Maintenance Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Maintenance utility Cocktail 4.1.4 released

by Mike Schramm (Sep 10th, 2008)

All the way since back when I started using a Mac, the program that's been most recommended to new Mac users in my experience isn't Adium, Transmit, or Quicksilver (although those are certain all terrific apps/reasons to be a Mac owner) -- Cocktail is the one that I've seen on the Top 10 Mac apps ...

MobileMe: A First look

by Cory Bohon (Jul 10th, 2008)

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 ...

Freeware Find: IceClean 3.0b

by Steven Sande (Jun 5th, 2008)

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 ...

TUAW Guide: Getting Ready for Leopard

by Mat Lu (Oct 19th, 2007)

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 ...

Mini-Review: Power Support Track Pad Film

by David Chartier (May 25th, 2007)

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 ...

Yet Another Yasu Update

by Dan Lurie (Aug 12th, 2006)

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 ...

Everything you need to know about Repairing Permissions (and more)

by David Chartier (Aug 5th, 2006)

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 ...

Apple's 'Quick Assist' support document edited, drops permissions repair and 'restart just because' tips

by David Chartier (May 31st, 2006)

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 ...

TUAW Tip: Mac OS X can verify itself now

by David Chartier (May 31st, 2006)

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, ...

Maintenance 3.5 released

by David Chartier (May 23rd, 2006)

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 ...

Apple Support doc: Mac maintenance Quick Assist

by David Chartier (May 8th, 2006)

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 ...

Maintenance 3.4

by David Chartier (Apr 3rd, 2006)

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 ...

BackityMac 1.0 - easy backup, restore and maintenance

by David Chartier (Mar 30th, 2006)

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 ...

Maintenance 3.3 released

by David Chartier (Mar 13th, 2006)

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 ...

Maintenance 3.2, now with non-Tiger goodness

by David Chartier (Dec 27th, 2005)

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 ...