Bought my first Mac. Question about setup & maintenance

[tennisproha]

Hi all

I bought a 2012 2.3Ghz rMini last week as some of you might know from the Mac Mini forum. I've yet to set it up, but since i'm migrating over from Windows, I have a few questions and concerns about setup and maintenance.

So once I go through Setup Assistant, I'll be good to go to start using my Mini, I think. However I'm wondering if there's anything else I should know or do that's specific to Macs. For example, on my Windows, I ran CCleaner and Malwarebytes every few weeks for general maintenance. I also ran Disk Cleanup every few months and defragmented the HD. Are there any clean ups or maintenance utilities like these I need to know about or run?

Likewise, are there any settings I should tweak for optimal performance or better maintenance?

Thanks everyone.

 

[Intell]

There is very little maintenance that needs to be done on modern Macs. Basically restart it at least once a month and install updates. Everything else is taken care of automatically.

 

[tennisproha]

There is very little maintenance that needs to be done on modern Macs. Basically restart it at least once a month and install updates. Everything else is taken care of automatically.

Really? Thats it. What about clearing temp files and all that? Thats all done automatically too? Like stuff that can slow it down over time…

 

[Meister]

Really? Thats it. What about clearing temp files and all that? Thats all done automatically too? Like stuff that can slow it down over time…

Welcome to Mac. Where computers work like they are supposed to

Stay the **** away from maintenance and performance apps. They are all a scam.
OS X does this by itself.

Putting in an ssd or running OS X from an external one will increase you performance greatly.

you could repair disk permissions: http://www.computerworld.com/articl...-x-mavericks--how-and-why-to-repair-disk.html

 

[Intell]

Caches are cleared as they become old. Prematurely removing them can adversely affect performance of your machine.

 

[tennisproha]

Sweet. that's good news as I was really tired of doing all the monthly maintenance and running my anti-malware programs on my Windows. thanks everyone.

 

[Natzoo]

Good luck, and congrats on the buy

 

[Fishrrman]

I use a little piece of freeware called "Yasu" to clean out logs, caches, run the cron jobs, repair permissions, etc.

It's no longer being developed, but the last version seems to work fine on all my Macs...

 

[GGJstudios]

Are there any clean ups or maintenance utilities like these I need to know about or run?

Likewise, are there any settings I should tweak for optimal performance or better maintenance?

If you're having performance issues, this may help:

Performance Tips For Mac OS X​

You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only 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.

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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. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt.

​

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

Five Mac maintenance myths​

 

[TLmac]

Sweet. that's good news as I was really tired of doing all the monthly maintenance and running my anti-malware programs on my Windows. thanks everyone.

I won't have to do this on a Mac? I won't miss it either. Except I was advised to do the malware crap on a weekly basis. I hadn't done it for about a month or so until yesterday. There were 178 issues that needed attention!
(Windows 8, HP computer)

 

[GGJstudios]

I won't have to do this on a Mac? I won't miss it either.

Macs are not immune to malware, but no true viruses exist in the wild that can run on Mac OS X, and there never have been any since it was released over 12 years ago. The only malware in the wild that can affect Mac OS X is a handful of trojans, which can be easily avoided by practicing safe computing (see below). 3rd party antivirus apps are not necessary to keep a Mac malware-free, as long as a user practices safe computing, as described in the following link.

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Read the What security steps should I take? section of the Mac Virus/Malware FAQ for tips on practicing safe computing.

 

[tennisproha]

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.

This is what I was mainly concerned about. Didn't know If I needed to do any manual maintenance, through 3rd-party app or otherwise manually through system controls. Its good to know all this is taken care of automatically.

Thank you for all the links you've provided. Wasn't aware of them and they're quite informative.