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1. Mar 26, 2018 - Having a secure and proficient laptop for work and personal projects is a must these days. Apple Mac devices can provide users with high.
2. Before we do anything, let’s make sure your Mac is up to date. Click the Apple icon > App Store, then click the Updates tab. Install any software updates you see here, including macOS updates.

It’s spring again, and with the new season comes the age-old ritual of cleaning out things you ignored for most of the year. Far be it from me to suggest that you clean out your basement, garage, or attic, but I would be remiss if I didn’t recommend you take a closer look at the crusty corners of your Mac.

(Top) Best MAC Cleaner Apps for 2018 to Speed up your MacBook. Fortunately, there are plenty of great Mac Cleaner Apps on the market. Here are some of our favorite free and paid versions. How to Download iTunes for Windows 10.

Last year, Chris Breen shared valuable —all of which are worth revisiting. But I also want to draw your attention to a half-dozen digital dust bunnies that you might not have considered: 1. Get rid of old iChat logs If you use iChat, you can have the program store logs of your chats.

(Go to iChat - Preferences, click on Messages, select Save Chat Transcripts To, and then choose a folder.) By default, the program saves transcripts in a folder called iChats in your Documents folder, but you can choose a different location to store these files. With this preference set, iChat saves a log file of every chat. This is a great idea (and especially helpful at work) if you often need to refresh your memory about a conversation. But if you send images inline during chats, these files may take up a lot of space. If you look inside the iChats folder, you’ll see that the files are organized by date. While you may want to save recent chat logs, you may have months of files you can trash, saving a lot of disk space.

Delete application backups Many programs offer automatic backups, and store copies of files in a selected folder, just as iChat saves chat logs. Two programs I use often—Bare Bones Software’s and The Omni Group’s —do this. Some applications, such as OmniFocus, let you choose the location for the backups; others, like BBEdit, don’t. BBEdit stores its backups in a BBEdit Backups folder in my Documents folder; I have OmniFocus store its backups in my Documents folder as well.

If you use any application that saves backups, you may find that it has tucked away several gigabytes of duplicate files, depending on how the program saves them. (BBEdit saves a new backup every time you save a file.) Deleting these backup files can save space, and make much easier. While you’re at it, check in youruserfolder/Music/iTunes folder; you may find a Previous Libraries folder, which includes copies of your iTunes libraries that were saved after you installed a new version. Get rid of Mail downloads When you receive attachments to e-mail messages in Apple’s Mail, the files are stored with your messages at first. But if you double-click an attachment to view it, or if you use QuickLook to glance at it, Mail stores a copy in your youruserfolder/Library/Mail Downloads folder. You may have dozens of files here occupying a huge amount of space.

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You can generally delete these without worry. If you still have the original messages, the attachments are part of those messages. If not, you may have already saved the attachments to your hard disk. Delete log files Your Mac stores lots of log files, most of which you never need to review. Open the Console application (in /Applications/Utilities), to see a list in the Console Messages window sidebar.

The different log files stored on your Mac are listed in the Console's sidebar. You can delete many of these files without affecting your Mac, and you can save significant space, since some of these files can be quite large. For instance, in the screenshot above, you can see a number of system.log files. The first one—system.log—is the current file, but the others, with the.bz2 suffix, are archived files. Delete these files with Titanium Software’s free utility. Launch the program, click on Cleaning in the toolbar, and then click on the Logs tab.

Check System Archived Logs, and then click Execute. While you’re using Onyx, check out the many other files that the program can delete to clear up space on your Mac.

Weed out iTunes dupes If you’re cavalier about how you monitor your iTunes library, you may have a lot of duplicate files. ITunes has a built-in feature to help you find duplicates, to see if you copied some files twice, or if you have the same songs on original albums and others from best-of albums. To use this feature, choose File - Display Duplicates. This shows all tracks that share the same name and artist.

If you hold down the Option key when you select the File menu, the menu item changes to Display Exact Duplicates. This sorts for duplicates where the name, artist, and album match. Check these files carefully. You may find some that you can get rid of, saving space not only on your Mac, but also on your iPad or iPhone.

ITunes can find duplicate files in your library. Still, iTunes’ duplicate search is limited. Doug Adams’ $15 gives you much more power to weed out duplicates, sorting by a variety of different criteria.

If you add lots of music to your iTunes library, Dupin is a great way to slim it down. Reset Safari If you use Apple’s Safari, some of the program’s features can take up unnecessary space. For instance, the cache file is intended to make your browsing snappier, but can easily consume hundreds of megabytes.

