Ah, Spring. Such beauty. Such splendour. What a naughty little season you are. Wearing all those pretty things for me. You knew I would notice, didn’t you? Don’t be coy now. You wouldn’t dress like that if you didn’t want me to look, would you? You minx.
Sorry, I seemed to have drifted slightly away from my point, I feel. Let’s start again.
Ah, spring. The dawning of seasons new and the promise of a brighter time. A time to start a fresh and give the place a once over. This is true of all things, be they domestic, mental, spiritual or otherwise. It is with this in mind that I bring to you a little tip for keeping your lovely, shiny Apple Macintosh computer/laptop clean. They are far less likely to slow down and go all ‘Vista’ on you than most other types of computer, but nonetheless, a little polish and tlc never hurt anyone (except those allergic to polish and tlc, i.e.; Goths)
This tip is worth sharing with any and all Mac users you know, because it is designed solely with the purpose of making everything run faster and smoother. You can’t argue with that, can you?
The first thing to do is to make a note of what your memory (RAM) is currently looking like. The best way to do this is to open Application Manager, by going:
Finder >; Applications >; Utilities >; Application Manager
At the bottom of the screen click the System Memory tab and then maybe take a screenshot of the results for reference when you are comparing the before and after stage, or just write down the details, so you can see the difference afterwards.
Next you should close down any existing programs (including Application Manager) and reset your Mac. Now, from the very second you hear the start-up sound as the Mac is rebooting, hold down the Shift key and don’t let go for anything. Even if your house suddenly catches fire whilst simultaneously being burgled by Pirates, do NOT let go of shift. You are going to keep holding down shift even as you fight the pirates with your spare hand and blow the flames of the house fire out with every available breath you have.
Now, when the little spinning cog/gear makes an appearance, start counting to TWENTY SECONDS in Mississippi’s for accuracy, and the moment you get to twenty, you can finally let go of the shift key, and give those thieving pirates the two-handed beating they deserve. You can also put your house fire out while you’re at it… and do you know why? Because your Mac is going to be completely useless to you for the next quarter-of-an-hour. You might even want to make yourself a cup of tea or finish that crossword. The one thing that you absolutely CANNOT do, is touch your Mac, because it is currently retreating into its core-programming and having a good old think about the meaning of existence, and its place in the order of things. It is pondering how best to serve you from this point onwards, and friends, when it has done thinking, it will let you know, I promise. The screen may flicker a little bit and then eventually it will lead you to its welcome/log-in screen. For the sake of safety, even when that has happened, you may as well leave it be another minute or two, whilst you go and have a wee or put a new towel on the radiator for tomorrow morning.
After this start-up is complete, it is time for the second part of the cleansing process. You should go to Finder >; Applications >; Utilities >; Disk Utility and find your Boot Drive. There will usually be a drive-shaped icon, with another drive-shaped icon directly underneath it. This lower one is known as your primary partition, and is where all the magic that makes your gorgeous Mac work is kept. This primary-partition will probably be called something like Macintosh HD unless you have renamed it, but you get the gist.
So, click on that drive-shaped icon that’s probably called Macintosh HD to highlight it and then in the bottom part of the screen, click the Repair Disk Permissions button and watch your Mac go to town on itself. You will see a whole bunch of command lines slowly start to appear and also a little time/status bar letting you know how things are going time-wise, and you may even see a few more flashes of the screen for good measure, but all you need to know about this, is that your Mac is basically just brushing its teeth, washing its face, spraying its pits, changing its pants, ironing its clothes and getting changed in to the sharpest gear it owns, and all to impress YOU, my friend! How ace is that!?
When that finally wraps itself up, you will get a little message at the bottom of all that code and repair-command saying that everything is done. To set everything in-line and finalise your Mac’s hard work; just do a normal reset (no holding down shift or fighting Pirates this time, my friend) and allow your gorgeous and shiny-like-new Mac to reboot itself, and then maybe give yourself a high-five for a job well done.
Once you’re back online and at your desktop, go once more to Finder >; Applications >; Utilities >; Application Manager and check out the fruits of your labour in the System Memory tab and see the difference!
It’s nice, no? Damn right it is. Why not take another screenshot and email me with both at jenkins@quiteenjoy.co.uk under the subject line ‘Jenkins, you sex monster, you’ve done it again!’ so we can see just how great I really am.
Now off you go… enjoy your newly-sexed Mac, and think of me when you’re gliding along the path to pure awesomeness.
– Jenkins