How to Clear Out The Clutter and Save Your Mac (Part 1 of 2)
Save a Mac Today
Once or twice a month I get a call from someone who wants advice on buying a new Mac. It's fun. I love helping people who are excited about the Apple ecosystem and want to find ways to take their Apple experience to the next level. Unlike raising children, it's something over which we have a bit of control and the outcome is fairly well defined.
Then, ten or fifteen minutes into the conversation, as we talk about their current Mac, I hear some red flags and the reasoning spins off in a whole other direction. Phrases like "can't install." And "won't download." Or the granddaddy of all error messages, "not enough room."
There are plenty of great reasons to get a new Mac, but a full hard drive, by itself, isn't one of them. Buying a new Mac because you are out of storage space is like getting a new car because your tires have gone bald. Most Macs can have a new, larger hard drive or (even better) solid state drive installed for a fraction of the cost of buying a comparable new Mac.
But even better, your chances are good that you just have unnecessary files cluttering up your storage space, making it harder for your Mac to do its stuff, and frustrating you with error messages that make you think the computer is on its last legs.
If buying a new Mac is driven by anything relating to storage space, take some time to look at what's on your hard drive and how much of it you really need at your fingertips. I say that because getting files off your Mac's internal drive is not the same as deleting them altogether. We all have files that we keep "just because," and old documents that need to be archived but don't deserve to take up the active space on your hard drive. Just as with paper documents, they can be moved to a filing cabinet; in our case, a flash drive or external hard drive.
Movies, TV shows and podcasts don't need to stay on your Mac unless you are planning to enjoy them offline, like on a plane. They can always be downloaded again as needed. And there are plenty of cute photos and videos that come as mail and message attachments but really have a 2 week shelf life and we never bothered to delete them. Not to mention the multiple takes of our family group for this year's holiday card.
Because we can't easily see how full the computer is, like we can with a closet or basement, it's easy to just keep adding files and photos and videos until we've used up all the space available. Over the course of a typical Mac lifetime of 5-8 years, we can add in a lot of stuff.
What to do?
Look for the second part coming tomorrow, where we look at how to save space and save your Mac!