Use MAX OS X Software Update to Install Apple Software Updates

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Software Update checks for new versions of any Apple software you have installed and (if you set it to do so) downloads them automatically. However, as I mentioned in Download Software Updates , you may wish to hold off on installing the downloaded updates until you have more free time and have checked to make sure they contain no serious flaws. When you're ready to install the updates, follow these steps:

1. Choose Software Update from the Apple menu. Software Update checks for updates and displays a list of any it finds, including those it has already downloaded but not yet installed. (If no updates are available, Software Update displays a message that says "Your software is up to date." Click OK, and skip the rest of these steps.)

2. Check the boxes in the Install column for the items you want to install.

3. Some items may not apply to you. For example, if you don't have an iPod, AirPort base station, or iSight camera, you can skip software updates for these items. In such cases, you can prevent Software Update from listing an item the next time it opens by selecting the item and clicking Delete. (If you later wish to see items you removed in this way, choose Software Update > Reset Ignored Updates.)

4. Click Install, and click through any license agreements that appear.

Software Update installs your new software, prompting you to restart if necessary. If no restart is necessary, click Quit.

Check for Third-Party Software Updates

Like Apple's Software Update, third-party applications that have built-in automatic update checkers give you the option of postponing an update until a more convenient time. But some applications check only when you explicitly tell them to. Therefore, take a few minutes to launch your most frequently used applications and use their Check for Updates features. Download and install any free updates now, following the developers' instructions.

Tip

Another way to check for the latest software is to subscribe to VersionTracker Pro. This service includes software that runs on your Mac and alerts you when updates to any of your installed software become available, at which time you can download and install them with a couple of clicks. VersionTracker Pro monitors up to three Macs for an annual fee of $50 (www.versiontracker.com/subscribe/mactrial/).

Reboot If Performance Seems Slow

Some people turn off their Macs whenever they aren't in use, either to save electricity or simply out of habit. Others leave them on all the time, on the basis that sleep mode uses a trivially small amount of energy and enables you to get back to work more quickly. (I fall into the latter group, turning off my Macs only when I go on vacation, or when for some other reason I expect to be away from them for more than a day.)
If you leave your Mac on all the time, you may find that over a period of days or weeks, its performance slowly degrades. One common reason for this phenomenon is memory leaks (see RAM Usage), but other kinds of bugs can also lead to excessive RAM and CPU usage that gradually bogs down your system. In addition, as you use your Mac it may create virtual memory swap files on your hard disk if you run low on physical RAM; the more of these files actively in use, the slower your computer runs.
When you begin to notice that your Mac doesn't feel as peppy as usual, try restarting (by choosing Restart from the Apple menu). If you use lots of resource-intensive applications and have a slower machine with comparatively little RAM, you may need to restart as frequently as every day; if you never notice any slowdowns, once a month may be adequate. You be the judge.
I talk more about keeping an eye on potential performance problems later.

Consider Clearing Certain Caches

As you use various applications, they often store frequently used information in files called caches. For example, when you visit a Web site in Safari, it stores the images from that site in a cache, so that the next time you go to the site, it can display the images more quickly (because it doesn't have to download them again). Another example is Microsoft Word, which can display the fonts in the Fonts menu in their own typefaces. If Word had to read in all those fonts each time you used it in order to build the Font menu, every launch could take a minute or more, so Word builds a cache that contains all the data it needs to draw the font names.
Caches are good thingsusually. Sometimes they cause more problems than they solve. One problem occurs when an application has cached hundreds or thousands of filesso many that reading in the caches takes longer than reading (or recomputing) the data they contain, thus slowing down the application instead of speeding it up! A more serious problem involves damaged cache files. Maybe an application failed to write the file correctly in the first place, maybe the information it put into the cache was bad, or maybe a disk error corrupted the cache after the fact. Whatever the reason, a corrupted cache file can cause an application to crash, run slowly, or exhibit any number of incorrect behaviors.

Note

I discuss caches in some detail in a Macworld magazine article titled "34 Software Speedups" (www.macworld.com/2006/02/features/softwarespeed/).

Several utilities provide a one-click method for deleting one or all of your caches. I recommend against blindly deleting all your caches; as I said, they usually help rather than hinder. However, a few caches in particular have notorious reputations, and clearing them periodically tends to make the applications that use them run more smoothly. My recommendations for weekly cache maintenance are as follows:

Clear your Safari cache by choosing Safari > Empty Cache (Command-Option-E).

Tip

Alternatively, you can disable Safari's cache altogether. In the Finder, navigate to the folder ~/Library/Caches/Safari. Select this folder and choose File > Get Info. In the Ownership & Permissions section of the Info window, choose Read Only from the pop-up menu, and then close the Info window. This prevents Safari from being able to write new files into the cache folder.

Safari stores favicons (those tiny icons that appear next to a site's URL in the address bar) separately from the main cache. To remove them, quit Safari and drag the folder ~/Library/Safari/Icons to the Trash.
Mac OS X maintains a system-level font cache that numerous applications use. Bad font cache files have been implicated in numerous problems. The easiest way to wipe out these caches is by using Font Finagler (http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/fontfinagler/; $10). Or, to delete most of your font caches manually, drag the folder /Library/Caches/com.Apple.ATS to the Trash. Enter your password when prompted to do so, and click OK. Then restart your computer and empty your Trash
Microsoft Office's font cache seems more prone to problems than the systemwide font cache. To clear it, quit all your Office applications and then drag the file ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office Font Cache (11) to the Trash.

