We've all awaited the .Mac to MobileMe switch for a while now (some more than others). However, Apple's 6 hour time table for upgrading to MobileMe turned awry and led into an almost 24 hour up, down, up, up, down cycle.

If you're like most users experiencing the 24 outage, then you haven't been able to login and experience MobileMe first hand. So why not take a look at our gallery? We've got pictures of the entire MobileMe suite of web applications and user preferences: from the login screen to storage partitioning.

Most of us know that we should perform regular maintenance on our Macs, usually simple things such as doing backups and shaking pizza crumbs out of the keyboard. But did you know that there are a number of UNIX System Tasks that are available for keeping your Mac running at peak performance?

A lot of Mac users don't want to pull up Terminal and type arcane text into the command line, so MacDentro has a GUI front end that you can use to run those commands and keep your Mac cruisin'. IceClean, now at version 3.0.6 has menus for OS X Maintenance, Cleanup, Security and Network, and Utilities, all of which are packed with menu choices or keyboard shortcut equivalents that make mundane maintenance chores simple to perform.

There are other apps available -- Maintenance and MacJanitor come to mind -- that perform similar tasks, but neither of those programs comes close to the depth of capability of IceClean.

The price is right, too - it's free, although you might want to send the MacDentro folks a donation if you find yourself using IceClean regularly. Download IceClean here.

Tip of the hat to our very own Victor Agreda for this find!

Like everyone else, we here at TUAW are excited and champing at the bit to get at Leopard. Unfortunately, we have about another week to go; however, that gives everyone time to get ready. In that spirit we present this TUAW Guide to Getting Ready for Leopard.

Keep in mind that I don't actually have access to Leopard, so all of the following advice is based on past OS X upgrade experience rather than the actual upgrade to 10.5. Nonetheless, I'm reasonably sure these steps should ease the transition from Tiger. As always, reader comments and suggestions are welcome.

While attracting dirt and grime is a hazard of owning a notebook, the neat-freak and 'oh my gosh this is expensive computer equipment' portions of my brains have always been bothered by how icky my MacBook Pro can get over time. I've tried a few products that are designed to protect one portion or another of a MacBook Pro from dirt, and Power Support's Track Pad Film is just such a product. It comes as two separate pieces - one for the mouse button and another for the track pad - and Power Support sells them as a two-pack so you get a backup in case you make a mistake or have a friend who could use some track pad protection.

Since the Track Pad Film is basically a clear sticker that is designed to allow you to still use your MacBook's track pad, application is pretty simple. Some people prefer to wash the heck out of their hands, while I personally just peel back the underside of the sticker and apply without ever actually touching the film. There isn't much to say about how well the film protects your track pad and mouse button: it's a clear sticker, so those two components are pretty well covered, as long as you applied them properly. 'Nuff said.

In terms of the performance of the actual piece of film that covers the track pad, I have a mixed opinion: for the most part, the track pad still responds fairly accurately. I'm a dual-mode notebook mouser myself - I can use a track pad or a USB mouse with almost equal comfort and precision, so I'm not one of those people who's dead in the water if I have nothing but a fingertip to steer with. However, I notice at random times that my trackpad accuracy momentarily goes out the window - for a stroke or two on the pad, it might pick up only half the normal distance the mouse would typically travel, or the mouse might get a little shaky on the screen, as if Mac OS X is having a hard time understanding exactly where my finger is and where I want the mouse to go.

Overall, if we had an official rating system on TUAW, I would give the Track Pad Film a 7 out of 10. It's a decent product that can certainly help protect one's track pad from dirt and general wear and tear, but this occasional drop in accuracy is a big ding for this blogging power user.

I found Track Pad Film in a Colorado Apple Store for $12.95, but you can also order it for your MacBook/Pro (including a version specific for the black MacBook) from Power Support.

Unlike Windows, OS X is great at taking care of itself. Built in periodic maintenance such as cron jobs (a holdover from the FreeBSD on which OS X is based) and on-the-fly disk defragmentation of the journaled file system make OS X essentially self sufficient when it comes to keeping itself running smoothly, so much so that many users never even consider running third party maintenance tools.

