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How-To: Clean and speed up your Mac with free, trustworthy downloads

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“My Mac used to be fast, but now it’s running so slow.” I’ve heard many versions of this complaint, and they’re always factually true, not just opinions: Macs do become sluggish over time, even if all of their chips and hard drives are working like new.

I’ve devoted several columns to hardware solutions — replacing old hard drives with fast new SSDs, adding more RAM, and increasing storage capacity using an external drive — but there are software solutions, too. Even die-hard Apple fans will admit that Macs typically run new OS X versions better (faster, and with fewer bugs) if you start with a clean slate: completely wipe your hard drive, do a fresh install of the latest OS X release, and restore only the files you need. That’s not as hard as it sounds, but it’s a radical and fairly time-consuming solution.

This How-To article offers a simpler alternative. First, find and delete enough files to leave your Mac at least 50GB of free storage capacity — enough room for the Mac to work without pausing to manage its hard drive space. Next, cleanse the cruft OS X builds up in the background as you use your computer. Below, I’ll show you how two completely free Mac programs, GrandPerspective and OnyX, will do all the heavy lifting for you. GrandPerspective offers a highly visual display of what’s taking up space on your Mac; Onyx cleans up the Mac files you’d be afraid to touch yourself…


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Apple warns developers of scheduled four hour iTunes Connect maintenance happening May 14th

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Apple has notified developers via email that iTunes Connect, the website used to manage and submit applications, will be down for maintenance on May 14th. According to the notice, maintenance will began at 8 AM Pacific Time and last for approximately four hours. Apple does not specify if any user-facing changes will be made, but perhaps Apple is making preparations for some announcements coming in just a few weeks at the 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference. Thanks to everyone who sent this in!


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Apple says developer website will go offline for ‘brief scheduled maintenance’ August 17 at 6 PM

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Apple has informed developers via email that the Developer Website will be offline beginning August 17th at 6PM PST for “brief scheduled maintenance.”

In the past, Apple has not informed developers about upcoming brief maintenance periods, but perhaps Apple is being more transparent in light of the recent hacking attempt and extended downtime for the developer programs.

Apple has also recently launched a website for users to monitor the available of Apple developer services.


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Apple says developer memberships and apps will not expire due to unexpected maintenance duration [Update: one week extensions]

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Apple has added some additional information to the Developer Portal’s maintenance page stating that memberships that were supposed to expire during the unexpectedly-long downtime have been extended to accommodate for the issue and apps will remain on the store until the portal is available again and developers can properly renew their accounts:


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