- Joined
- Dec 22, 2006
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- Your Mac's Specs
- 15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
Just an FYI for the "switchers" out there, based on my own experience:
I currently have approximately 120 apps I've installed on my machine. I have also installed at least 300 apps, if not more, that have since been removed. You could never do this in Windows, any version to date, without experiencing a significant slow down of the machine requiring a fresh install to get it back to snuff no matter how much of your time you spent maintaining the OS.
With OS X, there's really no reason not to try out any app that strikes your fancy when it's free or has a free trial. That hesitancy you had about installing extraneous stuff in Windows and what is this one going to install at startup - well, you can throw that right out the window. There's no registry in OS X and apps (for the most part) don't scatter stuff all over your drive.
Drag-n-drop apps: Eject and move those dmg's to the trash once installed. You don't need them any longer.
Apps using an installer: Some of these have an uninstaller you'll want to keep around. Most don't. If not, trash that one also.
Removing an app: Those without an uninstaller (which are most of them), just drag it to the trash. No muss, no fuss.
Removing the last shred: Even a lot of those drag-n-drop apps, once you've used them, will create a preference file on your machine. Space taken by these is inconsequential and you don't really need to worry about them. They don't use system resources like they did in that last OS you were using. But, if you want that gone also, the easy way, just grab yourself an app like AppDelete. (There are a couple of others you can find with a little searching of the forum.) It'll remove most, if not all, of those last traces of the app.
Lastly, keep around a good maintenance tool like Onyx or MainMenu (both free), and run it once every 2-4 weeks.
edit: Just wanted to give you "switchers" a little taste after seeing a post with someone questioning whether they should try a free app or not. And, a little sense of my background on that other side. I was one of those that obsessed about keeping my machine fine tuned and running it's fastest. Spent maybe 25% of my time on that last OS maintaining my machine. An overclocker, hardware enthusiast and hardcore gamer for many years. Even kept multiple log-ins with various services turned on and off in each (typically to get the most out of those games). None of my other systems over the years went 12 months without a fresh install of the OS and only XP lasted that long. Leopard on this machine, has been there for maybe 15 months now and still running pretty much as fast as when it was installed.
I currently have approximately 120 apps I've installed on my machine. I have also installed at least 300 apps, if not more, that have since been removed. You could never do this in Windows, any version to date, without experiencing a significant slow down of the machine requiring a fresh install to get it back to snuff no matter how much of your time you spent maintaining the OS.
With OS X, there's really no reason not to try out any app that strikes your fancy when it's free or has a free trial. That hesitancy you had about installing extraneous stuff in Windows and what is this one going to install at startup - well, you can throw that right out the window. There's no registry in OS X and apps (for the most part) don't scatter stuff all over your drive.
Drag-n-drop apps: Eject and move those dmg's to the trash once installed. You don't need them any longer.
Apps using an installer: Some of these have an uninstaller you'll want to keep around. Most don't. If not, trash that one also.
Removing an app: Those without an uninstaller (which are most of them), just drag it to the trash. No muss, no fuss.
Removing the last shred: Even a lot of those drag-n-drop apps, once you've used them, will create a preference file on your machine. Space taken by these is inconsequential and you don't really need to worry about them. They don't use system resources like they did in that last OS you were using. But, if you want that gone also, the easy way, just grab yourself an app like AppDelete. (There are a couple of others you can find with a little searching of the forum.) It'll remove most, if not all, of those last traces of the app.
Lastly, keep around a good maintenance tool like Onyx or MainMenu (both free), and run it once every 2-4 weeks.
edit: Just wanted to give you "switchers" a little taste after seeing a post with someone questioning whether they should try a free app or not. And, a little sense of my background on that other side. I was one of those that obsessed about keeping my machine fine tuned and running it's fastest. Spent maybe 25% of my time on that last OS maintaining my machine. An overclocker, hardware enthusiast and hardcore gamer for many years. Even kept multiple log-ins with various services turned on and off in each (typically to get the most out of those games). None of my other systems over the years went 12 months without a fresh install of the OS and only XP lasted that long. Leopard on this machine, has been there for maybe 15 months now and still running pretty much as fast as when it was installed.