When it gets too big, it can actually slow down browsing. History files can make Spotlight searching sluggish. And Top Sites, Website preview images, and Website icons (favicons) can slow down the program as well. Every now and then it’s a good idea to reset Safari. Choose Safari - Reset Safari and check the options that interest you. In this window, you can choose which Safari items to reset and delete.

I don’t reset or delete everything—you can see my choices in the screenshot above. Choose what’s most important to you, and reset Safari every now and then to speed up your browsing and save disk space. One last tip: have you looked in your Downloads ( youruserfolder/Downloads) folder lately? You may find plenty of unneeded copies of files there too. Senior contributor Kirk McElhearn writes about more than just Macs on his blog.

Twitter: Kirk’s latest book is.

. Pros Certified by one antivirus testing lab.

Good detection of Windows malware. Clear, simple user interface. Cons Very poor score in hands-on phishing protection test. Lacks scheduled scanning, website rating, and other features found in competing free apps.

Bottom Line The free AVG AntiVirus protects against Mac, Windows, and mobile malware, but that's about all, and its antiphishing component tanked in our hands-on testing. 'Ok, ok,' you say, 'you've convinced me.

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I'll install an app on my Mac. But I'll be goldarned if I'm gonna pay for it!' That's actually quite a reasonable attitude. Sure, you get more and better protection from the best commercial products, but while Mac-centered malware totally exists, it doesn't come close to the wild and woolly jungle of Windows malware.

AVG AntiVirus for Mac is one of several totally free antivirus solutions to protect your Macs. It takes care of basic antivirus protection, but its protection against malicious and fraudulent URLs currently leaves much to be desired. Since Avast's acquisition of AVG a couple years ago, this product and are now, if not siblings, at least cousins. On the PC side, the two free antivirus products are extremely similar under the hood, and my company contacts assure me that the same is true of the Mac products. Note, though, that Avast offers Mac users a lot more than AVG does.

In addition to basic antivirus protection, it includes site rating, active Do Not Track functionality, a network security scanner, and even a basic password manager. AVG's main window is spacious and simple. A large dark grey expanse holds three icons penned in by a darker rectangle: Mac Shield, Web Shield, and Email Shield. Mac Shield refers to real-time protection, scanning new files as they arrive. Web Shield works to divert your browsing away from malicious or fraudulent pages. The third icon, Email Shield, will eventually scan incoming email attachments for malware, but the feature is not yet ready. Don't worry; the moment you attempt to save or launch an attachment, the Mac Shield scans it.

You can use the Scan Mac button at center bottom to launch various types of antivirus scans. Links to view quarantined items and log in to your AVG account round out the window. Choosing File Preferences from the menu lets you tweak a few minor settings. For most users the defaults are fine, with one exception.

Like Avast, AVG can scan your Time Machine backups for malware. Out of the box, this feature is disabled; turning it on seems like a good idea. Pricing and OS Support Like Sophos and McAfee, AVG requires macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) or higher. Avira and Norton want 10.11 (El Capitan) or higher. If you're a prudent user who always accepts operating system upgrades, this shouldn't be a problem. However, if for some reason you're stuck using an old macOS version, consider ClamXAV, ProtectWorks,. These three can handle versions all the way back to 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

As noted, AVG is completely free., Avast, and Avira are among the other vendors offering free antivirus for macOS. However, like Avast, AVG is only free for noncommercial use.

If you want to use AVG in a business setting, you must pony up for the business edition. Commercial Mac antivirus pricing centers on just under $40 per year for a single license. Half of the current products fit that model, and most of those give you three licenses for $59.99 per year. With McAfee, that $59.99 subscription price gets you unlimited licenses, not just three. You can install on all the macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS devices in your household. Good Malware Protection Scores When reviewing utilities, I look at test results from four independent labs, and I also perform my own hand-on testing with live malware. That's not as dangerous as it sounds.

I use virtual machines, so if malware wreaks havoc, I just revert to an earlier snapshot. I don't perform that level of testing on macOS, so results from the two labs that test Mac antivirus become very important. As I mentioned, Avast now owns AVG, so I wasn't surprised to see that the two earned precisely the same scores from. Both protected against 99.90 percent of the lab's Mac malware samples, detected 100 percent of the Windows malware samples, and earned this lab's certification. Also included Avast in its latest report, but not AVG. Avast detected all the Mac malware and PUAs (Potentially Unwanted Applications) and most of the Windows malware. We can hope that AVG would have scored the same, but the labs are very clear: results apply only to the precise product tested.

Bitdefender and are the big winners, as far as lab results go. They received certification from both labs, earning 100 percent protection against Mac malware in both cases. Scan Choices If you just click the big Scan Mac button, AVG scans the most likely places for malware traces. On the I use for testing, this scan finished in less than four minutes.

