RE: Utilities for OS X?

[Santeh]

Hello all,

I recently switched from XP to OS X and, being a newbie to the current Mac OS, I was wondering if there was/were any utilities that should be run just for general maintenance of the Mac OS (even hardware)? For example, in Windows it was not a bad idea to occasionally run Disk Defragmenter and SpeedDisk, check for SpyWare/AdWare, etc.. Is there something like this I should be doing as general practice for Apple's 10.4?

Thank you!

Respectfully,

Sam

 

[robbieduncan]

You don't need to do any of that!

The HFS+ filesystem in OSX defragments itself as it goes along! There is no known spyware or addware for OSX.

The only thing some people seem to do a lot is repair permission (use Disk Utility in the Utilities folder in Applications).

 

[Soulstorm]

Actually, OS X performs a defragmentation for files that are 20mbytes or less. If you delete a file 100 mbyte, no defragmentation s taking place in this case.

HDs in OS X get fragmented. But the thing is that it doesn't matter in Macs. With disk defragmentation you will only see a 5% speed increase in opening files-no more.

I have never defragmented my disk. And it runs perfectly, and I have been using my G5 for approximately 1 year now.

So the only things you need to do are these:
1)Repair permissions
2)Update prebindings
3)Rotate system logs.

You can download System Optimizer to do all those things for you, in case you don't want to mess with the terminal...

 

[Santeh]

Hello all!

Thank you for the help, and the link! It is nice to know that Mac's are brilliantly set-up to "just work!" 🙂

Thanks again! I appreciate the time and help!

Always,

Sam

 

[Marky_Mark]

Hello all!

Thank you for the help, and the link! It is nice to know that Mac's are brilliantly set-up to "just work!" 🙂

Thanks again! I appreciate the time and help!

Always,

Sam

MacJanitor is a good day-to-day tool for rotating logs too:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/5856

MacJanitor allows you to manually startup daily, weekly, and monthly cron maintanence scripts. These scripts are important when keeping MacOS X in "good shape". Usually, these scripts are set to automatically launch at times of the day when little activity occurs. However, if your Mac is turned off during these times, then the maintanence scripts don't have a chance to run.

You're gonna love your new machine. No spyware, adware or viruses of any kind. Welcome to Macintosh. 🙂

 

[sunfast]

Main Menu

Main Menu is a pretty good piece of (free!) software for keeping everything happy.

http://www.santasw.com/products.html