Do You Really Need To Pay Money to Clean, Secure, And Optimize Your Mac?

What scares you the most about using a Mac? Viruses? Nope. Other malware? Maybe.

How about the fears that Windows PC users have had for years?

To hear switchers tell it, Mac users need to clean, secure, and optimize their Macs, not to mention load it up with virus chasing and performance dragging malware scanner apps. Do you really need to pay money to keep your Mac running well?

Your Mac Is Not Your Car

Your car needs ongoing maintenance so it continues to perform for you over the years. Guess what? Your Mac needs ongoing maintenance to keep it running year after year.

Here’s the problem. Most of what your Mac needs is built-in already, and takes care of itself. Other than a few clicks to empty the trash or delete history or cache files, your Mac should run for years without problem.

So, why are there so many advertisements floating around web sites which promote apps that promise to tuneup your Mac. The answer is the same as it is in politics. Follow the money.

The latest such app to grace my Mac is called TuneupMyMac. It promises to clean your Mac with a click. It promised to free up storage and speed up your Mac by removing junk files.

It even has options to delete sensitive and confidential data securely, and even optimize your Mac and make it more stable. Really? All that? And all I need to do is cough up $40?

One Click Cleaning: TuneupMyMac uses a System Cleaner and a Logs Cleaner to remove system and user cache files, including system and user logs. All of which your Mac does automatically anyway. The App Optimizer function scans Mac apps and cleans unnecessary files and languages (but only the dirty ones).

Optimization: You want your Mac to run as fast as possible, right? Duplicates Finder claims to optimize your Mac by finding duplicate files that waste storage space. I’m not sure how that optimizes anything, though.

Uninstaller: Who needs apps or Dashboard Widgets that don’t get used? Delete them all with TuneupMyMac’s uninstaller. Wait a minute. Aren’t there free Mac apps that do the same thing? Correctomundo.

Startup Apps: This module works like your Mac’s System Preferences. It lets you manage apps that are launched when your startup the Mac. Enable, disable, or add startup apps with ease. Wait a minute. Can’t you do the same thing by clicking the Login Items in Users and Groups in System Preferences. I think so.

Manual Cleaning: It seems to me that if I pay for an app to clean my Mac it really ought to do so by itself. The Internet Privacy tool in TuneupMyMac scans your browser history and cookies. All it takes is a few clicks. Which is what you’d do if you open up Preferences in Safari and delete all that stuff.

Large Files: Even in the age of huge hard disk drives, we can run out of space. Reclaim it with the tool that finds files and lists them in order of size so you can decide what to keep and what to delete, even if you don’t know why.

Shredder: When you drop a file into the Trash and then empty the Trash, the file actually hangs around, hidden but available. The Shredder tool permanently deletes secret files and folders. It works much like the Secure Empty Trash function in the Finder menu.

There you have it. All the things a slickly packaged $40 app can do that your Mac mostly does already, but where it doesn’t there are free apps that do. But, hey, we all have to do our part to keep the economy humming along, right? You can’t take it with you.

If you’re part of the economy that doesn’t have money to burn on frivolous apps or, there’s too much month left over at the end of your money, there’s a healthy list of useful alternatives, including The Top 3 Mac Tinkering, Tweaking, Customizing, Optimizing Tools.

Or, go a step further and learn How To Keep Your Mac Virus Free, Trojan Free, Worm Free For Free With 3 Free Apps.

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