I’ve used Mac OS X for many years and along with each upgrade or even each new install, followed by use of the “Migration Assistant,” there’s been applications, preferences and miscellaneous files accumulated which were no longer used or known of.
Note: I’ve always like to try out new applications which has compounded this “junk object” issue.
I’d also noticed over time the performance of the then whichever current OS X version wasn’t quite as sharp and “snappy” as I’d expect from any new install but it was overwhelming to try and remove all unused applications and their associated files — I didn’t even know where to start. So, when Apple recently released OS X 10.9, Mavericks, I decided this would be a good time for a fresh start, a completely clean install followed by the manual installation of only those applications I actually use on a day-to-day basis.
I began the process with a newly formatted drive to install Mavericks on. Using a new or repurposed drive allowed a bootable copy of OS X, Mountain Lion, to remain available in case of issues — certainly a more pressing concern if running non-Apple hardware. Looking back the install went generally well with the only issues being some of the tools used (UniBeast & MultiBeast) having changed default settings to support, by default, newer hardware then what I’m still using. I only needed to figure out which boot flags to set in order to make it all work for my setup — a learning process for sure but most of the information was to be had with a little research online. A little trial and error/success also solved any followup functional issues.
With Mavericks up and running it’s been a process of identifying which applications I actually use and want — amazing how few those are. I’ve been lucky in my practice of saving application serial numbers or license in Evernote certainly made re-registering much smoother. In those cases where there were more then one functionally similar application filling a specific role I’ve forced myself to evaluate each against my needs and use patterns to pick only the one I judge best.
At this point in time it’s a continuing process as I’ll prepare to do something on my computer to then discover I’m missing an application I normally use to perform that very task — but this is occurring less often now.
Additional Note: Perhaps if there’s any interest I’ll later post a list of those core applications along with my own experiences using them.
For the benefit of any of those who might be interested or have similar needs I’ve included the following information of my hardware set-up and the settings and drivers I used to get everything working .
This also serves as an archive/backup in support of my own memory — if I should ever do this again. ;-)
Hackintosh SETUP – 10.9 Mavericks ~Hardware~ Gigabytes Motherboard: GA-Z68XP-UD4 Processor: 3.49 GHz Intel Core i7 Graphics: Nivida GeForce GTX 570 HD 1280 MB Set Bios: SATA = AHCI –UniBeast– Tab on boot up and set boot flags: GraphicsEnabler=Yes PCIRootUID=1 **if not screen with go black at boot** –MultiBeast– Drivers > Disks > 3rd Party Sata Drivers > Trim Enabler > 10.9.0 Trim Patch Drivers > Audio > Without DSDT > ALC889 & HDAEnabler Drivers > Misc > ElliottForceLegacyRTC Drivers > Misc > EvOreboot Drivers > Misc > FakeSMC v5.3.820 Drivers > Misc > NullCPUPowerManagement **prevents OSX panic** Drivers > Misc > USB > USB 3.0 Drivers > System > AppleRTC Patch for CMOS Reset Drivers > Network > Realtek – Lnx2Mac’s RealtekRTL81xx Boot-loaders > Chimera v2.2,1
whoa, baby! I didn’t know you were using a Hackintosh!!!!!!!! I’ve always wanted to do that. Tell me about your experiences.
Hi Chris,
Yes, I’ve been running a “Hackintosh” since June of last year and have been very satisfied with the overall process and results. You can read much more about my experience at the following earlier post:
The HacMac project revisited
Reflecting on my first Hac Pro.
My short list of advice is,,,1) buy compatible hardware, 2) read and do the research and 3) be realisticly prepared for a little more time doing major OS upgrades. For me, and most people I’d say, the pluses far outweigh the negatives. All the information and tools can be found at tonymacx86.com,
It’s not like I don’t support Apple — We’ve still got four apple computers, two iPads and two iPhones in the house — some are older of course. :-)
I know about that web site, I’ve been debating doing this for more than a year now. Especially since the announcement about the new MacPro, because of the lack of internal expandability. What I ended up doing was buying a new Macbook Pro and using USB 3 to use an external drive box (one drive mirroring my boot drive, one storing my photo library, one backing up my photo library, one doing a Time Machine backup of the boot drive & photo library. (Paranoid? Not me!)
I have a scanner as well, so I used to have a 2008 Mac Pro and really wanted something like that, so a hackintosh was very attractive to me. I hesitated mainly because no one I knew had any experience with one. Now that I know you do …
Always happy to offer any help/support I can if you decide to take the plunge!
I have been holding off on Mavericks until Epson makes the updates for their printer drivers, which surprisingly they just have, even for my old printer. Now I just need to get up the nerve to pull the trigger, or wait for the “.1” release.
My Nvidia 8800 GT video card just died suddenly on my MacPro – got a use for a dead card? I hear you can bake them back to life, but I didn’t want to mess around with that. Instead now I went to an upgraded card, going from 512 to 1GB, and things seem a bit snappier.
Mark, any fix which requires baking a circuit board doesn’t sound great to me! ;-) Mavericks, so far, seems more stable then either of the “Lions” did on their first release. I like it and am glad to see Apple once again improving the core functionality. I also applaud the price, $0 for upgrade. Take that Microsoft Windows! :-)
Earl, I’d be interested to hear of your experiences with Maverick. I wasn’t impressed with Lion, and haven’t gone further. They just seemed to be making the desktop try to behave like a tablet or iPhone and I wasn’t ‘feeling’ it. So, I’m still on 10.7.5.
Paul,
Yeah, I wasn’t terribly impressed with the direction they were taking with the “Lion Series” of OS X but Mavericks seems to be focused back on improving the core of OS X with stability improvements, better support of USB 3.0, good multi-monitor support, superior memory usage and a total rewrite of Open CL with allows applications to use the GPU of your graphics card for intensive operations — if the application is written to do so. Of course it still retains all the Lion changes, which I’ve gotten use to. So far I’m very pleased with it and have experienced no majors problems which an update of application or driver didn’t fix — plus it’s free — hard to beat that price! :-)
Okay, you lost this computer illiterate guy in that first sentence with “Migration Assistant”. I picked up on some stuff but not all of. It;s a foreign language to me. I’m more interested in aperture and shutter speeds. :-)
Monte, the very reason this post is listed under “Technical” — over it’s seven years of existence MP has been many things, not only a photo blog. Hey, it’s never too late to learn a new language! :-)
:-)