Back in September we wrote a review about MacKeeper which looked at how to clean up a Mac with MacKeeper. Well, since MacKeeper is such an indepth piece of software we thought we’d take a look at some of the other parts of the program. Since our last post covered MacKeeper’s cleaning utility, for this post we’ll take a look at optimization, and all the wonderful ways you can keep your Mac like new.
As you can see, the optimization section of MacKeeper consists of three items – Update Tracker, Login Items, and Default Apps. Let’s take a look at Update Tracker.
Update Tracker in MacKeeper
Update tracker works by checking each application installed on your Mac and seeing if there’s a new version. The applications on your Mac which are marked as up-to-date are seen as green, and any out-of-date application is seen as red. Any out-of-date software on your Mac can be updated by clicking on the update button. Here’s how my Mac looked before running Update Tracker:
So, I clicked on the Update All icon and began to have some issues. My intention at this point was to show you how my apps looked once they were all updated. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
I had about 38 pieces of software which required updating, so I clicked the Update All button. The first piece of software I had problems with was Comic Life – MacKeeper froze about 3.5 MBs into the download. I then quit the application thinking it was a software issue, then went through the same process – the same issue occurred. I tried to update another app, and at this time, the progress bar and all subsequent updates froze. Enough was enough at this point so I contacted the Live Chat from within MacKeeper (which is an awesome idea). Unfortunately, the best they could give me was to shut down the MacKeeper process from within Utilities and to try again, and if this didn’t happen, then just download the programs from their developers website.
Since there are some apps on this list that I only use once every few months, this was a pretty futile solution, so I decided to go through the apps which I use most and update them from within MacKeeper. Unfortunately, this was inconsistent. Some of the programs updated, and some didn’t, freezing about 10MBs away from downloading. Very frustrating.
Login Items in MacKeeper
The Login Items part of MacKeeper allows you to control which programs start when you login to your Mac, and which don’t.
You can control these programs via the checkboxes on the side, or even add/remove items from the list. I didn’t have any issues with this part of MacKeeper, and I found that it worked great. It actually allowed me to remove items which I never even knew were starting up whenever I logged in.
Default Apps in MacKeeper
When you run Default Apps for the first time it will scan your Mac’s hard drive to look for associations between programs and file types. It allows you to define which program opens which type of file. It also shows current associations between all file types and applications which open them.
You can select which software is applicable for the file type, and then also choose from a range of different filetypes to which you want to associate that program with. When I reviewed the list MacKeeper gave me, I was pretty happy with the current programs and associations, so unless there’s anything you just have to have changed, leave things in here as they are.
Conclusion
Aside from the issues I had with the Update Tracker, the rest of MacKeeper’s optimization section worked pretty well. However, it truly won’t be an optimization piece of software until they fix the issues with downloads timing out and freezing up.
MacKeeper is available for just $39.95. Even with the issues I had, this is still a great deal, especially when you consider all that you get a whole suite of tools bundled into one program.
