Maintenance, Part 2: Optimize Mac OS X
Michel Munger
LOW END MAC
Now that we know how to protect a hard drive and its data, it is time to find ways to maximize the performance of Mac OS X itself. The following maintenance tips should allow you to keep your system software lean and mean, making your Mac faster, more reliable and keeping more disk space available.
My first tip is a hardware tip, even a UNIX tip. As most of you probably know, Mac OS X is a UNIX-based system. UNIX is known for its robustness, security and stability, but it is a resource-hungry system. It particularly requires large amounts of RAM to deliver the best possible performance. As they say, size does matter… for these things anyway. Therefore, I recommend that you install as much RAM as you can afford on your Mac. You will thank yourself for it because it makes a genuine difference.
 |
The way you allocate your RAM also has an incidence on your system’s performance. When your launch applications, they use the memory and divide it between themselves. Memory hogs such as Photoshop generally need to eat up solid chunks of RAM to offer their best performance, so keeping a minimum of applications open is always a good thing. If you have to work with several open applications, you should really install all the memory that your Mac can handle. RAM is cheap nowadays anyway.
Among applications, Classic can slow Mac OS X down when it is open. Keep it closed when you are not using your legacy software. If Classic slows your Mac down to the point where your productivity level suffers, it may be time to shop around for a replacement for your favorite Mac OS 9 applications. For years, I thought I would never find a simple and suitable replacement for GoLive 4, and yet, I found a magnificent open-source solution recently. (We will expand on open-source software in a later column.)
No matter how much RAM you have installed and how you use your applications, there are further ways to keep Mac OS X zippy.
 |
Save disk space
The first one is to have the smallest possible number of files on the startup disk. Why? As we explained in the first part of this tutorial, your disk keeps track of your files in a directory. When your directory is too large, it does the same thing than when it gets messy: your disk has to work unreasonably hard and it slows down the overall performance. Just imagine that you have to search for a book in different libraries. It will take you less time to find your book in a small and organized library than in a large and disorganized library. Another important motive to keep in mind is that Mac OS X uses virtual memory, and having plenty of free space on the startup disk is a great bonus for your system.
Therefore, the leaner your startup disk is, the faster your Mac will be. You have learned, in Part I, how to organize the directory. Now, you may want to consider how to shrink the amount of used space. Do not hesitate to use my previous tip to divide your drive into a “system” and a “data” partition to achieve this goal. Separating the files from the system is great for speed as well as security.
Another burden your Mac shouldn’t have to carry around: logs, caches and histories. Don’t get me wrong. Those files are useful, but if you never clean them up, they will become cumbersome and they may even corrupt.
Mac OS X behaves as a server because UNIX is server system software. If you leave it on from 3:15AM to 5:30AM, it will perform background daily, weekly and monthly maintenance routines. If you do not like leaving your computer on during the night, there are two ways to trigger the routines manually.
The simple way: download and purchase the Cocktail utility. Launch it and click on the Files icon. Then, select the Caches tab, make sure that User, System and Internet are checked, and click on Clean. Once this is done, click on the Logs tab and click on the Delete button. Do this every other week or monthly.
The geeky way: when logged in with an administrator account, go to your startup disk, open the Applications folder, and then the Utilities subfolder. Launch the Terminal. Without quotes, type “sudo sh /etc/daily” and enter your password. Let your Mac run the routine and wait until you see your username again. Repeat the drill with “sudo sh /etc/weekly” and “sudo sh /etc/monthly”.
 |
If you have been running your Mac for months or years without doing any of this, you should save plenty of disk space and you may notice a difference in terms of performance.
By the way, don’t forget to clean up and reduce the size of your Web browser’s cache. Erasing the browsing history, reducing the number days kept in the history and minimizing the number of stored cookies will also help. Those can really slow you down when browsing.
Another way to save disk space: if you reinstall Mac OS X, make sure to select only the frequently-used languages and printer drivers before installing. This will prevent the installation of a very important number of files on your system disk. If you haven’t used Simplified Chinese in the last few years and that none of your friends or relatives are familiar with it, keep it off your hard drive. You can always add it later on.
You want to save even more space? Whenever you install software, always keep the original installer around, even when it is shareware. Most products will offer you an Uninstall option right in the installer, or a separate Uninstaller application. When you stop using software, get rid of it. It will save disk space, and a proper uninstall process will also remove all the now-useless related files.
 |
Fix your files
Among Mac OS X’s UNIX characteristics, there is the use of file permissions. When these get messed up, you may be unable to use all the functions of your favorite software or you may have problems handling some files. To keep such annoyances out of the way, repair your permissions every month with the Disk Utility.
Lastly, corrupt files, depending on which they are, can cause their share of problems. It is always good to find out if you have any, in order to toss them out. TechTool Pro 4 does a fantastic job testing files and reporting issues. While using TechTool, why don’t you also run the File Info test to see if your file icons and other information need to be fixed? Both tests can easily be found in the Tests category, under the Files tab.
Among corrupt files, look out for corrupt fonts. They can make your applications unstable. And when you have too many of them loaded, your Mac’s performance will decline. I suggest looking at this list of basic system fonts (for Tiger) and disabling all other fonts until you need them. The Font Book (introduced with Panther) is located in the Applications folder. Launch it, select the fonts you want to disable, and click on the checkmark button in the middle of the window. You can always turn a font on later.
Job done!
Links
Cocktail, US$14.95
TechTool Pro 4, US$97.97
No comments:
Post a Comment