| Home Catalog FAQ | Log In |
Bundle Discount!
Save 30% when you build your own bundle of three or more books, including Take Control of...
(30% discount overrides other coupons and is calculated on the first screen of our cart.)
Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac, Second Edition
Keep your Mac running smoothly with our easy maintenance program!
Updated for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion!
Regular maintenance is necessary for peak performance and to prevent problems, but it's hard to know what to do and when to do it. Never fear, because you can now turn to best-selling author Joe Kissell, who walks you through his commonsense approach. Read this ebook to learn how to start on the right foot; what you should do daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly; and how to prepare for 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
Whether you're using 10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.7 Lion, or 10.8 Mountain Lion, you can find 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
iPad & KindleAn EPUB is available to purchasers of this title; log in to your account to download it. More info... A Mobipocket file is available to purchasers of this title; log in to your account to download it. More info... |
About the Author
|
Book Reviews
Author Interviews
|
Joe Kissell has written numerous books about the Macintosh, including many popular Take Control ebooks. He's also Senior Editor of TidBITS and a Senior Contributor to Macworld, and previously spent ten years in the Mac software industry.
Table of Contents
|
Read Me FirstMacs, 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
Several years ago, I went to the dentist for the first time in more than half a decade. The main reason I’d failed to make dental appointments all those years 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 repeatedly 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 book 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 book 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. You might start with either of two companion volumes I’ve written: Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac and Take Control of Speeding Up Your Mac. I recommend additional 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. The majority of the information in this book also applies to earlier versions of Mac OS X. 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 book 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 book 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 chapter; you may choose to do the tasks within a chapter 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 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) 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 cleaning inside and out, make extra archival backups, get rid of extraneous files, change your passwords, and more. See Perform Yearly Tasks.
Save time by skipping unnecessary work:
- Learn why you can probably avoid three common maintenance tasks in 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 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 Version 2.3
Version 2.3 is a minor update intended primarily to bring the book up to date with 10.8 Mountain Lion. Most of the changes are quite small, but a few are worth noting:
- Updated the instructions for using Software Update in Mountain Lion, where the feature is incorporated into the Mac App Store app; see Turn On Software Update and Use Software Update to Install Apple Updates
- Included details about how to Run Apple Hardware Test on recent Mac models
- Modified the discussion of Safari Main, Favicon, and Preview Caches to cover Safari 6, which has different options than in earlier versions
- Expanded my recommendations in Install Anti-malware Software to reflect Mountain Lion’s new security features
What Was New in Version 2.2
Version 2.2 contained numerous small changes throughout to bring this book up to date with information about Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, other recent software and hardware releases, and my two other Mac Fitness books. I also did the following:
- Completely overhauled the instructions to Run Apple Hardware Test to work with any Mac that can run Leopard or later
- Added information about using Recovery Mode in Run Disk Utility
- Mentioned the capability of creating encrypted—yet bootable—external disks using Disk Utility in the sidebar External Drives and Security
- Updated the instructions for clearing Safari Main, Favicon, and Preview Caches to reflect the latest version of Safari
- Provided instructions on changing the password associated with an Apple ID in Look for Passwords to Change
- Slightly updated my advice on free space in Disk Usage, and added information about re-downloading iTunes content in the sidebar Deciding Which Files to Delete
What Was New in Version 2.1
In version 2.1, I scrubbed the book to purge outdated bits and brought the information in line with current versions of Mac OS X and third-party software and services. I also:
- Added information about the Mac App Store in Update Third-Party Software
- Increased the amount of RAM recommended in the sidebar Be Sure You Have Enough RAM
- Expanded and updated the sidebar External Drives and Security
- Revamped the section Consider Clearing Certain Caches to reflect my current recommendations
- Added a sidebar about additional Trash to empty: Empty Application-Specific Trash, Too
- Updated the instructions in Check for Take Control Updates
- Removed the section about cleaning your iSight camera as a separate task, and merged that information with Clean Your Screen
- Revised my advice about the amount of disk space to leave free in Disk Usage
What Was New in the Second Edition
The second edition was 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
Can I read this ebook on an iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or Kindle?
There are lots of great ways to read our ebooks on these devices. For more details, please read our latest Device Advice.
Ask a Question
Feel free to ask us if you have a question about this title!
Send Us Your Comments!
How could we not publish such kind words? If you'd like to send us your comments (good or bad, though we hope they're all good), just click the Feedback link on the cover of your copy of the ebook. Be sure to let us know if we can publish your comment. Thanks!
Update Plans
August 24, 2012 -- Now that we've updated this ebook to include 10.8 Mountain Lion, we have no immediate plans to create another update.
—Tonya Engst
Visit our catalog to see all the other books we publish!
Teach classes? Check out our discounted class copy pricing!
Orders are processed for us by eSellerate on a secure site.
Copyright 2013 TidBITS Publishing Inc. | Privacy Policy | Contact | Follow on Twitter