Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Imola Ghost

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 21, 2009
1,153
12
I like to keep my computers in tip top running shape. Is there anything I should be doing to keep it running smoothly?

What I mean is does OSX Lion require any monthly (or more) type of disk utility. I've heard about resetting SMC or something like that but what do you guys recommend or do?
 
I'd say keep a clone of your boot disk, and data backups. If you like opening your laptop, maybe pop the back off and dust it out every year.

I don't mess with resets and such until a problem surfaces, but that's me.
 
I've own apple laptops since the G3 Powerbook era, and I've not really had any set maintenance. OSX and the laptop are great products and I've never needed to worry about doing to stuff to keep them running.
 
I like to keep my computers in tip top running shape. Is there anything I should be doing to keep it running smoothly?

What I mean is does OSX Lion require any monthly (or more) type of disk utility. I've heard about resetting SMC or something like that but what do you guys recommend or do?

Nothing really. Maybe open the bottom case and blow out the dust once a year. If you are the type of person that spills drink then DON'T drink while near your Mac.
 
OS X runs scheduled maintenance scripts in the background on a daily/weekly/monthly schedule. No user intervention is really necessary.
 
Not really much you can do. I always clean out my hard drive by deleting certain videos I don't need anymore or moving some docs to the cloud just to reduce clutter. Also wouldn't be bad to get some compressed air and clean out the dust that may be trapped inside the ports and keys.
 
Yeah just dust it. The fan can get dust stuck in it making it less effective. Other then that I wouldn't use those free "mac cleaning" tools. They don't do much at all.
 
Btw, does just opening the bottom case void the warranty?

Nope:) Upgrading RAM and upgrading HDD are both Apple supported upgrades and are detailed in the manual. (of the cMBP at least)

For a Retina obviously the RAM isn't possible but still, they do not care about just taking off the bottom. Plus they can't tell anyways.

I hope I'm not wrong, but if removing the bottom case voids warranty that's ridiculous.
 
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.

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.

 
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.

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.


Do you ever get tired of repeating the same thing over and over? :p
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.