VFCPUG Online

Apple have posted a new support document, “Mac Maintenance Quick Assist”, which features a general list of ten tips “to keep your Mac in top form”.

Though it appears to be aimed at the novice to intermediate user, it’s an interesting read nonetheless. You might not need to hear again that you should give you files meaningful names, or that you should backup your data regularly. However, it’s something of a revelation to witness Apple actually recommending the use of anti-virus software and disk optimisation tools. Perhaps even more startling is that Apple confirm that Repair Disk Permissions can be a useful part of routine maintenance, as well as advising we restart periodically to “refresh” our systems.

UPDATE 29 May 2006: Since I posted a link to this article it appears to have been updated (15 May 2006). The result of which is the loss of three tips: restart occasionally, Repair Disk Permissions, and use disk optimisation tools! If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m not the only person to have noted the original post, I might have believed that I’d dreamt it… “Curiously” those were the suggestions that I found most surprising, given that they appear to contradict some of the core messages of Mac OS X—“You shouldn’t have to restart your computer simply because you connected a new printer”, “It just works”, and “You probably won’t need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X”.