[csonni]

I suppose I'm a mild "geek" with my Macs. I like to keep up on maintenance procedures, etc. I see various "utilities" for X that perform various tasks, such as Cronation (to run Cron tasks- is this necessary?), Spellbinder (to update prebindings- is this necessary?), and others. I find these all interesting, but am I wasting my time using these just to try to squeeze out every ounce of performance, or are these truly necessary tasks for OSX stability and reliability?

 

[CubaMark]

Hiya csonni,

I used to be a slave to MacJanitor, which runs the unix maintenance routines that are typically missed by Mac users who don't leave their computers running all night long (why on earth Apple didn't change whatever setting comes standard on OSX, I'll never know).

But that's been solved with the purchase of "Macaroni", a little preference pane that monitors the last time those routines are run, and then executes them as needed. No more thinkin' about maintenance! It also does the "repair permissions" bit which seems pretty important to a happy Mac.

Beyond those, there are a bunch of other Preference Panes that people swear by... here's what I have installed:

- APE Manager (required for a few of the others...)
- Fruit Menu
- Macaroni
- TinkerTool (which at this point is only useful for putting both scroll arrows at both ends, and no longer has the ability to change the format of the desktop 'snapshot' routine from PDF to something else, like JPG or TIFF)

M.

 

[TripleX]

You should really try "Cocktail" it combines all the tools into one concise app.

 

[CubaMark]

Hey TripleX,

Just took a peek at Cocktail - and it seems that Macaroni has those bases covered, plus it's not an App that I need to actually think about

whereas Cocktail I would have to consciously launch and use.

Me, I want a no-brainer path to OS X maintenance!

M

 

[jb22]

Sorry to bud in, but I will be ordering my first Mac on Manday, a Dual 1.25 Power Mac. I've used Macs a lot but have never had to worry about maintaining them. So as a first-time Mac owner, what do I have to do to keep my machine running smooth? What's this talk of leaving your Mac on all night? Does it have to be every night or what? Does OSX take care of itself or do you need to get third party software?

Thanks.

 

[Chealion]

OS X takes care of itself, but the settings for the clean up programs occur in the wee hours of the morning which is when most people don't have their computers on, so for the built in maintenance programs to run you have to either change the time when they occur (something that has to be done in the terminal and requires knowledge from a UNIX geek) or run a thrid party software that will do it for you.