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Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac
Keep your Mac running smoothly with our easy maintenance program!
Regular maintenance is necessary to avoid problems and to ensure your Mac runs at peak performance, but it's hard to know what to do and when to do it. Best-selling author Joe Kissell has now applied his commonsense approach to the task of maintaining your Mac, whether you use Tiger or Leopard! Learn how to start on the right foot; what you should do daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly; and how to prepare for Mac OS X updates. Joe even explains how to monitor your Mac's health and debunks common panaceas.
More Info
Contents & Intro
FAQ
Read this book to learn the answers to questions such as:
How can I tell if my Mac is likely to have trouble?
How can I find out which unnecessary files are taking up space on my disk?
Should I defragment my hard disk and repair permissions regularly?
What are the safest ways to clean dust and crud from my Mac?
What is the best way to keep my software up to date?
Book Info
87 pages
Version 1.1
Published 29-Jan-08
1.3 MB download
ISBN: 1-933671-10-6
Free 22-page PDF sample with Table of Contents, Introduction, Quick Start, and section starts.
About the Author
Joe Kissell has written numerous books about the Macintosh, including many popular Take Control ebooks. He's also Senior Editor of TidBITS, contributes frequently to Macworld, and previously spent ten years in the Mac software industry.
Macs, like all machines, are prone to break down eventually—in either a physical sense (a component going kaput) or a logical sense (files becoming corrupted, applications misbehaving). You can reduce the risk of such problems, and minimize the damage when they do occur, with a regular maintenance regimen. This ebook contains simple, practical steps you can take to keep your Mac humming. This ebook was written by Joe Kissell, edited by Caroline Rose, and published by TidBITS Publishing Inc.
Introduction
A few years ago, I went to the dentist for the first time since the late 1990s. The main reason I'd failed to make dental appointments was embarrassment at having waited so long. I could just hear the dentist chiding me, "Ah, I can see you haven't had your teeth cleaned properly in 5 years. For shame!" The more time passed, the worse the embarrassment grew, and finally it took actual pain and a visible hole in a tooth to overcome it. So I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that I had several cavities and needed a root canal. The dentist was kind and understanding, but nevertheless pointed out several times that this visit might have been much less painful (and less expensive) had I flossed every day and gone for my semiannual checkups as I knew I should have.
I tell you this story not merely to urge proper dental hygiene, but because maintaining your Mac—like maintaining your teeth, your car, your health, or your home—is a good habit whose rewards are having fewer problems later on and being able to recover more easily from problems that do arise. You can sometimes get away without doing any maintenance for a few months or perhaps much longer, but you risk losing data, wasting time, and having to spend a great deal of money repairing or replacing your computer.
This ebook teaches you the most important and useful maintenance tasks you should perform to increase your chances of keeping your Mac in tip-top operating condition throughout its lifetime. I've organized the tasks according to their frequency: what you should do daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, as well as some important initial steps, some things you should do when a Mac OS X upgrade appears, and some tasks you might want to avoid, contrary to conventional wisdom. If you follow these recommendations diligently, you'll dramatically decrease the likelihood of serious problems.
I want to make a few disclaimers up front. First, there's no such thing as the One True Way to maintain your Mac. Everyone's situation is unique, so you may need to adapt these instructions to suit your needs—perform certain tasks more often or less often, skip tasks that don't apply to you, and so on. Take these instructions as guidelines, as a starting point to determine your own maintenance regimen. Second, no amount of maintenance can guarantee that you'll never have any problems. Manufacturing defects, malfunctioning software, user errors, and other mishaps can and do occur. Proper maintenance should, however, minimize both the number and the severity of problems you experience. Finally, this ebook does not cover troubleshooting or repair; the focus is on preventing problems, not fixing them. If your Mac crashes, loses data, fails to start up, or otherwise behaves improperly, you'll need to look elsewhere for solutions. (I recommend some places to look in Appendix A: Troubleshooting Resources.)
Note: To reflect the diversity of opinion about certain maintenance tasks, I've included several sidebars containing brief conversations among Mac experts, some of whom are Take Control authors or editors. These discussions are based on comments made on a preliminary draft of this ebook.
I originally wrote this book based on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger; this version (1.1) adds information about Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but most of the book applies equally well to earlier versions of Mac OS X. Even so, note that one of my first suggestions is to upgrade your Mac, if possible, to run the latest version of Mac OS X, which is likely to contain fewer bugs than earlier versions.
The tasks in this ebook are easy, and they get easier the more you do them. So start developing those good maintenance habits right now. And don't forget to floss every day!
Quick Start
This ebook describes a step-by-step process for maintaining your Mac. The maintenance intervals (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) reflect the relative urgency of the tasks in each section; you may choose to do the tasks within a section in any order, but I strongly suggest first following the steps in Start on the Right Foot.
Get ready:
Get your Mac into the best possible shape by updating your software, getting rid of old files, setting up a backup system, and performing other preliminary tasks. Read Start on the Right Foot.
Perform periodic maintenance tasks:
Every day, update your backup archive and download (but don't necessarily install) software updates. See Perform Daily Tasks.
Once a week, perform maintenance such as cleaning up your Desktop, backing up your hard drive, installing software updates, and rebooting or clearing certain caches if you notice performance problems. See Perform Weekly Tasks.
Once a month, empty your Trash, check your disk for errors, do some light cleaning, and exercise your notebook's battery. See Perform Monthly Tasks.
Once a year, give your Mac a good spring cleaning inside and out; make extra backups for long-term storage, get rid of extraneous files, and change your passwords. See Perform Yearly Tasks.
Save time by skipping unnecessary work:
Learn why you can probably avoid two common maintenance tasks. Read Things You Might Never Need to Do.
Handle Mac OS X upgrades with ease:
Before you know it, Apple will ship the next major upgrade to Mac OS X. Learn what you need to know to be ready for it in When a New Version of Mac OS X Is Released.
Avoid or fix problems:
Catch hardware and software problems before they become serious, or troubleshoot them if they do happen. See Monitor Your Mac's Health and Appendix A: Troubleshooting Resources.
Ask a Question
Feel free to ask us if you have a question about this book!
Joe Kissell has written numerous books about the Macintosh, including many popular Take Control ebooks. He's also Senior Editor of TidBITS, contributes frequently to Macworld, and previously spent ten years in the Mac software industry.