[yo-mike]

Hi,

I was wondering what you guys are recommending or using for Mac OS X System maintenance anymore. There’s been quite a few Apps. over the last few years for Mac OS
X., some freeware, shareware, or buy-me-ware.

What do you use and recommend?
Why the System Maintenance App. you use over others, if any?

Thank you!

[Eric5h5]

I prefer the built-in maintenance scripts. 4 years of heavy usage, zero third-party apps, zero reformats or reinstalls, zero problems.

--Eric

[yo-mike]

Eric5h5, on November 11th 2008, 12:43 PM, said:

I prefer the built-in maintenance scripts.
--Eric

Such as...?

[teflon]

well, the built in ones inherited from Unix. The ones that run in the middle of the night, daily, weekly and monthly.

Most of the maintenance apps just activate these scripts at the non-prescribed time.
In fact, Id go as far as saying that all of them do this.

[yo-mike]

teflon, on November 11th 2008, 01:26 PM, said:

well, the built in ones inherited from Unix. The ones that run in the middle of the night, daily, weekly and monthly.

Most of the maintenance apps just activate these scripts at the non-prescribed time.
In fact, Id go as far as saying that all of them do this.

Yes, yes I know the

sudo periodic

commands. But, for the rest of us who don't leave on
our Macs 24/7, 365 there's some maintenance that needs to be done, like repairs and cleaning of caches and the like. What do you use? ::

[Bill Ramey]

I use Macaroni from Atomic Bird. It runs the various Unix maintenance scripts in the background.

[Eric5h5]

yo-mike, on November 11th 2008, 01:25 PM, said:

But, for the rest of us who don't leave on our Macs 24/7, 365 there's some maintenance that needs to be done, like repairs and cleaning of caches and the like.

I don't leave my Mac on 24/7. The scripts still run without me having to do anything.

--Eric

[Janichsan]

Eric5h5, on November 11th 2008, 07:47 PM, said:

I don't leave my Mac on 24/7. The scripts still run without me having to do anything.

Yup. Since Tiger, the maintenance scripts run whenever they have the opportunity and no longer at fixed times. So there's no real need for maintenance apps for this purpose anymore. They only come in handy in case of emergency, for instance when the font cache is broken or something similar.

[teflon]

I got Cocktail free somehow, and Im pretty happy with it.
Only very occasionally do I crack it out for maintenance scripts, as I generally dont bother, cos of not really seeing the point because of the above. But if Ive got Cocktail open in order to unlock my dock (I have the right set of apps in there, and dont want them moved or changed), or show hidden things, or something then I might do quickly.

But if I didnt have a license for something, then Id just use the free and highly commended Onyx.

[Mr. Selvetarm]

I would use Oynx. After your first time running it, your computer will run noticeably more hoppy.

[yo-mike]

Eric5h5, on November 11th 2008, 01:47 PM, said:

I don't leave my Mac on 24/7. The scripts still run without me having to do anything.

--Eric

Ok. That's right. I haven't viewed my cron settings for Tiger yet. *remember I just upgraded not too long ago?

Anyway, I had a weird problem a day ago and tried Socks
It fixed the problem. However I'm going to write some mini reviews on these Apps on my blog and was wanting some extra leads.

So, thanks everyone for the replies. I'm also going to give AppleJack a try.

MacJanitor and OnyX gave my System problems, like lock-ups.
Socks locked up (I think) during the shutdown procedure because I tried to launch a web browser.- I didn't know not to cuz there's no documentation for it! No ReadMe and no Pdf. I'm not going to give up on it just yet though, and if I purchase it and it runs on my Panther partition too, that's awesome!

Anyway, there's just a ton of Mac Maintenance Apps, and I know you guys are pretty sharp on your Systems. So, I thought I should inquire from the developers' apprentices!
Thanks!

[ehuelga]

Two things I give to non-utility savvy Mac friends:
Applejack, which only recently made it to 10.5 and was indispensable for 10.4. (Also hand them a Post-It with "+S" & "applejack auto restart" for them to stick under their keyboard.)
Yasu, which I prefer over Onyx and Cocktail because there's less for them to screw up.

[Sargiel]

I use Oynx and haven't encountered any problems so far.