If your like me, then your somewhat obsessive about keeping your possessions clean and sparkly as if they were new, and clearly my Mac is no exception.

There are a range of different products out on the market, some are targeted specifically at the Mac aluminium such as the iKlear Apple Polishing kit to good old fashioned glass cleaner. But these all have their inherent problems, and many seem to simply move the dirt around rather than actually remove it.

Apple recommend that you use nothing more than a damp rag to clean the Aluminium surfaces on it’s products, but that simply isn’t enough sometimes. We’ve already seen me polish an iPhone scratch free and in that article I advocated using some glass cleaner to remove the excess dust. This is fine when your iPhone is suitably clean as the glass cleaner is designed to cut through grease that might, in this case, be left by the polish I used, but it’s not an ideal solution.

Some people clean their computers with dish soap on a damp rag. I’m here to tell you to stop doing that now. It’s stupid for a start. Why? simple. Dish soap contains salt, an abrasive. It’s exactly why we don’t use it on cars, or at least we shouldn’t. That abrasive can damage the coating that helps prevent the aluminium on your Mac from turning a dullish yellow colour as it oxidises. Plus if your actually going to be polishing the thing there are far more refined ways of doing it. Safer too!

So that leads us with the interesting conundrum of cleaning, and I’m going to look at both iKlear and KeepITClean’s Macbook Polishing Kit (Affectionately known as AppleJuice owing to it’s bright green colour). Both kits come with cleaning cloths and large bottles as well as a set of instructions that I didn’t read. Whats interesting is that the AppleJuice contains a fiber cloth, and the iKlear contains (if you got the kit like me) a multitude of microfiber cloths amongst other things. their performance though is what matters, so I’m going to test them both on a fairly dirty Macbook palm rest.

After I decided what cloth to use for the iKlear (the thick microfiber woven cloth they say to use for the surface) I set about a simple test. Each side gets one spray of the cleaning solution, and a firm, single wipe downward.

Whilst the image might be slightly hard to make out, the left side is the AppleJuice (keepItClean) and the right is the iKlear. Both did some major cleaning work, with the KeepITClean solution lifting the dirt and moving it, whereas the iKlear lifted and dissolved whilst picking up more dirt from the pad. As you can see the cloth is noticeably darker. Despite this though the AppleJuice ‘seemed’ cleaner with a slightly smoother feel. You might think that the ‘feel’ of the surface is somewhat less important, but it’s a good degree of measurement of leftover grease.

All in all the KeepItClean is more effective at actually removing the dirt first hand, but it just doesn’t quite get there with the supplied cloths, use a better cloth and it works wonders. However, hats down comes the iKlear. Granted it’s more expensive, but it seems to get back to the finish far more effectivley than the KeepItClean even though it seems to be a milder cleaning agent (read – needs more applications)

On glass it’s a different story, the iKlear doesn’t quite cut through the grease as well as the KeepITClean solution although both provide an effective clean. The iKlear has a better microfiber cloth for cleaning the glass and it does eventually get the job done, with two or three applications being needed.

If your after an all rounder the KeepITClean solution is fantastic but you might want to invest in a couple of Microfiber cloths first. If it’s detailing your after, and you want to spend more time cleaning your Mac, use the iKlear. Just remember that it might take a little longer to clean your pride and joy.