Macbook Pro (Cleanup / Memory)

[SquireC]

just repair disk permissions once a month

That was it. The name Chris was screaming out at me. I remembered it was you who said it!

How do I do that Chris?

[oddworld_audio]

The firewall is a type of antivirus. If you are smart about what you download you don't need antivirus anyways

Sorry but that is bullsh1t

[DarioJ]

That was it. The name Chris was screaming out at me. I remembered it was you who said it!

How do I do that Chris?

Onyx does this, plus more, automatically.

[djchriswoods.co.uk]

You use disk utilities in the utilities folder...

@DarioJ, what more exactly does Onyx do / need to do? OSX flushes the RAM when you close a program down etc already...what else is there?

[protocollie]

The firewall is a type of antivirus.

firewalls selectively block incoming and outgoing connection attempts from the internet. they do nothing to prevent/mitigate/eliminate malicious software other than possibly prevent it from connecting to the internet.

in regards to what you can do:

you don't need to do a huge amount of maintenance on a mac.

repairing disk permissions monthly is not necessary. disk permission repair is a measure you take when an installer (or you cocking around in your library/system folders) screws up disk permissions. if you're not familiar with the term, disk permissions are used to determine who can perform what operations on what files in your file system. if OSX is failing, or an application is constantly crashing on launch, it's possible disk permissions were screwed up and it can't read/write/create a critical file. this is just a misconfiguration issue. disk permissions don't degrade over time; they're something that has to be explicitly changed by a user with privilege to do so. beyond these circumstances, disk permission repair isn't necessary. it won't hurt, but it's a waste of time.

as far as keeping your drive clean/optimized, HFS+ (the OSX filesystem) is not like FAT32/NTFS (windows). it's generally good at avoiding fragmentation and automatically defragments itself as files are accessed (if the circumstances are right) so there's really not much you need to do in this regard.

i'm not entirely sure there's even a valid case for a "memory cleaner" - OSX is pretty smart about memory on the whole, and you really shouldn't need to clear out what's in it. for DJing, 8 gigs will be more than enough for you to not experience any significant slowdowns related to memory access. stuff that's hanging around in your memory may be data being cached at the OS level for the sake of keeping things running fast so the net effect of cleaning memory (much like using a task killer on android/closing all your apps on an iPhone) could be a small slowdown, to be honest.

imho, as a software engineer there's very little value to 'optimization' software and i'd be surprised if any of the tasks Onyx claims its performing result in any substantial performance increase. most of the stuff you can do to really optimize your machine is common sense - create a new user for performing and disable all applications that automatically start for it. be sure to log out of all other users while you're performing. don't run any software alongside your DAW/DVS. maintain enough free hard disk space that your swap file doesn't get crunched (and try and have enough memory to avoid paging to begin with.) if your performance bottleneck is your hard drive, use an external hard disk on your laptop and put music ONLY on it; nothing else. that way OS-level drive access for things like paging doesn't interfere with loading tracks.

my $.02

[papo]

Onyx does this, plus more, automatically.

Onyx is a very useful app. I use it once every few months. It definitely speeds things up for on my 2011 MacBook Pro.

This was taken directly from their website:

OnyX is an all-in-one system maintenance tool and optimizer. It is a very simple and light application that comes with a variety of maintenance tools that can be run to make sure that you are enjoying your system at its fullest.

The first scans that OnyX will make automatically when you run the application for the first time are a S.M.A.R.T status check of your hard drives and the analysis of your startup discs. If the application detects any problems, it will prompt you to carry out a reparation task.

Not everything that OnyX can do deals with hard drives, though. In the main window, there are five categories. The first one is hard drive analysis and restoration, but the following ones allow you to repair the permissions of your system (a common problem with Macs), clear your browser settings, cache, passwords, etc., delete application, user and system caches, and more.

An array of more advanced features is also available. Those allow you to hide or show volumes, repair discs, run custom scripts, among others. OnyX comes with extensive help and it even includes a glossary with the information about many tasks.

Although Macs are known for their stability and lack of errors, it can never hurt to have an application like this.

Onyx Advantages
It has several different types of checks and repair tasks available.
It has lots of help.
Disadvantages
Not a fully automated mac maintenance

[thepanache]

Upgrade to 8gb of ram - It's cheap so why not. I suggest Corsair mac memory.
Swap out the factory hard drive to an SSD and the whole thing will run like a beast. Apps will be extremely fast and read/write speeds will be really good. I suggest an OCZ Vertex 4, probably one of the best on the market and well priced.
I've had my MBP 13" for over 3 yrs and it's still super fast with no probs.. Running Logic Pro 9, Traktor and all sorts of plugins. Hence why you pay such a premium for a mac.

[SquireC]

Upgrade to 8gb of ram - It's cheap so why not. I suggest Corsair mac memory.
Swap out the factory hard drive to an SSD and the whole thing will run like a beast. Apps will be extremely fast and read/write speeds will be really good. I suggest an OCZ Vertex 4, probably one of the best on the market and well priced.
I've had my MBP 13" for over 3 yrs and it's still super fast with no probs.. Running Logic Pro 9, Traktor and all sorts of plugins. Hence why you pay such a premium for a mac.

Already got the RAM sat here.

I buy all my Mac upgrades from Crucial. Nowhere better.

http://www.crucial.com/uk/

[mostapha]

I use YASU to force it to run Unix maintenance scripts, clear caches, and stuff like that.

I use something called Mountain Tweaks (not sure where it came from) to do a few system tweaks, mostly turning stuff off that I don't like……like Dashboard and the 3d Dock.

I use AppCleaner to delete Apps & associated files.

I do backups with rsync, because I've had Time Machine fuck up one too many times.

And I assume the upgrade from 4GB to 8GB will make a difference. I jumped straight to 16GB and the difference is subtle but noticeable.

[papo]

I use something called Mountain Tweaks (not sure where it came from) to do a few system tweaks, mostly turning stuff off that I don't like……like Dashboard and the 3d Dock.

I use AppCleaner to delete Apps & associated files.

I do backups with rsync, because I've had Time Machine fuck up one too many times.

I do exactly the same...