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OK, let's be fair here for a second. If you read Apple's support docs you will quite often run into documents that advocate backing your files to time machine a

OK, let's be fair here for a second. If you read Apple's support docs you will quite often run into documents that advocate backing your files to time machine and doing a complete reinstall of OSX. I don't even need to search too hard. A few weeks ago I wanted to install bootcamp but found out that the bootcamp helper refused to partition my drive because it couldn't find a contiguous 30gb slot on my 80gb free drive. Oh! I could just defrag, I thought to myself... but not so fast, Yuri, Apple does not support defragging because Apple knows best. What do they recommend? "Another option is to back up your important files, erase the hard disk, then reinstall Mac OS X and your backed up files." (source: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375) Anyway, personally, I think the push button reset is a natural progression from the System Restore Points, which are great.

tfh 16y ago
> couldn't find a contiguous 30gb slot on my 80gb free drive I had the same problem last year and I used iDefrag to solve it. http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php
thought_alarm 16y ago
>not so fast, Yuri, Apple does not support defragging because Apple knows best. Well, they designed and implemented the system, so they should know best. And they do support defragmentation. Read that page again: "In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation, which can be performed with some third-party disk utilities". The reality is that few users ever have to worry about fragmentation of their HFS+ drives. And if you are concerned about fragmentation, I suggest 'hfsdebug', a free command-line tool.
tvon 16y ago
Not to get all tangental, but these are reasons why something like iOS is the probable future of consumer computing. There is so much crap that people deal with on a day to day basis with computers that they should never even have to know about.
sjs 16y ago
I try to be fair, I really do. Of course I'm biased - I grew up using Windows and can't help being bitter about it - but I try to keep things in perspective. Push Button Reset is great for geeks using Windows, but it's a bandage not the cure. My experience is that Windows' performance deteriorates over time just by using the OS normally. Installing programs and using them, etc. That's one of the things that drove me away from Windows several years ago. Vista and 7 may have changed this but Push Button Reset indicates to me that's not the case. While I agree that the solution to the Bootcamp problem is lame, the situation is quite different. Apple is not recommending you reinstall just to be able to use OS X normally. Maybe it's not that different, maybe my bias is too strong for me to see it clearly, but I don't think it is.
- koeselitz 16y ago
  Hmm. I agree with what you say here, but for the opposite reasons. That is: I think any OS will deteriorate over time with use. The question is how the OS deals with this fact. The Windows method of memory management and defragging is... passable, but not nearly flexible or versatile for modern machines. For one thing, it's horrendous at dealing with boot configurations. And that reminds the user that Windows (up to 7!) doesn't appear to have any sort of actual boot configurator that even a hard-core geek could use. What's more, while I see where you're going, and I agree with the thrust, I actually disagree with you that "Push Button Reset is great for geeks." It's the opposite of great for us; what we'd like to do is be able to manage clean reinstalls, and most of all to be able to partition hard disks to our liking. Considering that Windows 7 offers less partitioning options and capabilities than Windows 95 did (seriously, think about that for a moment) and that Vista was the first in a decade even to allow partitioning, we're far from a Windows which affords actual control over the machine or the media that goes into it. That's really the thing here to me, as a geek. What does Windows 8 have to offer me to impress me and make me happy as a user? The ability to partition seamlessly; the ability to force a partitioning over errors if I want to; the ability to reinstall seamlessly as many times as I need to, to burn reinstallation software as many times as I need to; the ability to easily and directly configure boot parameters, and to make a boot sturdy and permanent for all users on a machine running multiple partitions with differing encryption levels; finally, direct manipulation of inodes/indexes. These are all things which are still, so far as I can tell, flatly impossible within the context of Windows; and where any of them is possible, it's only with the help of expensive software. Whereas a person with a free, burned copy of Knoppix on a disk can do all of them in five minutes with any computer she choose. I'm not even saying Windows is evil here, or anything like it. It's just that it doesn't in any way meet what I need out of an operating system; there is no control over even the slightest thing, like indexing or bad-sector flags or defragging or partitioning or anything. And I sometimes wonder how Windows developers convince themselves that they're producing a powerful system. Maybe some of them can answer this; I know they're reasonably intelligent. Do any of you know why Windows won't offer these things? And what we're supposed to do in a world where more and more operating systems do?
danieldon 16y ago
Partitioning an already heavily used disk for bootcamp is probably the closest any relatively normal user would ever get to needing to degrag an OS X volume. And pretty much the only time a normal user would ever need to reinstall OS X is if something went seriously wrong with the system files. It's a very abnormal thing to encounter. And even if you somehow need to do so, the option to preserve user information has been in OS X for a long time.

