Chapter 9. System Maintenance

Just like our cars, homes, and bodies, our Macs need a little maintenance every now and then to stay in top shape. For our Macs, it's a matter of knowing what tools to use and how to use them effectively. An unmaintained system can eventually become slow or unstable, causing applications to crash or to not work correctly, which results in missed deadlines and unhappy clients.

A Mac that isn't performing as well as it should translates into lost profits. That may be in the form of missed deadlines because you couldn't work as fast or efficiently as normal because your Mac kept crashing, or it could be in time lost while you wait for your consultant to arrive and get you back up and running again. Although it's money well spent, a good consultant doesn't come cheap.

Preventive maintenance goes a long way toward keeping things from getting, well, ugly. By developing a maintenance routine of your own, in which you perform tasks like updating the software, backing up important files, checking for viruses, and clearing out old system log files, you can avoid many costly support visits and a lot of unproductive downtime.