Mac maitenence- RAM (some of you may not know).

[Loren Littlejohn]

So...

I bought a book on Pro Tools, because it's easier for someone to take me through a program than to stumble along slowly learning it. Anyhow not the point here is the point for you mac users:

RAM:

Reset Parameter RAM (Mac OS):

Restart your mac and immediately press and hold OPTION+APPLE KEY+R+P.

Hold the keys down until you hear the startup chime three times.

Release the keys.

I did it and about all I noticed was slightly faster startup time. Anyhow if your mac is old give it a shot.

 

[Kazrog]

Zapping the PRAM is old school - it used to be fucking essential to do it regularly in the crash-prone OS 9 and earlier days - but still is sometimes a good idea if you notice anything funky going on. Another utility I highly recommend is the free, open source AppleJack. You install it, and then any time you feel the need to do an automated system maintenance routine, you boot into the single-user command line, and run AppleJack from the prompt. I usually use the command line paramenters "applejack auto restart" or "applejack auto shutdown" depending on what I want to do. AppleJack is set up to do just about every OS X maintenance task under the sun, such as repairing disks, repairing permissions, cleaning out the virtual memory, and more. Because it runs in the command line environment without the overhead of the GUI, it's able to do some things that are impossible to do in the GUI environment unless you boot from another disk - it's handy especially on Mac laptops in that regard.

Although I've personally never had problems, the usual disk maintenance utility warnings apply - make sure you always make a backup of your boot drive beforehand, make sure you are plugged into AC power if you're on a laptop, etc. I also don't reccomend this for Mac n00bs or n00bs in general. If you're afraid of the BSD command line, tackle some simple things first in Terminal. Even though AppleJack walks you through everything and is essentially automated once it gets going, it's good to have a passing familiarity with unix concepts like permissions and swap files. The more you get to know about OS X under the hood, the more you will love it.

Also another word of caution - I have not personally tested AppleJack in Leopard (since I'm still running Tiger) and I don't know if it's ready yet. I've heard rumors that it doesn't work in Leopard, but that an update is on the way.