tfh 16y ago

> couldn't find a contiguous 30gb slot on my 80gb free drive I had the same problem last year and I used iDefrag to solve it. http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php

thought_alarm 16y ago

>not so fast, Yuri, Apple does not support defragging because Apple knows best. Well, they designed and implemented the system, so they should know best. And they do support defragmentation. Read that page again: "In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation, which can be performed with some third-party disk utilities". The reality is that few users ever have to worry about fragmentation of their HFS+ drives. And if you are concerned about fragmentation, I suggest 'hfsdebug', a free command-line tool.

tvon 16y ago

Not to get all tangental, but these are reasons why something like iOS is the probable future of consumer computing. There is so much crap that people deal with on a day to day basis with computers that they should never even have to know about.

sjs 16y ago

I try to be fair, I really do. Of course I'm biased - I grew up using Windows and can't help being bitter about it - but I try to keep things in perspective. Push Button Reset is great for geeks using Windows, but it's a bandage not the cure. My experience is that Windows' performance deteriorates over time just by using the OS normally. Installing programs and using them, etc. That's one of the things that drove me away from Windows several years ago. Vista and 7 may have changed this but Push Button Reset indicates to me that's not the case. While I agree that the solution to the Bootcamp problem is lame, the situation is quite different. Apple is not recommending you reinstall just to be able to use OS X normally. Maybe it's not that different, maybe my bias is too strong for me to see it clearly, but I don't think it is.

koeselitz 16y ago
Hmm. I agree with what you say here, but for the opposite reasons. That is: I think any OS will deteriorate over time with use. The question is how the OS deals with this fact. The Windows method of memory management and defragging is... passable, but not nearly flexible or versatile for modern machines. For one thing, it's horrendous at dealing with boot configurations. And that reminds the user that Windows (up to 7!) doesn't appear to have any sort of actual boot configurator that even a hard-core geek could use. What's more, while I see where you're going, and I agree with the thrust, I actually disagree with you that "Push Button Reset is great for geeks." It's the opposite of great for us; what we'd like to do is be able to manage clean reinstalls, and most of all to be able to partition hard disks to our liking. Considering that Windows 7 offers less partitioning options and capabilities than Windows 95 did (seriously, think about that for a moment) and that Vista was the first in a decade even to allow partitioning, we're far from a Windows which affords actual control over the machine or the media that goes into it. That's really the thing here to me, as a geek. What does Windows 8 have to offer me to impress me and make me happy as a user? The ability to partition seamlessly; the ability to force a partitioning over errors if I want to; the ability to reinstall seamlessly as many times as I need to, to burn reinstallation software as many times as I need to; the ability to easily and directly configure boot parameters, and to make a boot sturdy and permanent for all users on a machine running multiple partitions with differing encryption levels; finally, direct manipulation of inodes/indexes. These are all things which are still, so far as I can tell, flatly impossible within the context of Windows; and where any of them is possible, it's only with the help of expensive software. Whereas a person with a free, burned copy of Knoppix on a disk can do all of them in five minutes with any computer she choose. I'm not even saying Windows is evil here, or anything like it. It's just that it doesn't in any way meet what I need out of an operating system; there is no control over even the slightest thing, like indexing or bad-sector flags or defragging or partitioning or anything. And I sometimes wonder how Windows developers convince themselves that they're producing a powerful system. Maybe some of them can answer this; I know they're reasonably intelligent. Do any of you know why Windows won't offer these things? And what we're supposed to do in a world where more and more operating systems do?

danieldon 16y ago

Partitioning an already heavily used disk for bootcamp is probably the closest any relatively normal user would ever get to needing to degrag an OS X volume. And pretty much the only time a normal user would ever need to reinstall OS X is if something went seriously wrong with the system files. It's a very abnormal thing to encounter. And even if you somehow need to do so, the option to preserve user information has been in OS X for a long time.