Weekly troubleshooting utilities update

Our utilities update report is a list of 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 to bring you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there are only a few utility updates with some common maintenance programs, a popular cloning utility, and a search alternative for Spotlight.

Maintenance

The maintenance-related utilities updated this week were MacPilot and IceClean. MacPilot will allow you to access a number of hidden settings in OS X to tweak your system both in terms of looks and performance. It also has options for removing caches and performing other cleaning and maintenance routines. The latest update fixes bugs with some UI elements not being clickable, and addresses a crash when performing some operations with root priveleges. MacPilot has a 15-day trial but is $19.95 for a full license.

IceClean is a tool more focused on maintenance than MacPilot. It is a free utility that will verify permissions and preference files, as well as manage individual files, manage log files, rebuilt a number of system services and temporary items, and manage some hardware problems. The latest update is a minor bugfix release.

Disk management

In disk-management utilities, only Carbon Copy Cloner has been updated. The popular cloning utility update fixes a few instances of memory allocation error messages that may occur, and also addresses problems with the program's management of the /Volumes mount point directory for filesystems. Carbon Copy Cloner is a $10 utility.

Other

The last update this week is for an alterante search utility than Apple's Spotlight. FoxTrot Personal Search is a search tool that will add flexible ranking and categorization options to search results, including options for using wildcards in searches and optimization for specific file types. The program includes a number of enhacements for UI elements, a new software update engine, and corrects a crash when Leopard users would customize the toolbar. FoxTrot is 29 euros ($39) for a single license, but there are multiple licensing options available.

In addition to the personal client, FoxTrot also has a Professional and Server version, which has a number of additional options over the Personal version, such as tiered searches, previewing modes, and options for managing multiple search indexes. The current updates for the professional and server version are similar to those for the Personal client. The licenses for the professional suite start at 99 euros ($135).

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