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

How 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.

By the way, Mac360 gives daily Mac updates on Twitter. If you Twitter, give Mac360 a tweet. One more thing. Only the best Mac software gets reviewed on Ron's NoodleMac site. Check it out.

Off Topic Note: Guess what? Former Mac360 writer Kate Mac is back online after dumping Windows and re-embracing the Mac. Again.