There are a number of Mac OS maintenance applications
that promise to help you with various tasks. This article outlines some of them

Onyx

Onyx is free software.
It's the only one of this group that includes S.M.A.R.T monitoring (turn that on under
Preferences; actually see it under Info-> Disk). As all these
do, Onyx reads and sets preferences which it calls parameters for
the Finder, Dock and others. Onyx includes settings for Safari, allowing you to control settings that aren't in the Safari Preferences panes. It includes running and rescheduling of system
cron tasks, verification of disk permissions and rebuilding
of Spotlight and the Launch Services database. It can clean out
caches and log files and empty your trash. It also has an
"Automation" section.


A Log file viewer conveniently gives centralized access to all system and application logs; Unix Utilities include
a man page viewer, locate, and system_profiler. "Info" shows similar informaton to system_profiler in a more compact form.

Cocktail

Cocktail is NOT FREEWARE, the freely downloadable demo is apparently limited in some features, though it did not seem to have a limitation on features!? Cocktail controls
preferences under its "Interface" tab. Like Xupport, the Login
section includes a Kiosk mode. There are some interesting bits in the Misc. section such as the ability to set the screenshot file format. It includes setting MTU and TCP
window sizes under Network. It has control of locked files and
the usual cleaning of logs and caches under "Files". "System" lets
you run the system cron jobs, rebuild the ocate and whatis databases
as well as Launch Services, empty the trash and so on. "Disks"
can enable or disable journaling, repair permissions and set
the power saving facilities for laptops.

Xupport

Xupport is $19.90. The
downloadis time limited Xupport has a large number of preference items under
Settings in my opinion not as good as Onyx or Mainmenu. Like Cocktail or the excellent Tinkertool System, it
includes control of some TCP settings and adds control of
virtual memory files. Xupport includes a "Backup" utility that can
clone a bootable disk or create an image for Apple Software Restore.
The Browser tab is a Finder-like file browser. The Unix tab displays man pages, and Info is a convenient overview of your machine's hardware and software.

MainMenu

MainMenu runs as a menu bar item - you will notice the little
plus sign in a rectangle that appears in your menubar when you first clcik on it for installation. MainMenu includes the typical running of system
cron jobs, repairing disk permissions, cleaning caches, rebuilding Spotlight
and other databases, and setting some Finder settings. Under "Other
Tasks" it has log cleaning and flushing of some caches, but also includes disabling Dashboard

There are many similar products, I also like maintain1 although the GUI is not that great... see System/Disk Utilities at Apple for more.

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