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The Top 7 Free Utilities To Maintain A Mac.
So why are there so many Mac maintenence utilities? Check the price tag. The Top 7 Utilities are free. Does that mean your Mac running on OS X Tiger doesn’t need maintenance? The truth is that Mac OS X is highly sophisticated, very complex, and needs a little tuning here and there. There are caches to be dumped, hidden features to be opened, logs to be deleted, and much more. Should your Mac begin acting a little wonky, start looking for reasons and start with a few of these free utilities. #7 - MacJanitor Not all Mac maintenance utilities are created equal. Enter MacJanitor. Dig intro cron and other goodies with a set of utility scripts for Panther and Tiger. There’s no Intel version yet and MacJanitor was last updated over a year ago. #6 - Maintenance Titanium Software has two of the top free maintenance utilities for Mac OS X. Maintenance sports the standard fare of repair permissions, run scripts, reset Spotlight and more.
# 5 - Cocktail This superb little utility has been around awhile so expect to devote time to reading the reviews on Cocktail at MacUpdate. As with most Mac OS X maintenance utilities, Cocktail is general purpose in the Swiss Army Knife mode. The lack of brushed aluminum makes it a favorite almost as much as the lengthy list of tools and tweaks. #4 - ultimateTask The geekier among us may love the elegance and depth of ultimateTask and a companion product, rootMachine. Anything that helps me get rid of Dashboard is fine with me. #3 - MainMenu High on anyone’s shopping list from Santa is Santa’s MainMenu. As you might expect, this suite of maintenance utilities sits in OS X’s menu bar. That means getting a cleaner, healthier, shinier Mac is just a click or two away. #2 - Onyx Doing a little more for less (or, the same price, since everything’s free) is Onyx. No brushed aluminum left over from Panther days, Onyx opens up hidden features, deletes caches and hidden files, and lets you look at logs. #1 - AppleJack Frankly, any of the Top 3 could be #1, but AppleJack has a few extras. Can’t even get Mac OS X to show up on the screen? AppleJack to the rescue in single user mode. There’s the standard fare of repairing permissions, validating files, and killing corrupt caches. The Top 5 are ready for Intel Macs, but all seven maintenance utilities are essential tools to keep your Mac running clean, lean, and mean. Can you pay money and get the same thing? Yes. Among those maintenance utilities with a price tag, I prefer Xupport and Macaroni. The latter costs less but comes with more stars. The former costs more and does more but has less stars. Your mileage may vary. What’s your favorite Mac maintenance utilility? Did I miss one that should be on the list? Are these utilities even worth using on your Mac? Share your thoughts, experience, and favorites with other Mac360 readers in the Comments section below. Update - I’ve used Cocktail for so long that I mistakenly placed it in my Free List. A license is $15. I plead insanity, which, of course, comes from my child. Allow me to remove Cocktail from the Top 7 Free Utilities (since it’s not really free, Alexis-- duh), and replace it with the capable Mac HelpMate. Though relatively new, Mac HelpMate is popular and straightforward with many diagnostic tools, and a unique screen sharing and remote access feature. Highly recommended. • Article by Alexis Kayhill • Published on Friday, October 19, 2007
• Category: Encore Reviews • 6 Reader comment(s) • Email This • Digg This • Shop Now
« Previously Why I Let Evil Microsoft Control My Mac Life.
Nextly » How To Get Windows Media To Run On Your Mac.
Talk Back to Kate, Ron & the Mac360 staff Jak H. says:
love OnyX---have since v.9xxxx
— Posted on Tue Jun 10 at 5:28 pm by Jak H.
willis mcgee says:
Somebody does not know how to use AppleJack. You cannot uninstall it by simply dropping it into the trash. Use the uninstaller. If you’re having trouble, rather than just blast away at the software, which is loved and used by thousands of Mac users, tell us what kind of Mac you have, what system, and so on. — Posted on Sat Dec 22 at 12:24 pm by willis mcgee
Raymond J. Smith Jr. says:
Apple jack has run havoc on my computer. Even after deletion, it has a pop-up widow concerning its functions. Useless and dangerous is my opinion. I should know better by now that 3rd part software causes more problems then it corrects. Stay Away from AppleJack, it keeps coming back. It is useless and should not be recommended for Macs. — Posted on Sat Dec 22 at 11:48 am by Raymond J. Smith Jr.
jeffharris says:
Having used both for a while, I prefer Cocktail to Onyx. $15 isn’t much, but I prefer Cocktail’s interface and it’s ability to schedule maintainance. Cocktail seems to be the more compete and mature utility. With both, you’ve got to dig into the preferences a bit to set up. I set them both to dump everyting except my internet caches. If you fear cookies, you can dump those, too. ALWAYS restart afer running a utility that dumps cache files! I also swear by Disk Warrior. At $90 it’s certainly NOT free, but it’s been saving my Macs (and my clients’) for YEARS. From reading the description, it seems like AppleJack might be vaguely comparable. Generally, I run Cocktail. Reboot with my Disk Warrior disk (or from another hard drive with DW on it). Run Disk Warrior and Restart back with my original hard drive. — Posted on Sat Oct 20 at 9:15 am by jeffharris
Jack says:
Just a tip on Onyx - don’t let your computer fall into “sleep” mode while running the automator and doing a full optimization. Make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN the computer can NOT fall asleep by opening the energy saver preferences panel and moving the slider to “NEVER”.
— Posted on Sat Sep 01 at 7:55 pm by Jack
Samantha says:
Thanks for the info.
— Posted on Wed Aug 29 at 4:47 pm by Samantha
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