Macworld Forums: MacPaw CleanMyMac 1.9 - Macworld Forums

Post your comments for MacPaw CleanMyMac 1.9 here

Judging by comments on Versiontracker and Macupdate the devs are clearly soliciting five star reviews in return for some type of kickback to the user.

In addition there are two prices, one for a six month license and one for a lifetime one. Both Versiontracker and Macupdate only display the 6 month price, and haven't made this clear.

This feels dodgy to me. This kind of app is powerful and potentially destructive if used wrongly, and given that I've seen some dubious practices before I've even downloaded it, I won't be taking the risk. I'll stick with tried, tested and free alternatives like Onyx.

cjedj, on 13 July 2010 - 07:32 AM, said:

I have had the exact same reservations. I did however use it on my MacBook. Nonetheless, I am reticent to endorse this product and believe that a thorough review from a credible source is imperative. I have since learned about Onyx and suspect that is, indeed a safer alternative.

Come on guys. I use Onyx as well, but it is a different type of app. Onyx will never clean that much items. If you need a cleaner - get CleanMyMac. Onyx is just a tool to tweak some features of MacOS. It's like comparing Pixelmator and Textedit and say "you can also type symbols in Pixelmator"

cjedj, do you really think you can solicite some results on Versiontracker or Macupdate? The pricing problem is not the developer's problem there. The software communities just post the lowest option available as a rule. If you are interested in a product - go to the developer's official store.

I've been using this app since their 1.5.0 version and it is great. Even if you are a bit of a noob, it is really difficult to ruin something with CLeanMyMac unintentionally. It is a CLEANER and you have to take the risk. Yes, you can break an app once in a while - just reinstall it and add to their ignore list to forget about the problem. It's a minor price, worth paying for the benefits of this product.

BTW, MacWorld knows what to post on their site!

I knew I've made the right choice and Macworld has just dispelled my doubts.

I agree. Onyx is top notch. It has been part of my bi-weekly regiment for years. I also recommend AppleJack which was out of commission for a long time when snow leopard came out (no 64 bit support). Early this week Applejack released a new version and I am super psyched. AppleJack and Onyx take care of every problem I have ever had (OS related) on my Macbook Pro. Using anything that is not well documented and critically reviewed for repairing permissions and cleaning junk files will inevitably lead to a world of pain... particularly those that strip out "PPC versions from a UB application". I find that task particularly unsettling.

I went to the Software vendor's forum and looked at the "Feedback & Bug Report" Section, which is in general a good thing for me to do in order to get a 'feeling' about the quality of a product. Maybe this should also be recommended for authors of MacWorld if they write about a Gem product to gather some background information.
Though this is now a minor and more my personal thought, I was not very pleased what I was reading there especially with most of the answers the moderator "Greka" gave. I definitely disliked the advice to install just a software package again. This is always the easy careless way out for software companies if anything goes wrong with their application, but which costs the user normally quite some amount of time and work to do, rather than making an applications functioning and exercising better in the first place.
In general I dislike businesses whereas the moderator does not use his/her real name, and if so in this case of MacPaw, the person then is not listed as one of the business members under "About".
CleanMyMac seems indeed fatal if one is not equipped with a thorough knowledge and one click can quickly result in a lot of damage.
"Greka" scared me off this product with her 'feisty' answers. Very nice website with a nice product, but my gut feeling is unfortunately not with them anymore.

CleanMyMac is beautifully designed app. That's true. And Onyx just seams too basic.

However current release of CleanMyMac 1.9 cleaning algorithm has some bugs resulting in removal of system application such as Utilities etc. New beta 2.0 looks promising.

My vote for CleanMyMac.

P.S. Love MainMenu too

CleanMyMac 1.9 have a problems in this stage of development, how ever when improved I will definitely buy it .

I'm a Steam user and when I used this application it erased a lot of files from my Steam folder. Text would come up blocky and incorrect after using this application. I really can't explain why but after some testing it was clear to me it was caused by this application.

Tinkertool System can also do quite a bit of cleanup, with a cautious approach.

I'm always suspect of these "cleaner" type apps. Every one I've ever seen just gives you a list of files with names that don't really give you any idea what they are for, and then expect you to know whether it is okay to delete them or not. And most of the time the average user has no idea what is safe to get rid of or not. Too easy to hose up a system or a vital app. Until they come up with an app that can truly determine if a file is needed or not (or at least give you an full and accurate description of it's use), I'll pass.

The software may be fine. But on principle, I have to reject their payment scheme. If you don't by the lifetime license, they're asking people to pay $15 for a limited trial. Listen, guys, this is a minor utility, very optional. I guess the market will tell...

From the description given here, it looks like the free (and long-established) applications Onyx and Monolingual together accomplish the same things this app is supposed to do.

Maybe there's some cultural/language issues (the developers are in the Ukraine), but the tone of their responses on their user forum doesn't exactly encourage me to spend money on this software either. "Amateur" and "unprofessional" are the impressions I'm left with after reading through some of the comments.

PaulGeller, on 13 July 2010 - 08:30 AM, said:

I looked up AppleJack on SourceForge and it lists 1.6 as the most recent version. But the comments for that indicate it isn't updated to Snow Leopard. Is there a link to the latest version of AppleJack that is Snow Leopard-compatible?