X

Weekly Utilities Update: GrandPerspective, CheckUp, SMART Utility, more...

Our Weekly Utilities Update report is a list of all the updates for many Mac utilities that have been released in the past week.

Topher Kessler MacFixIt Editor
Topher, an avid Mac user for the past 15 years, has been a contributing author to MacFixIt since the spring of 2008. One of his passions is troubleshooting Mac problems and making the best use of Macs and Apple hardware at home and in the workplace.
See full bio
Topher Kessler
3 min read

Our Weekly Utilities Update report is a list of all the updates for many Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though utilities 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 were the same revolving updates for several file management and maintenance utilities, with some of them being significant updates. A few hardware monitoring and maintenance updates are also available that improve problem tracking and diagnosis on new Apple hardware.

File Management

The popular file sizing utilities WhatSize and GrandPerspective were updated this week. WhatSize is a small bug fix release, but GrandPerspecrive has options for more detailed logs, and new commands for rescanning the current and selected folders.

Updates for HDCleanup and "Tidy Up!" are available as well. HDCleanup adds sorting and listing options to the "Dupliate files" lists, and Tidy Up fixes crash and compatibility bugs. Both are useful for locating and sorting through unused, orphaned, and duplicate files on your drive.

Maintenance Utilities

A number of maintenance utilities have been updated. Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner, Purity, and MacKeeper are small point releases, and address minor bugs that could lead to application crashes. Cocktail has been updated to fix potential kernel panics and some other small compatibility issues with OS X 10.6.3, so if you use this utility in Snow Leopard then you might consider updating.

Hardware Maintenance

In Hardware monitoring and maintenance utilities, the CheckUp and accompanying CheckUp Remote utilities have been updated to support the new MacBook systems with Core i5 and i7 processors. The network monitoring tool InterMapper and InterMapper Remote Access have been updated to fix numerous bugs, some of which are specific for other platforms, but also others that address problems with the installer in OS X. Keep in mind that Intermapper is rather expensive and is targeted to IT administrators.

Lastly, SMART Utility is a significant released that adds support for 64-bit hardware on machines running OS X 10.5, in addition to fixing crash bugs for 10.4 machines and removing old code for the crash reporting and feedback systems.

Other Utilities

If you are an Apple XServe administrator, Apple's latest Server Admin Tools for 10.6.3 are available. These should be used for maximum compatibility with Apple's latest server OS.

A major update to Paragon NTFS is also available, which is an optimized build to improve disk access performance and offer full support in both 32-bit and 64-bit mode for Snow Leopard. In addition, Paragon NTFS includes HFS support for Windows, albeit read-only support.

This Week's list of updates:

  1. WhatSize 4.9.4 - ($12.99) Measure sizes of your files and folders.
  2. Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner 5.0.6 - ($9.99) System maintenance, optimization, antivirus.
  3. Apple Server Admin Tools 10.6.3 - (Free!) Remote administration tools, documentation, utilities.
  4. SMART Utility 2.2.1 - ($25.00) Checks hard drives' internal diagnostics systems.
  5. Purity 1.04.1 - ($9.95) Recover disk space & maintain your system (was MacDust).
  6. Checkup Remote 2.6.2 - ($49.00) Check the health of multiple Macs from a remote location.
  7. CheckUp 2.6.2 - ($29.00) Check your memory and disks; monitor the health of your Mac.
  8. InterMapper RemoteAccess 5.2.4 - ($245.00) Remote view on your network's health.
  9. InterMapper 5.2.4 - ($495.00) Monitors servers, networks & routers.
  10. Tidy Up! 2.2.1 - ($30.00) Locate duplicate files & tidy up your hard drive.
  11. Cocktail 4.7.3 - ($14.95) (Snow Leopard Edition) General purpose system modify/repair utility.
  12. Paragon NTFS 8.0 - ($39.95) Full read & write access to NTFS partitions.
  13. MacKeeper 0.8.10 - ($39.95) Set of clean-up utilities, standalone tools, online services.
  14. HDCleanUp 1.8.4 - ($10.00) Clean up the clutter on your hard disk.
  15. GrandPerspective 1.3.2 - (Free!) Graphically displays disk usage.

NOTE: Prices listed are as of this writing and are subject to change.


Questions? Comments? Post them below or email us!
Be sure to check us out on Twitter and the CNET Mac forums.

Computing Guides

Laptops
Desktops & Monitors
Computer Accessories
Photography
Tablets & E-Readers
3D Printers
Computing Coupons