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Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac, Second Edition
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
What's New
FAQ
Blog
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
95 pages
Version 2.0
Updated 20-May-09
1.1 MB download
ISBN: 1933671653
Free 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 bad) 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 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:
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.
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.
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 the Learn More section.)
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.
This version of Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac is geared toward people using Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or later. (Although Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard hasn't yet been released as I write this, preliminary information suggests that virtually all of the maintenance recommendations I make for Leopard will apply equally to Snow Leopard.) The majority of the information in this book also applies to earlier versions of Mac OS X, and where possible I've noted where different procedures apply to earlier versions. Even so, note that one of my first suggestions is to upgrade your Mac 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!
Maintaing 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, and installing software updates. See Perform Weekly Tasks.
Once a month, empty your Trash, check your disk for errors, test your backups, 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 three common maintenance tasks. Read Things You Might Never Need to Do.
Handle Mac OS X upgrades with ease:
Learn what you need to know to be ready for the next version of Mac OS X in When a New Version of Mac OS X Is Released.
Avoid or fix problems:
Catch potential problems early, or troubleshoot them if need be. See Monitor Your Mac's Health and Learn More.
What's New in the Second Edition
The second edition of Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac is a major revision, extensively updated with the latest information on Mac maintenance. Among the most significant changes are these:
Updated information about utilities for uninstalling applications, finding large files, and removing duplicates (see Clean Out Accumulated Cruft)
Revised and expanded conversations with experts on several maintenance topics, plus new conversations about defragmenting disks (Defragment Your Hard Disk) and using antivirus software (Install Antivirus Software)
Corrected information on the way periodic maintenance scripts work in Leopard and later (see Make Sure Scheduled Maintenance Tasks Run)
Completely revised advice on using antivirus software, resulting in moving that discussion from the section on preliminary tasks to Things You Might Never Need to Do
A new recommended weekly task (Empty Your Downloads Folders), monthly task (Test Your Backups), and yearly task (Check Your UPS Battery)
A list of software that can assist you in clearing particular caches if the need arises (see Consider Clearing Certain Caches)
Descriptions of several programs that can monitor your hard drive's S.M.A.R.T. status in Check Your Drive's S.M.A.R.T. Status
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There's no lack of advice available for how to run your Mac efficiently and solve pesky problems, but it's scattered all over the Internet. Our latest Take Control ebooks, both by Joe Kissell, provide a well-organized, go-to source for a comprehensive Mac maintenance plan and effective advice for handling any problems that might arise.
The first, Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac, Second Edition looks at how to start on the right foot with keeping your Mac running smoothly, and then it explains weekly, monthly, and yearly tasks that anyone can perform easily to enjoy peak performance and avoid pesky problems. Along with telling you what to do, it includes a section about what not to do, explaining several time-consuming tasks that don't provide any real benefits.
The second ebook, Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac, version 1.1, goes beyond maintenance to teach you how to solve any problems that might pop up. In particular, you'll learn how to perform 17 specific problem-solving tasks (including clearing caches, running disk-repair utilities, and checking your RAM), how to solve 9 common problems (including printer problems, mouse problems, and Mac-won't-turn-on problems), and how to proceed if you encounter a novel problem.
In both cases, Joe has updated the ebooks for the latest versions of Mac OS X, and for the latest versions of various utilities that play a role in Mac maintenance and troubleshooting.
You can buy either ebook separately for $10, or (at the links above) look for "Bundle Discount" options that let you save 30 percent if you buy three or more books together.
Those who own the first edition of Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac can upgrade for half off (or free if you purchased in 2009), and those who already own Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac get a free update. We've sent all sorts of email about the updates; if you didn't receive an email message about upgrading, open your PDF and click Check for Updates on the cover (page 1) for update details.
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.