Clicking the gear icon next to Scan Mac lets you choose a Deep Scan of the entire system, or a File Scan looking just at certain files or folders. Even the Deep Scan only took 15 minutes, just a hair longer than Avast, and well below the current average of 24 minutes. Almost all the Mac antivirus utilities I've reviewed include the ability to detect Windows malware as well. True, malware designed for Windows can't run on a Mac, but eliminating it means there's no chance of it somehow leapfrogging to a Windows system on your network. AVG promises to detect and remove Windows and mobile malware, in addition to malware aimed at macOS. To test AVG's skills against Windows malware, I copied my current malware collection from a thumb drive to the desktop. AVG immediately started wiping out the samples, leaving just a handful.

A File Scan on the folder eliminated a few more, for a total of 86 percent. Interestingly, I tested Avast with my previous malware collection and it weighed in at 85 percent, almost the same.

Sophos has the best score this test, with 100 percent of Windows malware eliminated. Poor Phishing Protection While viruses, Trojans, and other typical types of malware necessarily target a specific operating system, phishing attacks are totally platform-agnostic. If you log in to a fraudulent site, thereby giving the fraudsters your credentials for the actual site, it doesn't matter if you did it on a PC, a Mac, or a browser-equipped refrigerator.

Whatever the platform, you've lost control of that account. My phishing test starts with hundreds of suspected phishing URLs, scraped from websites that specialize in tracking and reporting on them. To test a Windows-based product, I set up five browsers, one protected by the product under test, one by phishing champ, and one each by the protection built into Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.

I wrote a simple program to launch each URL simultaneously in all five, and record with one click whether it blocked or missed a fraud, or whether the URL turned out not to be a phishing fraud after all. Alas, my handy program runs strictly on Windows, so my antiphish testing on macOS is a manual cut and paste affair. In my testing, I've learned that while phishing frauds themselves are platform-independent, defense against phishing is not.

Scored quite a bit lower in this test than the comparable Windows edition. Many phishing protection systems replace the fraudulent page with a warning message in the browser, explaining that proceeding to the site would be dangerous, but allowing the user to override the warning. AVG's Web Shield works quite differently. It pops up a window reporting that it secured a threat, leaving the browser to display a simple error message.

When I finished the test and ran the numbers for AVG, I was a bit shocked. AVG's detection rate was 39 percent lower than Norton's, and all three browsers beat it handily using their built-in protection.

Among Mac antivirus products, only Avira has done worse, running 47 percent below Norton's detection rate. On the plus side, this is significantly better than the score earned. Then I remembered that I had a similar experience with Avast. Initially it scored 32 percentage points behind Norton, which is in the same ballpark as AVG's 39 points. At that time, my Avast contact explained that Safari gets protection only from the Web Shield component, while browser extensions offer enhanced protection in Chrome and Firefox.

When I repeated the test using Chrome, Avast tied with Norton and beat all three browsers. Only has done better, outscoring Norton by 5 percentage points. Bitdefender on Windows did even better, 12 points above Norton. Alas, browser extensions for AVG's Mac antivirus aren't yet ready, so phishing protection totally relies on the less-effective Web Shield component. I'll revisit this review when the browser extensions come out.

What's Not Here AVG covers the basics, with protection against Mac, Windows, and mobile malware. It offers a modicum of protection against phishing frauds, though this component isn't very effective. And that's about all. Other free Mac antivirus utilities bring quite a bit more to the party. With Sophos, you get full remote management of up to three installations, so you can fix Uncle Ernie's antivirus without driving across town. It also includes a simple content filter for parental control.

Avira rates links in search results, so you don't accidentally visit a dangerous page. By default, it runs a scheduled scan every week. It brings along a raft of other security-related components, some free, others free trial.

AVG's cousin Avast also rates the safety of search result links. Its active Do Not Track component prevents advertisers and other trackers from building a profile of your online activity. The network security scan lists all the devices on your network and flags any that have security problems. It even includes a basic password manager. You Can Do Better As you can see, AVG Antivirus for Mac suffers by comparison with other free Mac antivirus utilities. Lab tests show that it does its essential job, protecting against malware, but it's not effective at blocking malicious or fraudulent URLs. Its biggest virtue lies in its extremely simple, streamlined user interface.

Those willing to pay for Mac antivirus protection can get significantly better protection. Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac both cost $59.99 for three licenses, and both earn top ratings from the independent labs. Bitdefender took the top score in our antiphishing test, and its ransomware protection feature prevents unauthorized apps from modifying your important files. Kaspersky goes beyond the basics with an effective parental control system, protection against webcam, a network attack blocker, and more. As in the Windows realm, free antivirus tools for Mac handle the basics, but commercial ones do much more.