How to Bulletproof (or Unf*ck) Your Mac
(Photo: Small Dog Electronics)
Macs are easy to use. Intuitive!
Viruses? Never heard of 'em!
Well, perhaps. But problems do crop up, even with the venerated Macintosh. Not long ago, I went to use Spotlight (cmd + spacebar) and, well, it looked a little off.
It displayed "Indexing Spotlight," with an estimated finish time of several MILLION hours.
I'm no computer scientist, but that seemed like an abnormally long time. Alas, "ruh-roh" realizations alone do not diagnose problems, let alone fix them. Much of the world has felt the same at one point or another: "My [fill in the blank] is screwed, but I don't even know where to start." Cars? Computers? Health? We're all ignorant of something, as mastering everything just isn't an option.
So, I put a notice out on the Internets asking for help and learned a lot about Macs in the process. First and foremost: It need not be complicated to bulletproof (or unf*ck) your Mac.
But what if your Mac crashes or is stolen? Does that goddamn spinning beachball mean that my computer's going to implode? Is there a simple way to sleep soundly at night?
My hope is that this post somehow helps you to do exactly that. It won't be fancy, and it won't impress the Carnegie Mellon CS crowd, but it will get the job done with minimal headache and paradox of choice. Here's what I've learned so far…
We'll start with an e-mail thread from Jared Cocken, Creative Director of The Wonderfactory, then we'll lead into personal suggestions.
If you have alternative solutions or more elegant fixes, please let me know in the comments!
Enter Jared
Most software glitches on OS X are permissions-based. Permissions set the read/write characteristics of every file and who those files can be viewed by; it's an old system that comes from Mac OS X's Unix underpinnings. Luckily, it's usually pretty easy to repair permissions.
Below are a few steps that will (A) Fix common issues on Macs, and (B) Keep your Mac running smoothly.
Step 1: Backup Data and Repair Permissions
1) Backup your data using one of the following methods:
Local Incremental Method – You can use Time Machine to perform incremental backups. I like the freedom of no wires, so I back up over WiFi to a
