New to Macs. Just a few questions.

Nope, you don't really need anything to maintain your new MacBook Air.

I use Coconut Battery to check my battery every so often. Though there are numerous other free and paid battery apps depending upon your desired level of information.

assassin204 said:

Hi Guys,

New to the Mac scene, just bought my first MacBook air yesterday. I have always been a windows user, and still will be for games and stuff, but as I started a new job; I thought I would get a Mac for my day-to-day stuff to change things up.

When I started looking around for software to install on my Mac, it immediately changed my way of thinking. I thought I would need an antivirus, disk cleanup and other softwares to maintain my Mac, just looking on Google for these answers immediately showed I didn't.

So my question is, do I require any type of software to maintain my mac at all?

Also, I was wondering if you guys could advice me on some cool software for basic stuff, e.g. something like a program that tells me the stats of my mac(temp, ram use etc)

Thanks Guys

Click to expand...

The only maintenantce I need is iDefrag to defrag my hard drive once in a while. And I also format my Macbook once a year to keep it fast. (Usually when there is a new version)

assassin204 said:

wow...I honestly cant believe its as easy as that. haha.

well thats awesome

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Also make sure to not leave it plugged too long, apparently ruins the battery long term.

Some users like iStat (or similar) for managing their Mac.

assassin204 said:

Forgive me if i am wrong, but I have always been told that SSD's shouldn't be defragged.

Click to expand...

Ah true forgot it was SSD for Macbook Air, nvm

assassin204 said:

yeah i was speaking to a friend, and I think i recall him saying that this was a pretty good program to get. Thanks

Click to expand...

Also get DaisyDisk, it's a great free app to check why your HD is filled up

Go to your computer's preferences and find 'Security & Privacy' and then turn on the firewall. There's not a whole lost else you have to do for security other than make sure you don't enter your system password for programs when you don't know where they came from.

Another security measure: Don't instal Flash. Get Google Chrome, it has its own flash player built in. ONLY launch that when you need flash and then close it again. This lets you access flash sites but will keep Safari, Firefox, and the rest of your system free of flash and any exploits it may allow from sites running in the background that you didn't know about.

aerok said:

The only maintenantce I need is iDefrag to defrag my hard drive once in a while.

Click to expand...

You can do what you want, but there's no need to drag new users into habits that Apple says aren't necessary.

aerok said:

Also get DaisyDisk, it's a great free app to check why your HD is filled up

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I second this. You'll find caches of old stuff you don't need or old iPhone backups or some such junk that can be trashed.

A great program.

Small White Car said:

You can do what you want, but there's no need to drag new users into habits that Apple says aren't necessary.

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Doesn't really matter anymore since he's using SSD but on a regular HDD, OSX cannot defragment by itself if the HDD is nearly full.

assassin204 said:

Hi Guys,

New to the Mac scene, just bought my first MacBook air yesterday. I have always been a windows user, and still will be for games and stuff, but as I started a new job; I thought I would get a Mac for my day-to-day stuff to change things up.

When I started looking around for software to install on my Mac, it immediately changed my way of thinking. I thought I would need an antivirus, disk cleanup and other softwares to maintain my Mac, just looking on Google for these answers immediately showed I didn't.

So my question is, do I require any type of software to maintain my mac at all?

Also, I was wondering if you guys could advice me on some cool software for basic stuff, e.g. something like a program that tells me the stats of my mac(temp, ram use etc)

Thanks Guys

Click to expand...

Yep thats the great thing about OS X... it doesn't need to be maintained! Just a warning, however, don't fall for those ads like "MacKeeper" because they are scams...

One other app you should get it Onyx. It will help you clean the computer caches etc (which normally help the system run faster but can become corrupt)... this isn't something that needs to be done often... only like once a month or 2. It basically makes sure nothing is incorrectly cached and is slowing your computer down

Drew017 said:

Yep thats the great thing about OS X... it doesn't need to be maintained! Just a warning, however, don't fall for those ads like "MacKeeper" because they are scams...

One other app you should get it Onyx. It will help you clean the computer caches etc (which normally help the system run faster but can become corrupt)... this isn't something that needs to be done often... only like once a month or 2. It basically makes sure nothing is incorrectly cached and is slowing your computer down

Click to expand...

I can't stress Onyx enough. However, I'd stay away from any disk defragmenting software on a Mac, particularly if you have an SSD as it's a good way to rack up write cycles on your SSD.

assassin204 said:

I have gone onto macupdate just to check out the programs you guys mentioned, and it appears to be all freeware?

Are they just trial software?

Click to expand...

Onyx and DaisyDisk are indeed free, completely free.

My must have general apps for mac are-

istat
Onyx
Insomniax - for laptops.

Not really much maintenance needed with Macs, i just do a fresh OS install every OS release.

assassin204 said:

okay, because I went on daisydisk's site, and there is a charge to buy it.

Click to expand...

Maybe they changed then, I remember getting it for free on the App Store

assassin204 said:

I thought I would need an antivirus,

Click to expand...

You don't need any 3rd party antivirus app to keep a Mac malware-free, as long as you practice safe computing, as described in the following link. Read the What security steps should I take? section of the Mac Virus/Malware FAQ for tips on practicing safe computing.

assassin204 said:

So my question is, do I require any type of software to maintain my mac at all?

Click to expand...

None. You don't need to "maintain" your Mac and you don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well. Some of these apps can do more harm than good. Some can even degrade, rather than improve system performance.

Some remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process. These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space.

Some of these apps delete caches, which can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt. Caches exist to improve performance, so deleting them isn't advisable in most cases.

Many of the tasks performed by these apps should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

With very few exceptions, you don't need to defrag on Mac OS X, except possibly when partitioning a drive.

About disk optimization with Mac OS X

You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X.

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Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention. You can use Maintidget to see the last time these scripts were run.

assassin204 said:

Also, I was wondering if you guys could advice me on some cool software for basic stuff, e.g. something like a program that tells me the stats of my mac(temp, ram use etc)

Click to expand...

Use iStat Pro (free) or iStat Menus ($16) to get accurate readings of your battery, temps, fan speeds and much more.

This may be useful:

Some other apps you might want to have.

Click2Plugin
Growl
LittleSnitch
Alfred
Bartender

aerok said:

Also make sure to not leave it plugged too long, apparently ruins the battery long term.

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Do have anything to back up this claim?

Once the battery is charged, the power adapter draws little or no electricity from the outlet. So how would this ruin the battery? It certainly causes less harm to the battery than a continuous cycle of full draining and charging.

Resist said:

Do have anything to back up this claim?

Once the battery is charged, the power adapter draws little or no electricity from the outlet. So how would this ruin the battery? It certainly causes less harm to the battery than a continuous cycle of full draining and charging.

Click to expand...

It's fine to leave it plugged in after it's fully charged, as it stops charging when it's full. It's not fine to leave it plugged in all the time, as the battery needs to be exercised regularly to stay healthy. For more details, see the AC POWER section of the following link. The link below should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend you take the time to read it.