should I buy clean my mac 2 or is there another app I should use?

I agree. I've used Clean My Mac for years and never had any issues. This company also makes another great app called Gemini, which finds duplicate files on a drive.

I also like Omni Disk Sweeper that gives an overview of large files that can be deleted in order to speed up my Mac.

The myth that Macs don't need to be maintained goes way back. Maybe back in the 90s or early 2000s it was true, but it most certainly is not now. Safari has the "Clean History and Website Data" that resets it's settings and clears the cache. There is a noticeable difference when I do this. Especially on my aging Macbook Pro (Early 2011). Not just in Safari, but in general use of OS X.

I'm an iOS developer and I have to constantly maintain my Mac when it comes to using Xcode. Even Xcode has a "Clean" feature to delete the Derived Data folder in order to build the latest version of an app in development. The idea the Mac OS X does everything for you in the background is pure poppycock!

lumierephoto wrote:

The myth that Macs don't need to be maintained goes way back. Maybe back in the 90s or early 2000s it was true, but it most certainly is not now.

Nonsense. Macs actually needed more maintenance back then than they do now.

Being an iOS developer does not qualify you to make these kinds of judgements. I'm a Mac developer and security researcher, and I can tell you that Macs do not need the kind of treatment that CleanMyMac and other similar apps give them.

Well, I DID say the "myth", not the "fact" that they needed more maintenance back then. When I bought my first Mac (a G4 tower in 2000), I didn't really use it to the capacity that I use my current Mac. And that was the word floating around that they needed little maintenance. It was pretty true for me for the most part. Not these days though.

If you're a Mac developer, then you understand that a program (an OS is still a program) will run out of memory if all it's resources are being used. I'm sure the core OS takes care of these things, but not for the whole file system. There are many cases when this has to be done manually in order to speed up performance, especially if you have an older or aging machine. CleanMyMac is not always the solution to why your Mac is slow, but it's a place to start.

Also, if you're a Mac Developer, you know that Xcode doesn't maintain itself. The simulator needs to be reset often so it doesn't slow down in performance.

It's actually silly that you state you are a Mac Developer, because MacPaw (the company that created CleanMyMac) are Mac Developers too. They even have an App in the Mac App store that is an Editors Choice (it's called Gemini-great app by the way). Do you?

Being an iOS developer, or any advanced user of Mac OS X, does actually qualify one to make such judgements. We use OS X at a much deeper level than most. If not advanced users, then whom?

Now it's true, that Mac OS X does not "need" Clean My Mac, BUT it sure as **** helps! Clean My Mac is not the only method for getting better performance out of your Mac. It's only part of the solution, and like I said above, may not help in your particular use case. There are many other tricks and methods, and I use most of them.

I will reiterate Thomas R's sentIments and highly knowledgable advice and recommendations on this topic.

DO NOT USE ANY SO CALLED APPS CLAIMING TO "CLEAN", "OPTIMIZE" OR "SPEED UP" YOUR MAC!!!! EVER!!!!

Apps like MacKeeper or any other maintenance apps like CleanMyMac 1 or 2, TuneUpMyMac, SpeedUpMyMac, MacCleanse or anything like these apps, installed on your Mac, while they appear to be helpful, can do too good a job of data "cleanup" causing the potential to do serious data corruption or data deletion and render a perfectly running OS completely dead and useless leaving you with a frozen, non-functional Mac.

Plus, these type of apps aren't really necessary OR needed. They really aren't.

There are manual methods to clear off unnecessary data off of your Mac that are safer and you have complete control over your Mac and not just leave a piece of auto cleaning software in charge of clearing off data off of your Mac. Their potential of causing OS X issues outweighs the implied good and benefits these types of hard drive or memory "cleaning" apps are written to do.

These types of system 'cleaning" apps are very poorly written and are really a scam to rob newbie and novice Mac users of their hard earned cash for a poorly written maintenance program that will do much more harm to a perfectly normal running OS X system than the good that the app developers purport these types of apps will do.

Plus, the software companies that write these apps make it hard to easily uninstall these apps if something DOES go wrong and these apps work in a way where you have no recovery or revert function to return your Mac back to its former, working state in the event something does go wrong.

It is best to never, EVER download and install these types of apps.

The risk to your system and important data is too great a risk!

I can almost guarantee that if you continue using CCM, you will end up, at some future time, doing data damage/corruption/deletion to critical OS X system files that WILL render you Mac unusable or inoperative.

There are many cases when this has to be done manually in order to speed up performance, especially if you have an older or aging machine. CleanMyMac is not always the solution to why your Mac is slow, but it's a place to start.

