybe it is spotlight or just the network having a bad day. I suspect most of it has to do with running non-universal apps e.g. MS Office...
- wastern, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I only use OnyX and it does me fine.
It should be noted though that too much "maintenance" can do more harm then good. I know someone that after his switch from windows was used to doing a lot of work on his computer, he 'over-maintained' his mac and ran one of the clean-ups that actually messed up his system pretty bad
leave your system on at 3am and it'll do a lot of the maintenance for you.....daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. That is most of what you need right there - pixelnet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9You can also open up a terminal and run
sudo periodic daily
sudo periodic weekly
sudo periodic monthly
Obviously enter root password at prompt and the monthly one can take a fair while :)- mr804, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7That's basically what most of these stupid ass $15 utilities do. Shell commands to launch repair permissions or fsck or periodic. Yay. $15 to rotate my logs, now my mac is 100 times faster! *****. I've had months where I've never had periodic run or fix permissions and my macs weren't slower or faster before or after.I think a lot of people really just want something "broke" to fix half the time.
- Nogger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Install Anacron to automatically run the cron jobs missed while the box was turned off and that is it.
These "maintenance apps" are for folks (mostly ex-Windows users) who get a warm feeling from "kepping the system up and running". They give them the fake satisfaction of "mastering the beast". If you would replace these apps by placebos, they would be equally satisfied and would swear by them.- jeriqo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes, I think Mac OS X should run the periodic scripts at any time of the day if the past were missed.
- schnuck, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1well said, nogger.
- alphasubzero949, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There are only three free utilities I use:
1. CLIX - when I want to run CLI commands but don't want to bother hitting up through all of the remembered commands in my ~/.bash_history.
2. anacron - Install and forget.
3. AppleJack - when I need to reboot to SUM to check. Great for multiple Macs.
The shareware developers are taking advantage of the ignorant by charging $$ for what is already on the system by default. - krishenn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I am new to OS X so I just wanted to thank the commenters above for educating me a little bit on maintenance issues with the Mac.
That's it. Thanks. :-) - egarcia79, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1my system runs fine without these programs. i do use onyx though. its great to clean up cache, etc. and reclaim some hardrive space. also if you turn off your computer instead of keeping it on osx can't run it's maintence scripts. onyx, as well as the others, allows you to run these scripts manually. i always keep my system on so i don't really use this feature. also the repair and verify permissions feature in onyx since you could just use disk utility. most users should be fine without ever using these programs
- Crusty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1CLIX: http://rixstep.com/4/0/clix/index.shtml
Not the prettiest maintenance utility, but dayum it's powerful. - Twango, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Cocktail is not free ... never has been to my knowledge.
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