Mac OS Maintenance

Most defragging is done by the OS. Maintenance is also handled by overnight routines automatically. No real need for anti-virus, but you can get ClamXav to scan for Windows viruses in data files that you may pass on to Windows users.

 

Another thread recently had the general conclusion that anti-virus software does more harm than help.

Macs are clean. If you are reasonable with opening emails/IMs and such you should not have to worry.

 

onyx is like ccleaner for the mac. it will manually do the maintenance scripts, clean, optimize the system, clear cache, clean temp files etc. you can do it manually or with the automation feature. i use onyx monthly and seems to speed things up after youve booted a few times to rebuild the system cache.

 

Yes do get OnyX. It's very very very good.

 

if you have now upgraded to Leopard and dont mind using the terminal use the following command to run the unix commands what apple included in the OS to help keep it running smoothly .

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

then enter your password (you need to have admin rights)

 

Honestly, you really don't have to do any type of maintenance at all on a Mac (imo). As long as you don't install software from untrustworthy sources, then OS X completely takes care of itself. (by untrustworthy software I mean kracked software from the net, downloaded shareware from an unknown company without a good reputation, etc.)

When I first switched to OS X from Mac OS9, the first couple of years I would run some system utilities out of the old learned behavior that computers require you to do work under the hood. Knowledgeable OS X users told me it was unnecessary, but old habit die hard. But then out of business I would up not running any utilities for a long time, and then I realized that there was no reason to.

Since then I've been using my Mac for a couple of years now without ever running a maintenance utility. The only times I run a system utility is when a problem that pops up. (a problem which wouldn't have been prevented by running utilities regularly, such as disk corruption from a sudden power outage). And my system runs fine.

Most OS X people never run any maintenance utilities, and their systems work fine.

There's really no reason to do that. It basically does nothing for you, and OS X automatically does it periodically as a hidden background process any way.