I have never used any of these junk "cleaning" programs, yet somehow, my Macs have always kept working just fine. CleanMyMac is never an appropriate solution to the problem of a slow Mac. In certain rare cases (which have never actually occurred on any of my Macs, and that I've rarely seen here in my 8 years of active participation), a Mac's caches may become corrupt. In such a case, an app like CleanMyMac may temporarily cure the symptoms, but it doesn't address the reason behind the corruption, and CleanMyMac in particular has been known to damage the system in some cases. There are far better ways of deleting the caches in those rare cases where this is actually necessary.

If you believe that CleanMyMac is necessary, you should be able to provide some concrete examples of what it does and why it is necessary. Generalities about needing to "take care of resources being used" will not do.

It's actually silly that you state you are a Mac Developer, because MacPaw (the company that created CleanMyMac) are Mac Developers too. They even have an App in the Mac App store that is an Editors Choice (it's called Gemini-great app by the way). Do you?

Whether or not MacPaw has a different product that is an Editor's Choice is irrelevant to the point of whether or not CleanMyMac is useful. We're not talking about Gemini, we're talking about CleanMyMac.

As for me, I do not have an app in the App Store. However, I do have an app available outside the App Store that is currently being actively recommended in certain situations by Apple Geniuses.

I have never used any of these junk "cleaning" programs, yet somehow, my Macs have always kept working just fine. CleanMyMac is never an appropriate solution to the problem of a slow Mac. In certain rare cases (which have never actually occurred on any of my Macs, and that I've rarely seen here in my 8 years of active participation), a Mac's caches may become corrupt. In such a case, an app like CleanMyMac may temporarily cure the symptoms, but it doesn't address the reason behind the corruption, and CleanMyMac in particular has been known to damage the system in some cases. There are far better ways of deleting the caches in those rare cases where this is actually necessary.

If you believe that CleanMyMac is necessary, you should be able to provide some concrete examples of what it does and why it is necessary. Generalities about needing to "take care of resources being used" will not do.

I don't need to base my answers based on your criteria on how I should answer them. I'm answering based on my experience with CleanMyMac since Snow Leopard. That's at least 3 years.

Where's your concrete evidence that CleanMyMac does cause corruption? Do you know how to interpret their log files? There's all kinds of programs/situations that can cause corruption in OS X. Given time, all systems will need either a core OS reinstallation or a clean installation in order to get your computer running good again. Doesn't matter the OS.

I use Clean My Mac because it is more convenient than manually cleaning my computer. I happen to value my time. However, LIKE I SAID, it is not a cure all.

Sure you may think you "know it all" when it comes to maintaining a Mac, and probably do know more than most, but most people don't understand computers at this level and for them this program can really help them. THAT'S WHO IT'S FOR! And that's only one case.

I just don't like seeing this propaganda you and other posters on this thread are saying about this program. At this point in time in 2014, I'd be MUCH more worried about the proliferation of adware and malware from websites more than any other time in Mac history.

Whether or not MacPaw has a different product that is an Editor's Choice is irrelevant to the point of whether or not CleanMyMac is useful. We're not talking about Gemini, we're talking about CleanMyMac.

As for me, I do not have an app in the App Store. However, I do have an app available outside the App Store that is currently being actively recommended in certain situations by Apple Geniuses.

I have an app in the AppStore that my mom thinks is cool 😁

I can almost guarantee that if you continue using CCM, you will end up, at some future time, doing data damage/corruption/deletion to critical OS X system files that WILL render you Mac unusable or inoperative.

That's what Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner is for! Back up your files!!

BTW I've been using CleanMyMac since Snow Leopard and haven't even done a clean install since then. I only do upgrades (to new version of OS X) or a reinstallation of the OS only. No problems.

P.S. I just installed Yosemite and then ran Clean My Mac. My early 2011 MacBook is running awesome!! Yippee!

Most of the average users of Macs that download and use this piece of crud software do not have the foresight or forethought to have a viable data backup in the first place when they choose to use a piece of utility software that they put their complete trust in to instantly cure all of their Mac ills.

But what do I know. I have only been using, upgrading and troubleshooting Macs for over twenty years and have been an active participant in these Apple Community Support forums for nearly eight years and just about seen and read it all here

Obviously, you seem to know more about these types of utilities than I.

Maybe you can visit the MacPaw website and give the developers some awesome feedback on their software product and maybe suggest some things to make using their software more user friendly to use and also improve the install/uninstall process without leaving bits and pieces of its software behind and maybe suggest that they implement some new code to allow for a revert function in the highly improbable event that their software accidentally hoses some unsuspecting user's Mac system.

