In the mid-1990s, two of the most popular Mac utility software titles were Norton Utilities (Symantec) and Now Utilities (Now Software). Soon, Now Utilities disappeared from the Mac software market. But Norton Utilities survived the rest of the decade.

Norton Utilities was virtually THE system utility software for Mac users throughout the second half of the 90s. Nonetheless, some people didn’t like it. When I first started my Pd.D work in 1996, one female graduate student from Korea said she didn’t like it because Norton Utilities destroyed files. Then a new software title came out of nowhere and quickly captured the hearts of Mac users who needed a different choice for diagnosing and repairing disk problems. That was TechTool Pro.

Compared with Norton Utilities, TechTool Pro was a mere disk-problem diagnostic program equivalent to Norton Doctor, which is just one of the components of Norton Utilities. To my knowledge, TechTool Pro didn’t have a repair function at first. Anyway, Norton Utilities was succeeded by Symantec SystemWorks, but it was eventually discontinued around 2003. In contrast, TechTool Pro has expanded its region and now contains such components as disk optimization (Optimization), data recovery (Data Recovery), format & initialization (Wipe Data). Now, TechTool Pro sounds just like old Norton Utilities, doesn’t it?

By the way, a major reason why we decided to use the latest version of TechTool Pro 4 is that we actually have a serious system problem. I know the initial origin of the problem. It’s open-source multiplayer game Urban Terror. About 3 or 4 weeks ago, we started having a system shutdown – the desktop suddenly becomes dark with a message that you need to restart your Mac by holding down and releasing the start button at the back. It’s something that doesn’t occur very often, not even once a year. But we had this system shutdown almost every 2 or 3 hours after downloading customized maps. Eventually, we deleted entire game files, and the problem was gone, we thought. Then a system shutdown started occurring again a week ago. We now have a system shutdown almost every other day. And we just had it about 12 hours ago. This time, we get a system shutdown only while using web browser called Camino. Continue reading →