However, for older systems and systems in special usage cases such as computer labs, the built in tools aren't always enough to stop system slowdown and other issues. That's where programs like Yasu come in. Yasu, standing for Yet Another System Utility, is a donationware utility designed for administrators of large groups of systems and allows easy running and automation of cache and log cleanup, permissions repair, and other similar activities.

YASU 1.3.9 fixes some early issues with Intel/PPC compatibilities, and is availalbe from the developers site.

The 'Repair Permissions' function of Disk Utility has been under quite a bit of speculation as of late. There are those in one camp, such as John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who believe repairing (restoring, resetting, etc.) permissions is not much more than voodoo, while others in the support end of the Mac OS X community swear by it as the first line of defense. So what's a confused Mac OS X user to do when trying to draw up a formidable troubleshooting game plan?

Heading over to Dan Frakes' Repairing permissions: what you need to know article at Macworld is a great first step at trying to cut through all the confusion. Dan dissects virtually every aspect of the permissions repair process, from explaining what exactly 'permissions' are, to a few specific situations when it's a good idea to add the operation to your troubleshooting tool-belt. It's an informative read that helps demystify this much-debated aspect of Mac OS X.

Remember that 'Mac Maintenance Quick Assist' Apple Support document we found that seemed to be aimed at those new to Macs and computers in general? You know, the one that recommended fundamentals like dusting your computer and using file names that actually mean something? Well, John Gruber today fortunately pointed out that the document has been slightly edited, as it no longer recommends questionable voodoo repair permissions tactics, nor disk defragmenting (Mac OS X automatically does most of that work itself automatically) or "restarting your Mac every few days just for kicks". Three cheers for sensibility.

Disk Utility is a great maintenance and troubleshooting tool for those times when your Mac starts acting up. Repairing permissions can sometimes be handy (even though its true validity is in question as of late), but using the Verify and Repair Disk operations is often a more useful tactic. However, until Mac OS X 10.4.3, you had use Disk Utility to verify or repair your Mac's drive from some sort of an external source. You either had to plug into another Mac in Target Disk mode, or reboot and use the install disks that came with your Mac - not the most friendly process to your workflow. But now, With 10.4.3 and later, you can start up Disk Utility right from within Mac OS X and chose the verify option to make sure system level elements like your file catalog are all in order. One warning though: it is completely normal for your Mac to temporarily freeze or 'seize up' at the beginning of running this operation (you should get the infamous beachball), as this Apple support document explains. After a little while, depending on your Mac's speed and all that jazz, it will come out of its daze and you can continue working/chatting/surfing while it finishes the disk verification process.

This is a really handy tool, perhaps even more valuable than checking permissions, and should be a welcome addition to any Mac maintenance arsenal.

Maintenance, the Automator action that performs many system repair and clean-up tasks, has been updated to version 3.5. New features include:

• Ability to automatically restart after Maintenance has run
• Ability to automatically view the results file
• Time stamp added to results file

Also, for a few versions now, Maintenance has included an AppleScript that I believe performs the same tasks for pre-Tiger 10.4 versions of Mac OS X. Included with the download is a ReadMe PDF that explains what each task is and when/why you should run them.

Maintenance is free and available from Automator World.

Apple has released a "Mac Maintenance Quick Assist" support document that is more or less a 10-step guide aimed at beginners for taking care of their Mac, both inside and out. These steps include good, basic practices such as using relevant names for files instead of "DSC_00001.jpg," while also recommending that you occasionally clean your Mac (duh).

I was surprised to see a few tips make this list, however. The first: Check for viruses. "Macs don't get anywhere near the amount of viruses that Windows PCs are prone to, but that doesn't mean that they can't get infected," reads tip #8. I guess the guys who wrote this article didn't get the memo from the team who made the "Macs don't get viruses" TV commercials. The other odd tips deal with Mac maintenance stuff, like repairing permissions and defragging your hard drive. I was under the impression that, since Panther, Mac OS X defragged itself. On the permissions topic, there has been a lot of chatter over the last couple of months about whether repairing permissions is actually useful. Just check out the pseudo-series John Gruber had on the topic.

