Maintenance in OS X - is it necessary?

[discofuel]

Is it important to perform routine maintenance to OS X?

I've read some people talking about programs like OnyX, AppleJack, Jasu - should I be using them?

What about uninstalling applications. I usually just do a search for the app name and delete anything associated with it but someone mentioned that you should use AppDelete?

And how about defragging? I use my mac for music production and constantly creating, moving and delete large files.

 

[cjmillsnun]

Every OS should be maintained in some form.

Mac OS X does require maintenance but not in the form Windows does.

For example it is not necessary to defrag in OS X,

However it is a good idea to look at making sure the the CRON jobs (daily, weekly and monthly scripts) are run regularly. An app like cocktail http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.php is useful for this.

 

[applevx]

Every OS should be maintained in some form.

Mac OS X does require maintenance but not in the form Windows does.

For example it is not necessary to defrag in OS X,

However it is a good idea to look at making sure the the CRON jobs (daily, weekly and monthly scripts) are run regularly. An app like cocktail http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.php is useful for this.

I disagree.

Defrag the HDD is very necessary under OS X too. OS X only auto- defrag very small size of file in HDD. With a lot of files, music, pics, applications, etc on my HDD, OS X became sluggish a lot. That's why I do defrag HDD every week or every two weeks with iDefrag . Some other tool can do this job too, but iDefrag is the best.
I can tell that iDefrag is the only program worth the every penny!

Also, I use CleanMyMac to remove system and user junkie, use Cocktail to clean, repair and optimize system.

Back to the topic, yes, it is very necessary to do the maintenance in OS X!

My ¢2

 

[calderone]

Doing those things may help, but they are not necessary.

 

[bobr1952]

Necessary is a relative term--and for me, I think the system takes care of itself pretty nicely as long as you don't keep messing with it--which I don't. I do check to make sure the maintenance jobs run and have that check in my dashboard--but that is really about it. I do monitor things--like temps and the like to make sure things are running as they should as well as checking in with Activity Monitor to look for anything unusual. But I don't use any other maintenance tools.

 

[calderone]

Necessary is a relative term--and for me, I think the system takes care of itself pretty nicely as long as you don't keep messing with it--which I don't. I do check to make sure the maintenance jobs run and have that check in my dashboard--but that is really about it. I do monitor things--like temps and the like to make sure things are running as they should as well as checking in with Activity Monitor to look for anything unusual. But I don't use any other maintenance tools.

It isn't relative. We are talking about necessary for the machine, not the individual. Either maintenance is necessary or it isn't. It doesn't matter what the individual thinks.

Having supported hundreds of OS X machines, I can tell you that maintenance is unnecessary. Here is Apple's list:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1147

All pretty standard stuff you should be doing anyway.

And here is some info about the automatic maintenance tasks:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2319

These get run whether or not the machine is asleep or powered down (they run when the machine is turned on or awoken, in 10.6 at least). In 10.5 and below, you will need to run them yourself.

But this still isn't necessary. The files that are sitting around aren't impacting performance unless you are near capacity on your startup disk.

The only thing I would do every month is a volume verification as this will often alert you to a potentially failing hard drive. A permission repair after large software installations is highly recommended. Many package installers are improperly created and may disrupt default permissions.