Do I need to delete temporary files on my mac?

Question

Do I need to delete temporary files on my mac?

Hi. Well, I'm almost a year into my first mac and it has to have been one of the smarter moves I've made. I guess because I'm coming from years of using the MS OS, I had a question or perhaps a clarification regarding temporary files and even defragmenting. In the other OS via the Control Panel, you could/should/needed to/ occasionally delete your temp files as they tended to accumulate, and you could/should/needed to/ defragment your hard drive fairly frequently in order to optimise the laptop's performance. My question is whether the same procedure is require on a mac and if so, how so? Or is this just another one of those beautiful perks of having a mac, that it is actually all taken care of automatically? Thanks for taking the time to answer this: most appreciated.

Macbook 13" Aluminium, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Jul 2, 2010 4:28 AM

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Answer 1

Fortuny

Level 7

21,461 points

Jul 2, 2010 5:24 AM in response to Adrian Cavinder

Hi Adrian,

essentially Mac OSX takes indeed care of a lot of things you have to do on Windows PCs manually.

The X Lab has some real good articles and FAQs on that http://www.thexlab.com/index.html

Especially the 'Running the Mac OS X maintenance scripts' http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintscripts.html plus this Apple document on Disk Optimization http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375?viewlocale=en_US should give you 'a piece of mind'... 😉

Happy computing

Stefan

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Answer 2

Fortuny

Level 7

21,461 points

Jul 11, 2010 9:16 PM in response to Adrian Cavinder

Hi Adrian,

no problems with more questions... 🙂

But it would be better to ask iPhoto related questions in the iPhoto Forum http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=143 since the real iPhoto cracks are hanging out there.

I don't use iPhoto myself due to lack of 'source material' 😉

Have Fun

Stefan

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Answer 3

Jul 10, 2010 10:41 PM in response to Fortuny

Dear Stefan,
Well, I hope you don't mind if I pose another question to you: one that's been bothering me for some time. It has to do with iPhoto and storing photos in general. So far I have been placing my photos in >my mac>my pictures and then working through iPhoto to sort them into categories, events, etc. So far, so good, but I don't understand the relationship between the two. For example, I can create new folders in iPhoto, but that doesn't change my original folders in my pictures at all; so where are the iPhoto folders on my mac? And if I delete from >my pictures, then does that also automatically delete them from iPhoto, or visa versa? The set up that I would ideally like to have is that everything I do in iPhoto automatically updates my actual photos in >my mac>my pictures. Is that possible? Or am I going about this the wrong way? Your input would be appreciated. Thanks. Adrian

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Answer 4

Jul 11, 2010 8:26 AM in response to Adrian Cavinder

Just for the record, you don't need to do this on Windows either. There are all kinds of little myths like this floating around. The notion that deleting temp files somehow improves performance and/or stability is one, the idea that defragmenting has some kind of diagnostic utility is another. That defragmenting speeds up your computer, or somehow improves the longevity of your HDD would be a third and fourth.

These things have long since stopped being relevant, regardless of OS, and assuming they ever HAD any relevance to begin with. There are plenty of people out there who like to think they know a whole lot more than they actually do. They might partially understand something a real expert says, and then go around spreading this bad information. The intent may be good, but the result is people getting these silly notions in their heads that make the rest of us roll our eyes and mutter a curse under our breath as we fight off the urge to strangle someone.

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Answer 5

Jul 3, 2010 2:03 AM in response to Fortuny

Hi Stefan, Thanks for the input. Really helped me have a better understanding of mac's OS. Cheers.

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Answer 6

Fortuny

Level 7

21,461 points

Jul 3, 2010 7:53 PM in response to Adrian Cavinder

You're welcome anytime, Adrian.

Glad to be of help.

Happy computing

Stefan

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