All in all, I think I was actually a little frightened by evidence of even cheesier one-liners making their way into Apple's support docs: "As a Mac user, you won't have to do windows, but you will need to do some housekeeping!" Yuk yuk.

Maintenance, the beloved Automator action that can run a whole slew of maintenance tasks that command line geeks can only dream of (just kidding guys), has been updated to version 3.4. This time around, it has a shiny new icon, an expanded readme file (that explains every action it can perform) and yet another task to its tool belt: Rebuild LaunchServices Database.

As always, Maintenance is donationware, as the author, Jesse Hogie, has a link on his blog.

BackityMac is a really handy, really simple to use backup and restore utility that allows you to chose from a number of different application support directories to backup into a good ol' fashioned read-only disk image. The list of library and support folders includes:

• Mail
• Entourage
• Keychain
• Safari, Firefox and Camino bookmarks
• iPhoto library
• iTunes library
• iWeb files
• Documents folder
• your entire Home folder

However, BackityMac is no one-trick pony. It also has a Maintenance pane that allows you to perform various Mac OS X tune-up tasks such as permissions repair, deleting caches, re-indexing Spotlight, running those late-night cron scripts and more.

If you haven't found a good tool or developed some kind of a backup habit yet, BackityMac is a great place to start - especially since its free. Go check it out.

Maintenance, the ever-handy Automator action (and applescript for those without Tiger) that runs a variety of, well, maintenance tasks in one fell swoop, has been updated to version 3.3. It isn't a massive update, save for two new options: Update Locate Database and Update Whatis Database. As usually, you can snag your very own copy (which includes the aforementioned applescript) of Maintenance for free from Automator World.

It's no secret that we TUAW bloggers love Maintenance, the Automator app that runs a whole slew of maintenance and cleanup tasks. Some of these tasks are designed to be automatically run late at night by OS X, but unless you leave your Mac running 24/7 or you're crazy like me and you're simply up till all hours of the morning, you probably shut down or sleep your Mac and these tasks never see the light of day. Maintenance is great for taking care of these OS X cleanup tasks and can also run other operations such as permissions and preferences repairs - all from a slick little Automator action.

But wait, what's that? You aren't using Tiger yet? Well fret no more! With the latest update to version 3.2, Maintenance now includes a good ol' fashioned applescript for non-Tiger users. I'm sure this works on Panther, and kinda sure it could work on Jaguar too, but I can't find any documentation that specifies. If anyone knows for sure, please enlighten the rest of us.

Once again though, I highly recommend using this action as it's quick, unobtrusive, easy to use and pretty comprehensive in covering the key OS X cleanup tasks that have to be run.

I've always heard about these "background maintenance tasks" that OS X performs in its omniscient glory, but I never knew much about what they actually were or when they were performed. This weekend I finally did some digging and thought I'd post a few thoughts that might help give some Mac users insight into maintaining OS X beyond simple permissions repairs and emptying the trash.

In short, OS X is designed to periodically run various maintenance tasks such as purging log files and dumping hidden and temporary files. The only problem is that these tasks by default are scheduled to run early in the morning, when I'd bet most Mac users are sleeping. This odd task scheduling is a throwback to the days when computers were never shut off, even though a lot of computer users either shut their machines down or at least set them to sleep at the end of the day - especially notebook users.

So how can OS X still run these maintenance tasks and keep your Mac running squeaky clean, you ask? Well you have a few options:

1. Like a friend of mine, you could simply set your Mac to always be up and running, optionally sleeping itself after the maintenance task schedule specified in this Apple KnowledgeBase article. This certainly isn't an ideal solution if you own a portable and leave it in a bag often overnight.
   
2. You could use the simple Terminal instructions in this Apple KnowledgeBase article to run the tasks whenever you please. OS X's built-in schedule be damned!
3. If you're on Tiger you could use the Maintenance Automator action (which we here at TUAW love) to run OS X's built in maintenance tasks, as well as a few extras such as permissions repairing and preference file verifying.

These are hopefully a few simple and easy-to-implement options that will help keep your Mac running like brand new.