Well, good luck to you and happy computing!!!

😉

Where's your concrete evidence that CleanMyMac does cause corruption? Do you know how to interpret their log files? There's all kinds of programs/situations that can cause corruption in OS X. Given time, all systems will need either a core OS reinstallation or a core OS reinstallation. Doesn't matter the OS.

Search the forum and see all the folks whose installations have been hosed by this app, both the original and the 2 version - which has added trashing of the iPhoto Library for good measure.

I've been using Macs for twenty years now, and no, it's not true to say that all systems need either "a core OS reinstallation" (whatever that imaginary beast is) or "a core OS reinstallation" either. I wonder do you mean 'clean'? That's rubbish. It's just not true. In twenty years I've reinstalled the OS about 6 times, and for of those were years go when I hadn't a clue of what I was doing.

lumierephoto wrote:

I don't need to base my answers based on your criteria on how I should answer them. I'm answering based on my experience with CleanMyMac since Snow Leopard. That's at least 3 years.

Okay, so your personal experience is that you think CleanMyMac does some good for you. That's not really much in the way of evidence for your point of view. You are certainly welcome not to provide the kind of evidence that I have suggested, but don't expect that to convince anyone of your point of view.

What I can say is that I've been an active participant on these forums for 8 years, and have seen many, many things. I've seen quite a few cases where overzealous "cleaning" with CleanMyMac has damaged systems. All you have to do is search here to find those, though admittedly the sheer volume of posts here makes that a time-consuming task.

I can also say, based on my understanding of how Mac OS X works, that cache cleaning is not only unnecessary, but is actually counter-productive. Caches are there to keep your Mac running faster, and older data is automatically cleaned out of the caches by Mac OS X. If you insist on clearing caches, you hinder the ability of Mac OS X to keep itself running faster. If you see a noticeable benefit every time you clear caches, that is because you have some other problem with your system that is causing cache problems. In such a case, frequently clearing the cache does nothing but temporarily fix the symptoms, without touching the cause.

I use Clean My Mac because it is more convenient than manually cleaning my computer.

Macs do not require this kind of maintenance. You seem to have mistaken my meaning when I said I have never used utilities like CleanMyMac on my computer... that is not because I'm doing the "cleaning" manually, it's because I don't do that "cleaning" at all. Period. Never have, never will, and have never had any problems as a result.

Most of the average users of Macs that download and use this piece of crud software do not have the foresight or forethought to have a viable data backup in the first place when they choose to use a piece of utility software that they put their complete trust in to instantly cure all of their Mac ills.

So you're actually making one of my points/rationales for me. People who don't know how to use computers are bound to screw things up anyway. So why the paranoia??

maybe suggest some things to make using their software more user friendly to use and also improve the install/uninstall process without leaving bits and pieces of its software behind

TONS of software developers do this. In fact, I was doing some manual cleaning last night cause I just updated to Yosemite and found remnants of past Adobe installations all the way back to CS 5.

Yep, that's right, Adobe. Only one of the most successful software companies on the planet.

maybe suggest that they implement some new code to allow for a revert function in the highly improbable event that their software accidentally hoses some unsuspecting user's Mac system.

I've been using CleanMyMac 3+ years. I have also been using the SAME Mac OS X everyone else has been using. So WHY has my experience been different?

Remember folks, I basing my answers here on EXPERIENCE, these self proclaimed Apple "geniuses" are basing their answers on their BELIEFS and DOGMA that no one cares about. Users only want to have a good experience with their Macs and they could care less about the things you nit pick about.

Macs do not require this kind of maintenance.

lumierephoto wrote:

Remember folks, I basing my answers here on EXPERIENCE, these self proclaimed Apple "geniuses" are basing their answers on their BELIEFS and DOGMA that no one cares about.

Actually, our answers are based on knowledge of how the OS works and experience over many years with more computers than just our own. It's becoming increasingly obvious that your experience has been different because you don't know what you're doing and are not interpreting things properly. For example, I can only assume that all the screenshots you provided are supposed to be evidence that Macs do require maintenance, but what you have actually shown are screenshots of different troubleshooting tools, not things that are required as any kind of regular maintenance.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that your experience has been different because you don't know what you're doing and are not interpreting things properly

But yet, my almost 4 year old Macbook purrs like a little kitty 😮

lumierephoto wrote:

But yet, my almost 4 year old Macbook purrs like a little kitty

as does my 4 year old Mac mini (without any "cleaning tools")...