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OS X maintenance?

Nevrsadie

Nevrsadie

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 31, 2006
216
9
Dark side of the monitor
I have had my MBP for about a month now. Its my first laptop and my first Mac. I am really loving this thing, its a true powerhouse of a machine. Anyways, I am so used to running maintenace programs in windows to keep everything smooth. Virus scans, defragging, adaware, so on and so forth. I know that you dont have to defrag in OSX and macs do not get viruses for the most part. My question is are there any programs or utilities that I should be running to keep OSX runnning smoothly?
 
Onyx is a nice little app that does some maintenance scripts for you.

also, going to disk utility and repairing permissions (just spotlight "disk utility") is nice to do once in a while.

...isn't it nice having a :apple: ? :D
 
Nevrsadie said:
I have had my MBP for about a month now. Its my first laptop and my first Mac. I am really loving this thing, its a true powerhouse of a machine. Anyways, I am so used to running maintenace programs in windows to keep everything smooth. Virus scans, defragging, adaware, so on and so forth. I know that you dont have to defrag in OSX and macs do not get viruses for the most part. My question is are there any programs or utilities that I should be running to keep OSX runnning smoothly?
Click to expand...
Mac OS X generally does a good job of running its own maintenance scripts - something that happens silently in the background. However, if, for some reason you wish to run these scripts manually, several programs can do this. I can't recommend one in particular, as I always use the command line to run maintenance scripts manually.
 
ero87 said:
Onyx is a nice little app that does some maintenance scripts for you.

also, going to disk utility and repairing permissions (just spotlight "disk utility") is nice to do once in a while.

...isn't it nice having a :apple: ? :D
Click to expand...

Thanks for the OnyX tip that is a cool program. Looks like it will do everything neccesary. I wasnt having any problems but I know over time that there has to be some maintenance. And yes it is nice having a :apple: !
 
I would quite seriously not bother. OS X takes care of that stuff for you; you only need to do anything if something goes wrong. Aside from upgrading from 10.3 to 10.4, I haven't manually done any "maintenance" stuff at all and the OS runs just as well as it ever did.

--Eric
 
Eric5h5 said:
Aside from upgrading from 10.3 to 10.4, I haven't manually done any "maintenance" stuff at all and the OS runs just as well as it ever did.
Click to expand...

I have to ditto... I used to be religious about doing "maintenance" when I had Panther and then when I got Tiger I pretty much lost interest and stopped doing it. No observation that I've ever had increased instability as a result of that decision.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Mac OS X generally does a good job of running its own maintenance scripts - something that happens silently in the background. However, if, for some reason you wish to run these scripts manually, several programs can do this. I can't recommend one in particular, as I always use the command line to run maintenance scripts manually.
Click to expand...
Laptops often don't get those scripts run (unless they have some different schedule that I don't know about) ...because the maintenance scripts run in the wee hours of the morning.

I manually run the commands via the terminal every 3 months or so on my old G4 iBook.
 
zweigand said:
Laptops often don't get those scripts run (unless they have some different schedule that I don't know about) ...because the maintenance scripts run in the wee hours of the morning.

...
Click to expand...
This is not true with MacOS X 10.4. The maintenance scripts are run when the computer becomes available. They are no longer restricted to the wee hours of the morning. My own experience is similar to that of mkrishnan. I used to run OnyX and/or Yasu on a fairly regular basis. After upgrading to MacOS X 10.4, I lost interest and rarely do it anymore. My computer displays no ill-effects due to this decision.
 
Since I moved to 10.4 I haven't bothered running anything other than Disk Utilities Repair Permissions. Stuff that used to be handled by cron (this was easy enough to fix too by installing anacron) is now handled properly by launchd. I don't see the point of these "maintenance" apps at all on 10.4.
 
MisterMe said:
This is not true with MacOS X 10.4. The maintenance scripts are run when the computer becomes available. They are no longer restricted to the wee hours of the morning. My own experience is similar to that of mkrishnan. I used to run OnyX and/or Yasu on a fairly regular basis. After upgrading to MacOS X 10.4, I lost interest and rarely do it anymore. My computer displays ill-effects due to this decision.
Click to expand...
This is good if true! How did you find this out?
 
MisterMe said:
This is not true with MacOS X 10.4. The maintenance scripts are run when the computer becomes available. They are no longer restricted to the wee hours of the morning. My own experience is similar to that of mkrishnan. I used to run OnyX and/or Yasu on a fairly regular basis. After upgrading to MacOS X 10.4, I lost interest and rarely do it anymore. My computer displays ill-effects due to this decision.
Click to expand...


Well I learn something new about OSX everyday. So what you guys are saying is that I really dont need to do anything, it is all done for me in the background. The more I learn the more I realize what an awesome operating system this is.
 
zweigand said:
This is good if true! How did you find this out?
Click to expand...
Scripts run under launchd in 10.4 and are set to start when the computer is idle for the first time after a date/time has passed. In versions before 10.4, it was run under cron, which meant the system had to be on, you cannot set cron to run on the next idle time.
 
If we are talking about preventative measures that a user can take for Mac OS X, this is the best advice anyone can give:
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.​

:rolleyes:

This advice is even more important if you are new to Macs. Trying to find bizzy work to replace tasks you no longer have to perform shouldn't include fiddling with areas you aren't familiar with yet.

How will you know that you are familiar enough with Macs to fiddle with those areas? One clue will be the fact that you no longer feel a compulsion to fix what isn't broken. ;)
 
After upgrading to MacOS X 10.4, I lost interest and rarely do it anymore. My computer displays ill-effects due to this decision.
Click to expand...

Is that a typo? Or, what ill-effects does your computer show?
 
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