clean my mac?

[MattyO]

Can anyone give me some suggestions on keeping my mini "clean"? I have a 5 year old powerbook G4 that is very slow and I am assuming it is full of various things from the past 5 years of use.

I am not computer savy and would like to purchase a program that is easy to use and will keep my mini running smoothly and not get bogged down with files etc from every day use.

Is clean my mac a good option? Better ones to use?

I will be using the mini for school work, photoshop (minimal use), Netflix, hulu, surfing the web etc ...

Thanks in advance.

 

[GGJstudios]

I am not computer savy and would like to purchase a program that is easy to use and will keep my mini running smoothly and not get bogged down with files etc from every day use.

Is clean my mac a good option?

Your Mac will not slow down simply because data is stored on the hard drive, unless you're almost out of drive space. Deleting files off your drive will not improve performance. Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes". Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.

One app that I would not recommend, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere, is CleanMyMac. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much.

You don't need "cleaner" apps to keep your Mac running efficiently. Mac OS X does a good job of maintaining itself, without the need for 3rd party apps. Many have successfully used Monolingual to remove unwanted languages and architectures to free up drive space, but even that will not make your Mac faster.

Be aware that extreme caution should be exercised when using such apps, as deleting certain languages or architectures can create significant problems. At best, deleting these things may buy you 1-2GB of drive space, but will not improve your system's performance. If you're not certain about what you're doing, don't delete anything. The small drive space savings are not worth the risk of potential problems.

 

[MattyO]

Your Mac will not slow down simply because data is stored on the hard drive, unless you're almost out of drive space. Deleting files off your drive will not improve performance. Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes". Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.

One app that I would not recommend, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere, is CleanMyMac. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much.

You don't need "cleaner" apps to keep your Mac running efficiently. Mac OS X does a good job of maintaining itself, without the need for 3rd party apps. Many have successfully used Monolingual to remove unwanted languages and architectures to free up drive space, but even that will not make your Mac faster.

Be aware that extreme caution should be exercised when using such apps, as deleting certain languages or architectures can create significant problems. At best, deleting these things may buy you 1-2GB of drive space, but will not improve your system's performance. If you're not certain about what you're doing, don't delete anything. The small drive space savings are not worth the risk of potential problems.

Thanks for the advice ... just read through the entire link on CMM you linked to ... pretty dsapointing and once the rep realized you knew your crap they backed off ...

 

[indg]

wow i didn't realize people still used g4 powerbooks today.

aside from hardware upgrades, there are a few things you can do to improve performance. look for forgotton background processes eating cpu cycles, remove third-party kernel extensions that are no longer used, rebuild caches, and defragment your hdd.

for background processes look in:
/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
~/Library/LaunchAgents
~/Library/LaunchDaemons

open user/accounts in system preferences and look under login items for your user to see what apps start up upon login.

use an app like onyx or cocktail to clear and rebuild system/user caches.

use an app like idefrag to do a full defragmentation of your drive.

as always clone/back up your system before doing any cleanup.

 

[MattyO]

wow i didn't realize people still used g4 powerbooks today.

Yeah, it still goes, albeit slowly ... was going to get the Imac at the last refresh, but hat ethe glossy monitor so have been holding oput for the new mini ... Just waiting on Best Buy to deliver it right now ...

 

[himynameis]

use an app like onyx or cocktail to clear and rebuild system/user caches.

Can't you just trash the caches folders and have them re-create themselves? I do that about once a month and haven't noticed any ill effects, but then again I don't really do anything too complex with my mini.
They seem to build up fast, though.. and it's a bit annoying that I have to restart before I can empty the trash fully..

 

[GGJstudios]

Can't you just trash the caches folders and have them re-create themselves? I do that about once a month and haven't noticed any ill effects, but then again I don't really do anything too complex with my mini.
They seem to build up fast, though.. and it's a bit annoying that I have to restart before I can empty the trash fully..

You don't have to keep emptying caches. Your Mac will run fine without doing that.

 

[himynameis]

You don't have to keep emptying caches. Your Mac will run fine without doing that.

Yeah, I know. I'm just a little.. over enthusiastic with keeping my computers running smoothly.

I also obsessively re-organize my files on my internal and external drives on a constant basis. Just like my clothes are grouped by colours in my closet.

I'm just a tad strange like that.

 

[GGJstudios]

Yeah, I know. I'm just a little.. over enthusiastic with keeping my computers running smoothly.

I also obsessively re-organize my files on my internal and external drives on a constant basis. Just like my clothes are grouped by colours in my closet.

I'm just a tad strange like that.

Monk? Is that you???

 

[himynameis]

Monk? Is that you???

Haha, not quite.. I'm surprisingly fine with the germs concept. It's just organization.

Although, I do severely dislike shaking peoples' hands.. Not because of what they may have on their hands, but because it seems that every single time I shake someone's hand they are disgustingly clammy. Blegh.

And on a side note, are there rules against off-topic conversations for these forums? I should probably find this out before I anger someone.

 

[GGJstudios]

And on a side note, are there rules against off-topic conversations for these forums? I should probably find this out before I anger someone.

You won't anger anyone, as long as you don't stray too far off-topic, or for too long.

 

[Gwaredd]

CleanMyMac - Rubbish

Hello Mates,

After using this bloody piece of junkware for about a year I noticed all sort of weird things happening on my OSX. I found after poking around a bit that it was this bloatware that was causing all the problems since it deleted some critical files. Upon spending several hours trying to fix things I finally decided to wipe the HD and start over. In using "CleanMeMac" I really bottled it. The only thing it cleaned was me out of 40 quid. Listen to what these other blokes said and avoid it.

Cheerio!

 

[kappaknight]

I've used this for awhile and didn't really have problems with it. I have avoided touching the Languages area after upgrading to Mavericks.