Meeting Notes: Utilities 02.06
This month’s meeting started out with a few pieces of business. Dave was able to network with many vendors, on behalf of the user group, at Macworld. Because of this, we have been receiving lots of free giveaway items. Our goal is to have a free prize for everyone who attends our meetings. At every meeting,we have a free giveaway table where you can find back copies of Mac related magazines, demo software, etc… You will also find a “tip jar” where you can make financial donations to the group. These donations help to defray the cost of office supplies and Web site hosting. We hope to never charge admission to our meetings. We want to thank Jeff Huffman of Jeff’s Audio/Video, jeffsaudiovideo.com, for the use of a projector for tonight’s meeting.
The next regular order of business was introductions. Those present were asked to tell the group what they do to keep their Mac in shape and if they had ever experienced a system crash. As expected, there were virtually no reports of major system failures from the group.
The next topic covered in the meeting was Apple news. The annual Macworld was held in San Francisco in January and many new products were announced and demonstrated. Apple is in the process of switching to the use of Intel-based processors from the G-series.
The new Intel-based iMacs are now shipping. The new MacBook Pro laptop was announced and Apple is currently taking orders for an imminent ship date. The use of the Intel processor will not affect the performance and reliability of the products. The new Macs operate in exactly the same way as the previous G5 units. Features of the new MacBook Pro include a built-in iSight camera and the new MagSafe power connector. In order to make the transition to the new processor architecture, Apple has created a technology called Rosetta that allows any OSX software to run on the new machines. The new machines will no longer support classic (OS9) software. All new software versions for the Mac will be written in a new code called Universal Binary. Universal Binary programs are designed for the Intel Macs but will also run on any of the previous, G-series, Macs.
On the software side,Apple is now shipping new versions of iLife and iWork. iLife 06 comes standard on all new Macs but can be purchased from Apple. iLife has consisted of five applications, iTunes, Garage Band, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. A new application has been added to iLife called iWeb. The new iPhoto can handle a greater number of photos and responds much faster and features more photo editing options and effects. iWeb is a new Web page editing application. iWeb includes built-in templates and is targeted toward amateur web pages for personal photo albums, etc… The program is designed to easily publish to your .mac account. iMovie is a video editing program for your digital videos. One new feature in iMovie 06 is live video previews with special effects. The new GarageBand includes new features for creating podcasts. New features in iDVD include new themes and support for wide screen format. A new iWork 06 was released at MacWorld but few new features were added.
The main program of the meeting concerned Mac repair and maintenance utilities. Norton Utilities is no longer being produced for the new Macs.OSX 10.3 (Panther) introduced Journaling technology. This makes it easier to recover from problems. Consequently, the utility market has been greatly diminished since Panther was released. Defragging your OSX volume is no longer necessary for the average user. The system now incorporates those processes in its regular maintenance routines. The most effective maintenance strategy is to leave your Mac on at all times. The system will run periodic maintenance routines on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
Putting your Mac totally asleep will not allow these processes to run. Set your Energy Saver preferences to adjust your sleep preferences. A good surge protector is a worthwhile investment. Several shareware and free programs exist that force your Mac to run these maintenance processes and can be found at versiontracker.com. Another excellent tool that comes standard with OSX is the Disk Utility application found in your Applications>Utilities folder. This program allows you to repair your file permissions using the Repair Disk Permissions function. Fixing the file permissions solve 80% of all software problems. Disk Utility also has a Repair Disk function. In order to use this function on your boot drive, you must boot your Mac from the CD that came with your Mac. Another reason Mac users don’t need to run a lot of utilities is because of the current absence of viruses, spyware and other malware that effect the Mac. Software utilities can do nothing for hardware failures. If you hear clicking or whining emanating from your hard drive, make sure you have a recent backup copy of your important files because the hard drive will fail soon. Recovering lost data that has been overwritten is almost impossible or, at least, very expensive. There are three major commercial utilities that you can purchase. TechTool has replaced most of the functions of Norton. TechTool is recommended as the first major utility to try if none of the Apple installed utilities work for your problem. Disk Warrior creates the structure of your hard drive. This is a good second line tool if TechTool doesn’t find the problem. Drive Genius is a much more professional/technical program and not useful for the average user. Backups are critical. All hard drives fail eventually and a good backup will save you hours of trouble. There is software that can recover some lost data. The first thing is to not use the computer after a critical file is deleted. Any use may overwrite that data. Critical files that have been totally lost can usually be recovered by a company such as Drive Savers. A typical file recovery by Drive
Savers costs $2500.
Apple frequently issues software updates through the Software Update preference panel. It is recommended that you set Software Update to the manual setting within the Software Update preference panel. Run a disk utility or the Repair Disk Permissions function in Disk Utility before running a major software update.
Remember, in most cases, you may never have to do any maintenance on your mac and it will work for years. That’s why you bought a Mac!