Perform Monthly Tasks

Once a monthperhaps on a different day from the one on which you perform your weekly tasksset aside about 15 minutes to perform four additional maintenance tasks: emptying your trash, running Disk Utility, cleaning your screen, and cleaning your mouse or trackball.

Empty Your Trash

I have no doubt that some readers are now concluding I'm out of my mind. Empty my Trash once a month?! What could he be thinking? The thing is, of those people, some of them are thinking that once a month is far too seldom, and others are thinking it's far too often!
Your Trash, as you probably know, is simply another folder. As a result, moving files or folders to the Trash does not delete them, just as tossing a crumpled paper in a physical trash can doesn't automatically turn it into landfill. On your Mac, as in your home, the contents of the Trash continue to take up space until you empty the Trash (in the Finder, choose File > Empty Trash). When you empty the Trash, you free up that now-unused space for other files.
How often should you do this? It depends on how you think about the Trash.
Let me put my cards on the table: I am a compulsive Trash emptier. I picked up this habit many years ago when I was struggling to make do with a 20 MB hard disk and every kilobyte counted. If I left items in the Trash without emptying it for more than a few hours, I'd run out of spacesimple as that. Today, even though I have a large hard drive with plenty of free space, I still haven't kicked that habit. On the other hand, because I know I'll be emptying the Trash shortly after putting a file there, I tend to think of moving files to the Trash as a final deletion from which recovery is impossible, so I don't take that step unless I'm entirely sure I can do without that file.
On the other end of the spectrum are what I'll call pack rats. They cringe at the idea of getting rid of anything for good. For them, the Trash is just another folder, and unlike a physical trash can, it never gets full. You can keep putting stuff in there for as long as you want. So they freely move files and folders to the Trash that don't seem especially important at the momentjust to get them out of the waybecause they realize they can open up that folder at any time and get the files back.
In between, of course, are most of the rest of us. Each person's Trash philosophy is a bit different from the next person's. If you're that hypothetical person right in the middle of the Trash emptying spectrumneither a pack rat nor a compulsive emptierlet's just say that today is a good day to empty the Trash.
For everyone else, here are some reasons why you might want to move toward the center, toward what I'm proposing as the happy medium of monthly Trash emptying.
For those on the compulsive side, consider this:

Everyone makes mistakes. You can probably recall at least one occasion when you had to fish a file out of the Trash. Remember that once you've emptied the Trash, the only way to recover deleted files is to try expensive (and often unsuccessful) undelete utilities or to send your drive to a much more expensive data recovery service. Giving yourself a bit of a safety net might save you grief later.
Modern hard drives are large enough that you probably won't run out of space if you wait a few weeks before emptying the Trash.
You'll be able to focus on your work and be more productive if you don't keep glancing down to see if the Trash can is full.

For those who lean more toward being pack rats, think about this:

How many times have you had to recover a file from the Trash that was more than a month old? Ever? If that's a common occurrence, you should seriously consider revising your filing habits.
Hard drives are large, but not infinite. You will eventually run out of space. In the meantime, all those extra files can contribute to increased file fragmentation, potentially decreasing your Mac's performance.
All those extra files, merely by sitting in the Trash, could result in productivity losses due to misleading Spotlight searches and longer waits for backups and diagnostic utilities to run.

A Conversation about Emptying the Trash

How often should you empty your Trash? Let's ask the experts:
Sharon Zardetto Aker: I've always recommended, especially to the pack rats, that they create a folder called "To the Trash" and put stuff in there. At intervals, sort by modified date and anything older than [choose the age] goes to the Trash and gets emptied. You lose the convenience of having Command-Delete send to the Trash this way, but you don't have to review the Trash contents.
Kirk McElhearn: One problem with that approach is like-named files that overwrite existing files in the "To the Trash" folder. This doesn't happen with the Trash, which renames files if necessary.
Peter N Lewis: I'm not a pack rat, but I've trained myself to never empty the Trash unless absolutely needed. I find it hard to believe that issues of fragmentation and what-have-you are going to slow the computer down noticeably if you have a large hard drive that never comes near being full. Backups can be configured to avoid backing up the Trash folder if necessary.
Adam Engst: I'm with Peter on this; I empty the Trash only when I need the disk space or when there's some other reason to eliminate a particular file entirely (and when I'm too lazy to get rid of it individually via Terminal).
Joe Kissell: One big advantage to frequent Trash emptying is that Spotlight searches don't produce long lists of deleted (and therefore, in my way of working at least, irrelevant) files.
Tonya Engst: So many of the files in my Trash begin with "TCo" (for Take Control of) that I like to clear it out periodically so that I can easily find stuff if I put it in there accidentally. Otherwise, I'm scrolling through hundreds of versions of old manuscripts.

And for everyone, regardless of how frequently you decide to empty the Trash, here's one huge piece of advice: look before you leap. Get into the habit of opening the Trash folder (by clicking the Trash icon in your Dock) and scanning its contents before you empty it. It may take you a few minutes, but you're far less likely to delete a file by mistake that way.

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