Part of maintaining harmonious relationships involves doing nice things for others.
Just ask your mother, BFF, or significant other.
Here’s a baker’s dozen of the most relevant insider tips from technicians, to help keep your Mac happy and working reliably:
1. Restart every couple of days
This is the “great refresher” – like a cat nap for your Mac. If you see any strange behavior, a restart often does wonders to clear it all up. Your Mac will often get some spring back in its step as well.
2. Quit your open applications as you go
In essence, freeing up memory (RAM) as you go. The more applications you have open at once, the more beach ball action you will see, the more sluggish it feels. This is like emptying your pockets, wallet, and purse of unneeded papers to travel lighter and be more spry when shopping on Robson.
Best way to see what’s open and quit unused applications is the Command-Tab and Q combo. Hold Command, press Tab a few times to choose the app you want to quit, then press Q while still holding Command. You will usually see it shut down smoothly. If it starts bouncing, that means you have unsaved documents, so just let go of Command and resolve the issue.
3. Don’t move it too quickly when it goes to sleep
When you close the lid of your laptop, wait for the sleep light to start pulsing as if it’s breathing. Before that happens, a lot of hard disk activity is going on, and motion can damage a busy hard drive. Once the sleep light is pulsing, the hard drive heads are locked and immobile.
Just think back to a time you were juuuuuust drifting off to sleep when someone rudely bumped into you. How did YOU feel?
4. Don’t let the battery die completely
Old style NiMH batteries needed to be drained completely, once in a while, to get more out of them. Lithium-ion batteries do not need this in the same way – they can in fact be damaged if you drain them completely. Ideally, keep a 10% charge in there at minimum… And the more time you spend using your Mac plugged in, the better, as long as you are still using the battery once in a while. Some more info on Apple’s website, here.
Batteries have a certain number of cycle counts – like cats, but with more like 1000 lives.
5. Backup backup backup!
I can’t stress this enough. There is no prevention for a dying hard drive other than a great automatic backup system. Doesn’t matter if your Mac is brand new. And the more automated the better. For any laptop users, grab a Time Capsule. For anyone using an iMac or Mac Pro, grab any external USB hard drive to be configured for Time Machine. You won’t see it coming, and you will lose data – it’s just a matter of when. Here’s how you check if Time Machine has run recently.
Note: Yes, I will gladly use fear mongering and scare tactics to get this point across. 😀
6. Buy AppleCare (but not a Future Shop/Best Buy warranty)
The extra two years of warranty on your Mac is always a great investment. Components die without warning, even on new machines. For the couple/few hundred dollar investment, sometime before the first year runs out, you get two extra years of coverage. The Future Shop and Best Buy warranties require that you ship your Mac off to a repair depot. If you have genuine AppleCare, you can walk into any Mac retailer for immediate service.
Bonus tip: Sell your Mac at the two year mark so the new buyer gets a one year warranty and you get the best trade-up value for the machine.
7. Do an erase/install once every 6-12 months, depending on usage
System software can become a little bit sluggish or glitchy over time – this is unavoidable in any operating system. Minor data corruption can happen any time an application crashes, the hard drive hiccups, your power runs out, the drive is near capacity, etc. Over time, that corruption can turn into some service failures – like syncing issues or unexpected quitting in applications.
If those issues start coming up, you can have a professional backup your data, erase the hard drive, install a clean (and upgraded) operating system, and manually copy back in your information. This preserves just the data and applications you need, so the Mac runs more lean. Always feels like a speedy new Mac when you do this!
8. Add some RAM
Between 4 and 8GB is best, at minimum, whatever the cost. Beach ball goes bye bye. Enough said.
9. Keep at least 10% of your hard drive space available
Data is being read and written to and from your hard drive all the time. If you use applications like Photoshop or Final Cut Pro, that is even more of an issue. Keeping a good amount of space available on your hard drive allows for faster virtual memory and scratch disk access across all applications – and it lowers the wear and tear on your hard drive.
You can find out your used/available by clicking on the Macintosh HD icon on your Desktop and pressing Command-i.
10. Delete your caches
Once in a while, go into your Home folder -> Library -> Caches, and empty the contents of that folder. Careful to delete the folders within the Caches folder, not the items in your Library.
The Library stores all your settings, preferences, and user data for applications like Mail, Address Book, iCal, Safari, etc.
11. Install as few plugins and applications as possible
Running a lean mean system is always the best bet for long term speed and stability. Only install applications or plugins you absolutely need, and avoid anything cosmetic or gimmicky. If applications ask for updates, I always say no unless there is some feature or service I need in that new update. A static system is a stable system.
12. Use cloud-based technology to sync your info
You can use IMAP for email (instead of POP), MobileMe for contact and calendar “Push” sync, and Drop Box for document/photo syncing. Keeping live info on cloud servers is great for functionality, but also helps tremendously in the event of a theft. You can just keep working from your iPhone while you shop for a new MacBook Pro with insurance money!
13. Most importantly: PAMPER YOUR MAC
Make sure you only put it down on clean flat surfaces (to avoid vindictive grime getting between table and Mac; high risk of scratches here), dust it regularly, keep food and drink away from the keyboard, keep stickers off its pristine surface, invest in a Radtech ScreenSavrz cloth, be gentle with it, and give it a name.
Mine is Naomi. She and I work really well together. 🙂
