Antivirus, system cleanup, and much more

News flash: Macs can develop problems, just like any computers. But they tend to run fine without antivirus software and the general vigilance that helps keep PCs trouble-free (some of ’em must run fine, right?). But that doesn’t mean your Mac wouldn’t benefit from some occasional maintenance. Enter MacKeeper, a suite of tools aimed at keeping your Mac healthy. That’s a bold claim, and trust is important when using any app, but it’s crucial when your system is on the line. Unfortunately MacKeeper, with its occasionally awkward English and warnings about the importance of scanning OS X for viruses, makes a shaky first impression (the overbearing emphasis—in and out of the app—on MacKeeper’s Facebook popularity doesn’t help). When it comes to maintaining our Macs, we want Don Draper. MacKeeper delivers Pete Campbell.

A Finder-like view of files lets you search, preview with Quick Look, and sort files before deciding what to do with them.

Like Pete, MacKeeper is nothing if not ambitious. Its antivirus scanner scours your hard drive and selected folders manually or on a schedule. A collection of file management tools can back up, encrypt, search, and permanently erase (or recover) documents. It even scans your drive for applications, grabbing updated versions automatically. MacKeeper can free disk space by uninstalling applications with their related files and deleting duplicate documents, PowerPC binaries, extraneous language packs, and much more. There’s even an antitheft service that reports your stolen Mac’s location to ZeoBIT—but oddly, no disk repair utility is included. If you need help, support is available through toll-free calls, email, or live chat, though after a 15-day trial only email support is included with a basic single-computer license.

We had no problems on our test Macs before running MacKeeper and none afterward. In fact, we had gigabytes of extra drive space and zero viruses—surprise, surprise—to show for using it. The individual utilities do their jobs and are mostly simple to use. Still, our trust issues lingered.

Some tools make it too easy to disrupt important OS X components. The uninstaller offered only a basic warning (and, happily, asked for our administrator password) when deleting hard-to-replace utilities like Keychain Access. But it also only partially deleted our Adobe apps. The application updater marked Apple’s Mail and Chess as due for upgrades, then downloaded a new version of a similarly named (but totally different) chess game from Download.com. That’s a harmless head-scratcher for Mac veterans, but potentially troublesome for new users. And several MacKeeper tools duplicate existing OS X features—like backup, file searching, even choosing login items—while falling far short of Apple’s ease of use. Despite extensive customer-service options, MacKeeper probably isn’t something to install for Grandma to run on her iMac between your visits.

The bottom line. MacKeeper has a few interesting tools, but we found it useful mainly for freeing up drive space. Most users won’t need its antivirus feature and can safely get along with OS X’s built-in utilities for maintaining their Macs.