Useful utilities included with Mac OS X

Apple ships over 20 utility programs with Mac OS X. They're located in the Utilities folder, which is in the Applications folder on the user's hard drive. Most users will use at least one of these programs, so it's useful to know what utilities are available.

• Activity Monitor - An Apple program which resides in the Utilities folder. It allows users to monitor programs running on the Macintosh. The information it provides includes CPU usage, disk usage, real memory usage, virtual memory usage and the number of threads generated by the program.
• Airport Admin Utility - This utility allows users to configure and update Airport Base stations as well as Airport Express Base Stations.
• Console - Allows users to view error logs created by Apple and 3rd-party applications. Users can also delete log files using this program.
• Disk Utility - Allows users to repair format, erase, and repair hard drives. This utility will also create RAID disks.
• Grab - Allows users to do screen captures. The system has built into it the ability to take a snapshot of the whole screen, a selected part of the screen, or the contents of a window but Grab provides the ability to do things like timed snapshots. This is useful in situations where a user might want to take a picture of a menu, for example.
• Keychain Access - Allows users to examine the contents of their keychains, add or delete keys, lock or unlock keychains and repair a keychain.
• Migration Assistant - The application which allows users to transfer their applications and data from an old system to a new system. The systems are connected via a FireWire cable and the old computer is in Target Disk Mode.
• Network Utility - Allows users to check the state of the network. Network Utility will do pings, DNS lookups, traceroutes, whois, finger and port scans.
• Printer Setup Utility - Allows users to setup, monitor and delete printers.
• System Profiler - Allows users to get a comprehensive look at the hardware and software installed on their computer.
• Terminal - Allows users to gain access to the UNIX system which is the heart of Mac OS X.
• X11 - This is an optional part of Mac OS X which the user can install from the Mac OS X installation disks. It provides an enviroment where users can run thousands of often free programs found on the Internet. Sourceforge is a good source for X11 applications.