Q: Any one using clean my mac 2 on OS X Mawerick? Is it worth?
-
Feb 8, 2014 2:43 AMby AnaMusic,HelpfulAlbyone wrote:
Just popped into Clean my mac 2 :... Is it worth installing it?
In a word... NO... See this discussion...
https://discussions.apple.com/message/10893864#10893864
In General... 3rd Party AV Software and Cleaning Utilities... tend to cause More Issues than they claim to fix...
They Not Required...
Mac OS X tends to look after itself.
-
Feb 8, 2014 4:30 AMby Barney-15E,HelpfulAlbyone wrote:
One last question AnaMusic: what do you think about Sophos antivirus for Mac?
Just something that will cause more problems than it can ever hope to solve.
Take a look at The Safe Mac Mac Malware Guide: http://www.thesafemac.com/mmg/
-
Feb 8, 2014 7:13 AMby John Galt,HelpfulHere are a few tales of misery resulting from using CleanMyMac:
All those "cleanup" programs are scams. CleanMyMac is not the only one, so be vigilant of similar junk from similarly worthless snake oil vendors. They generally appear in the guise of "cleaning" or "protecting" or "optimizing" your Mac. Some use clever cartoon characters, some use scare tactics, while others employ highbrow arrogance claiming to know more about Apple products than Apple itself. All of them are extremely prevalent, and the only defense against them is you.
Wasting money on them will be the least of your troubles. In many cases they are not easily removed, and the damage they inflict is not easily reversed.
-
Feb 8, 2014 7:30 AMby R C-R,Barney-15E wrote:
Albyone wrote:
One last question AnaMusic: what do you think about Sophos antivirus for Mac?
Just something that will cause more problems than it can ever hope to solve.
FWIW, I used Sophos Home Edition for years, starting when it first was released. I never had any problems I could attribute to it on any OS version I used it with, Mavericks included. It never slowed down anything, generated any false positives, or deleted anything it should not have. It never interfered with software updates from Apple or any other vendor, crashed, or did anything else besides checking files for malicious code signatures. According to The Safe Mac Malware Guide & other sources, it also is among the best at identifying the few malwares that can attack OS X.
I eventually uninstalled it about two months ago, but that was only because it adds harmless but somewhat verbose entries to the system log when it periodically runs its checks for new malware signatures in the background. That caused the logs to roll over faster than I wanted, but that's only because I sometimes refer to older ones when trying to help others identify issues doing that might clarify.
Maybe it is just an impression I have gotten from following discussions about Mac A-V software here & elsewhere, but it seems to me that essentially everyone reporting that Sophos causes problems is someone who hasn't used it themselves.
-
Feb 8, 2014 10:25 AMby Barney-15E,Maybe it is just an impression I have gotten from following discussions about Mac A-V software here & elsewhere, but it seems to me that essentially everyone reporting that Sophos causes problems is someone who hasn't used it themselves.
I have never used it or any other AV software, but I wasn't trying to imply that it caused problems. However, my statement still stands, AV software of any stripe can only cause problems on a Mac, not solve any.
-
Feb 8, 2014 11:54 AMby OrnotBitwise,You got some very good advice and it looks like you're going to heed it. Personally, though, I have found one (1) third party Mac utility that actually works as advertised and does do you some good.
Try Onyx. It greatly simplifies the maintenance scripts we're all supposed to be running -- we all do run our scripts, don't we? -- and doesn't seem to do anything ... nasty to the file system or anything else. I'm beginning to swear by it, to be honest. Of course, I am lazy.
And no, before someone asks, I don't work for or with Onyx. I just like their utility is all.
-
Feb 8, 2014 2:41 PMby R C-R,OrnotBitwise wrote:
Try Onyx. It greatly simplifies the maintenance scripts we're all supposed to be running ...
There are no maintenance scripts we are supposed to be running. If the OS is operating normally, it does everything like that automatically, as needed. Only if you are experiencing a few, specific problems will Onyx do anything to help solve them, for instance by deleting corrupted cache files.
However, deleting caches will slow down the system until they are rebuilt (their purpose is to speed up operations by caching precomputed data), so doing that with Onyx (or with any other utility) when there is nothing wrong with your caches will just keep the system from operating optimally.
-
Feb 8, 2014 3:27 PMby R C-R,Barney-15E wrote:
I have never used it or any other AV software, but I wasn't trying to imply that it caused problems. However, my statement still stands, AV software of any stripe can only cause problems on a Mac, not solve any.
OK, with zero firsthand experience with AV software for Macs of any kind, perhaps you will be kind enough to explain what you base this very broad generalization on?
For instance, exactly what kind of problems do you think Sophos could cause? Do you have any explanation for why I never saw any problems, even though I ran it for years on several different Macs?
All Mac AV software is not alike, any more than any other kind is. Sure, some of it is poorly written & maintained, uses unnecessarily large amounts of system resources, doesn't follow Apple's developer guidelines very well, & so on, but that is no reason to assume all of it suffers from these defects.
-
Feb 8, 2014 3:32 PMby Barney-15E,Sure, it can give false positives, it can delete files that shouldn't be deleted, and can make parts of the system inaccessible. They can do all of those things, and never once find a virus on your Mac that is of any concern to the user. If you keep the OS updated, they will also never find any malware that is of any concern.
-
Feb 9, 2014 12:21 PMby arthur,CleanMyMac is crapware. Crapware is anything that purports to "optimize", "clean", "accelerate", "monitor", or "protect" your Mac. These apps are unnecessary, poorly written, overpriced (if they were free, they'd still be overpriced), and harmful. They can damage your OS and be difficult to uninstall. But, some people really like crapware. That's why the a-holes who sell this stuff sell it- people keep buying it. New Mac users and converts from the PC world need to develop crapware detectors.
The king of crapware is MacKeeper. CleanMyMac is a close second.
Third-party antivirus software on Macs is not crapware, but is of minimal benefit. Macs are not PCs. Macs have anti-malware protection built in already.
I used to use ClamXAv and then Sophos. Both started running away with CPU usage and slowed my macs down. They never seemed to find any actual malware, but were good at finding false positives. So I stopped using antivirus software about a year ago. My macs have never run faster or better or more reliably than they do now. I keep up with Mac OS and security updates, I have good passwords, I am careful what I download, I do regular backups, and I don't think that Nigerian bank presidents want to make large deposits into my bank account.
I understand the point about not wanting to transmit Windows viruses to my PC using friends, but most of the people I communicate with are Apple people anyway, and the PC people are smart enough to have their own antivirus software.
If people really want to have crapware and third party antivirus software installed on their Macs, then maybe a PC would be the way to go.
<Edited By Host>
