Troubleshooting utility news and updates
Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week, which this week covers some maintenance tools, filesystem tools, and hardware management tools.
Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were only a few updates, for a couple of popular maintenance utility titles, and a new tool that can help optimize SSD performance in some systems.
Maintenance
There are few utility updates this week, and the majority of them are for a couple of popular maintenance tools. CleanMyMac enables you to slim down universal binary applications by removing unused code, and also allows you to remove unused languages. It provides options for uninstalling applications and removing files left over from applications that have previously been removed. The latest update addresses a compatibility issue that prevented Disk Utility from unmounting drives, and also includes a couple of improvements to the handling of code-signed applications and the tool's uninstaller module. CleanMyMac is $14.95 for a full license.
The next maintenance tools are MainMenu and MainMenu Pro, which are easily accessed from the system menu bar. The program offers a number of options for rebuilding permissions and Spotlight indexes, tweaking your Mac's interface, and managing system log files. The Pro version additionally enables you to clean caches, run disk maintenance routines, and manage the system's built-in periodic scripts. The latest updates for these tools add a new overlay menu and an option to pack your current desktop contents into a single archive file, run multiple maintenance tasks at once, and adjust new system features. The standard version of the program costs $15, while the Pro version costs $19 for a license.
Hardware
The last utility updated this week is Trim Support Enabler. Trim is a routine for solid-state drives (SSDs) that maintains the free blocks in a state in which they are ready to be written to, which can significantly increase the performance of SSD drives. The trim command has been supported by Apple on the newer MacBook Pro systems only in OS X 10.6.6, but the command can be enabled on other systems. Trim Support Enabler lets you do this for non-Apple-branded SSD drives. The latest update adds some options for backing up, restoring, and updating the driver, and also provides the option to fix the long boot times some people have experienced with SSD drives.
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