Do macs require maintenance?

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Do I need to do anything to maintain my mac in order to keep it running smoothly as I did with windows (not that it was ever that smooth)? I may be paranoid but it seems like my machine is taking longer to shutdown than it used to.

If maintenance can be performed, how/which programs should I utilize?

Thanks!
 

cwa107


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Yep, it doesn't hurt to periodically run the maintenance tasks in a program like MainMenu or Onyx. And as long as you don't fill the hard disk to near-capacity, you'll never need to worry about fragmentation.
 
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I could not agree more with cwa107 Macs are the best computers you can buy you'll love it
 
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Though to be fair, I didn't do any for my first 18 months with this MacBook and nothing terrible happened :). Do it every now and then now though, Onyx makes it pretty easy really.
 
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Even if it doesn't need it, it'll make you feel better. I like how when I run Onyx to clear the caches and such I can get about 1-2GB of HD space back.
 
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I like MainMenu, its free and works very well.
 
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Even if it doesn't need it, it'll make you feel better. I like how when I run Onyx to clear the caches and such I can get about 1-2GB of HD space back.

I'm scared to use onyx because I don't know what I'm doing.. what would you normally select under the cleaning tab?
what's cleaning the boot?
 
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Do I need to do anything to maintain my mac in order to keep it running smoothly as I did with windows (not that it was ever that smooth)? I may be paranoid but it seems like my machine is taking longer to shutdown than it used to.

If maintenance can be performed, how/which programs should I utilize?

Thanks!

I would say not really. Check out this article before you go overboard with the maintenance.
 
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If you don't run the maintenance scripts for a long time then nothing serious will happen to your Mac. I suggest putting your mac to sleep at night time and when you wake up it will automatically run the scripts for you…
 
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I have posted a few things about maintenance on the Fix My Mac link in my signature. Personally, I am a fan of Cocktail (similar to onyx) to the degree that I purchased it to use the Pilot feature, though I have heard good things about onyx as well.
 
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I read somewhere that cleaning the cache is not necessarily a good thing since cache files exist for a logical reason, such as letting your programs and apps open very quickly, as opposed to taxing the system memory for such a simple task.

I'd not go so crazy about maintenance, personally speaking.
 
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I read somewhere that cleaning the cache is not necessarily a good thing since cache files exist for a logical reason, such as letting your programs and apps open very quickly, as opposed to taxing the system memory for such a simple task.

Yeah, that's true caches are only supposed to be cleaned if your system isn't working properly or an app isn't working properly, it's not really a maintenance routine despite what most people think…
 
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If your startup times are a lot slower than they used to be, you might want to see what programs you have starting up with OS X. I had this issue when I first got my Macbook. A quick check showed that I had 2-3 additional programs starting with the OS. It made the difference in a 35 second boot up and a 1:20 sec boot up.

Shut down times seem to be the same way, the less you have active on shutdown the faster it will be. Mine is about 6 seconds with about 85 apps installed.
 
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Onyx is free yeah I just downloaded it. It's great! You rarely have to do any maintenance but when you do Onyx makes it cake.
 

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