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3 Top Mac Utilities To Maintain OS X. Each One Is Free.

OnyxHow well does your Mac run? What maintenance utilities do you use to keep your Mac running in tip top shape?

Here’s three Top Mac Utilities to help your Mac stay healthy. Each one is free. Each from the same location.

You’re just a few clicks away from having a suite of tools to keep your Mac running better and faster than Mary Jo Foley runs from logic and reason and good sense.

While reading Mary Jo’s version of the Mac vs. Windows world will cause you to lose hair and brain cells, these Mac maintenance utilities won’t cost you a penny. Or a dime. Or a dollar. Or more.

Granted, there’s only so much you can do to keep your Mac running smoothly, staying dependable and reliable, and reducing your stress level. Stress is a bad thing and causes poor health, reduced mental capacity, and blather in ZDNet writers. Says who? Says our Bambi Brannan.

Mac360 suggests that everyone get a few maintenance utilities for their Macs (they’re free), and we suggest that Mary Jo just get a Mac. I guarantee it’ll reduce her blather.

Onyx
Not only do I value what’s free, I value multi-function tools. I’m the crescent wrench girl, the Swiss army knife gal, the certified Value Vixen™ so Onyx is highly recommended.

Use it to run a variety of system maintenance tasks on your Mac, open up some of the Mac’s hidden parameters, and remove various files and caches to can cause your Mac to slow down.

Hidden paramters? Yes, as in hidden features. The Mac’s Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Expose’, Login window, and Safari have a number of features which are not turned on by default. Onyx turns them on.

Maintenance
This cleverly named little utility helps your Mac do a few of the things that Onyx doesn’t. Do. Maintenance is just as free as Onyx, but it’s less filling, and yet manages to perform other tasks that your Mac may need.

For example, use Maintenance to repair permissions on your Mac, run those pesky periodic scripts hidden in your Mac’s bowels (yes, that’s actually where they are-- all bowels need cleaning, right?).

Maintenance also resets Spotlight’s index routine, rebuilds the LaunchServices database whenever it becomes naughty, deletes the always growing Application, Font, and System caches, and goes one step further to check out your hard drive.

How can one argue with that kind of value?

Deeper
Sounding oh too much like the title of a straight-to-DVD porn film, starring Busty McNutts and Peter North, Deeper is actually yet another utility designed to turn on and turn off.

Turn on what? Turn off what? I thought you’d never ask.

Deeper enables and disables a variety of functions, not unsimilar to some of those in Onyx, even though both are the same price.

Yes, it’s the same old fare-- reveal the hidden functions in the Finder, the Dock, Dashboard, Safari, and other Apple applications.

You thought you were busy before you downloaded these nifty neato tools? Just look how busy you’ll be running a busy bee Mac-- so efficient, so clean, so fast, so secure and dependable. You make me proud.

What I haven’t truly figured out is why these Mac utilities are free. The folks at Titanium Software have gone to some degree of trouble to figure out what’s in the closet of Mac OS X, then figure out what’s needed to keep the closet clean of dust, litter, belly button lint, and cuticle debris.

Think about it. These tools are free. As in beer. As in no cost to you. Yet, they’re good tools that every Mac user should have, with the exception of Mary Jo, even if she decides to try out a Mac instead of gushing that Windows is now in color.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.

   • Article by Alexis Kayhill • Published on Wednesday, February 13, 2008
   • Category: Encore Reviews • 5 Reader comment(s) • Email This • Digg This • Shop Now
  Page 1 of 1 Page(s) for this article.

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Mac360 readers talk back. View their comments below or post your own comment to this article. Comments are moderated by the Mac360 staff. Or, post comments in the Mac360 Forums. It's mostly anonymous, there's no obligation, and no cost, so join in-- it's free, fun, low in calories, low in carbs, non-fat, and mildly addictive-- like chocolate and blondes.

Readers Talk Back:
clove23 says:

Applejack should be mentioned. MainMenu is nice as well.

   — Posted on Mon Feb 18 at 2:37 am by clove23

Switcher says:

“What I haven’t truly figured out is why these Mac utilities are free”.  - Really? 

What us switchers cannot understand [after all the hype] is why the world’s greatest OS doesn’t come with some form of internal method of monitoring and maintaining itself to a degree of certainty that precludes the need for such over-hyped utilities.

As mac users no of us should be reading things like this: “Granted, there’s only so much you can do to keep your Mac running smoothly, staying dependable and reliable, and reducing your stress level.” Huh? We bought our mac to avoid feeling the loss of dependability, reliability and safety, ala Mr. Softie.

Mac has been around long enough to INCLUDE the needed software in it’s “evolving” OS to make it work “out of the box.” If there is a universal need for these, and other, utilities, as this and all other mac websites breathlessly claim, why won’t Mr. Jobs include them in his software right out of the box? Really, i left Mr. Softie because of the constant need to go outside of the system to make it work. How did us switchers wind up needing all this add-on software for routine system maintenance, etc.?

The clarion call of the apple-junk-head faithful that “IT JUST WORKS”? - right out of the box, needs clarification. It may be time for a reality check as the hoards of the unwashed window users pile into your world. Remember, we switchers have been fed similar lines from Mr. Softie for years and that’s why we switched.

I do like the idea of independent developers adding to the mac experience, but please, why do I need to acquire software so vital that this website constantly bangs the drum nonstop about the same MUST HAVE UTILITIES? Why not implore Apple to do the right thing and fix their software, which would allow you to publish articles about how to USE the software instead of how to maintain it? I don’t want to see under the hood, I’m not a software developer and don’t want to know what makes it work, just make it work out of the box.

Why, as a switcher, do I ever need to read something like this, “For example, use Maintenance to repair permissions on your Mac, run those pesky periodic scripts hidden in your Mac’s bowels (yes, that’s actually where they are-- all bowels need cleaning, right?).”, and wonder, is my mac safe and clean? Please, issues like these lie at the heart of why we switched.

Mac stuff should come with all the necessary software to keep itself “healthy”. Don’t force us switchers to slowly and frustratingly, discover the holes in the software that you guys have been plugging for years with third-party vendor software. Why not alert apple to the holes and ask them to fix them?

I’m looking for guidance here [please hold the criticism to a minimum] on just what MUST be added to my new mac software to make it “just work”. Leave the extraneous things for later, for now just what is absolutely needed would be helpful.

Mac wants to be on center stage, it’s walking down the isle towards center stage; now, PERFORM.

Looking for help,

Stumped In Third-Party Developer Land

   — Posted on Sun Feb 17 at 12:50 pm by Switcher

Apophenion says:

For system maintenance I like Macaroni. Install it, then forget about it.

   — Posted on Wed Feb 13 at 9:09 pm by Apophenion

  Page 1 of 1 Page(s) for Comments on this article.
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