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Your Mac has thousands of files tucked inside. Which files are taking up tons of space? It’s not always obvious as you peruse your home folder in the Finder.
You could make a Smart Folder and tell it to show you files over a certain size. Or you could open the Inspector and click all over the place looking for a folder stuffed with nine hundred raw image files. But there’s another way.
Donation-ware Disk Inventory X is a handy little application for quickly spotting the space hogs on your Mac. The program creates a graphical representation - called a treemap - of your disk (disks) with larger files displayed as large color-coded blocks. Large folders are also readily apparent, with their contents shown as tiny little blocks.
The interface is well-designed - making it easy to hop around the large occupants on your drives. A path is displayed showing the location of a selected block. A floating window can provide detailed information about each file. Disk Inventory X also has options to reveal files in Finder or delete them through a handy control-click menu.
It’s not the only way to manage your disk space - but it’s fast and well-designed. If you need to find some quick candidates for deletion Disk Inventory X could be the tool you’re looking for.
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This was Murphy’s second entry in the Macinstruct tutorial contest. Murphy didn’t win anything. Maybe next year. If you want to check out the winning entries follow this link and take a look at numbers 26, 6, and 18. They’re the winners. Congrats!
We posted something like this last year, but this screencast does things just a little bit differently. Instead of showing hidden files in Finder to set the background image Murphy uses the ln command in Terminal to create a soft link to the image file. One advantage is that you don’t have to go back and turn off the display of hidden files when you’re done.
Murphy thinks this is a great way to send someone files - if you know the recipient is using a Mac. Using your company logo as a background can give your materials that extra touch that sets them apart.
Click here to see Murphy’s original custom dmg post.
NOTE: This isn’t working the same way in Leopard. I don’t have a solution yet.
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Murphy took a look at a friend’s iPhone the day after iDay. Here are some observations from a brief dash through the features:
The video is beautiful. Not only that, but the transitions from one feature to another are absolutely seamless. When you rotate from vertical to horizontal the display magically morphs from one view to the other - it’s subtle and quick. The scrolling is smooth. When you get to the end of a page there’s a pleasant bounce rather than an abrupt stop. The resolution is fantastic.
Little things Murphy hadn’t seen before: Like having multiple browser windows arranged side by side, which you can jump between by dragging left or right, much like Cover Flow. And the camera - this was cool. As you rotate the iPhone the image on screen stays still. It’s always right-side up. Very cool. Almost makes up for no video!
A lot of mistakes had to be corrected as Murphy typed, and the suggested word wasn’t always what he was after. But we’re optimistic that practice will make this better for iPhone users. It doesn’t mean much, Murphy finds typing on a Q unbearable because it’s so narrow. He needs a reasonably wide keyboard he can thumb-tap. Not really a complaint. These devices aren’t laptops - so obviously there’s a size / ease-of-use trade off. More importantly, Murphy is thoroughly impressed with what he’s read about the technology and logic built into the keyboard.
The Google maps feature looked good. Murphy tried out the satellite view and was impressed with the image quality. He didn’t try the driving directions.Moving through contacts is smooth and quick. It looks like it would be easy to navigate a long list. Cover Flow was as clear as the demos. But the two finger zoom on pictures and web pages seemed a little awkward. Again, maybe Murphy isn’t coordinated enough to own an iPhone.
It’s surprising that you can’t use the iPhone as a storage device. A story on AppleInsider indicates this could change. Murphy thinks you should be able to download files from a web site, like a zip archive. And there should be some kind of file management interface like Finder. The Appleinsider story is very promising, hopefully there’s some truth to it.
Short wish list: Speed dials would be nice. Songs as ring tones. Murphy really wants third party apps. Skype, Salling Clicker, VNC. An SSH client would be nice too. And Flash!The phone is built on OS X. If Apple’s going to brag about that little nugget the rest of us should be able to take advantage of it.
For tons of users the fact that it doesn’t run SSH means absolutely nothing. To Murphy it’s big. Plenty of users won’t care about some of the stuff Murphy is hoping for. But for many IT professionals the omissions could be a deal breaker.
Bottom line - the iPhone is a beautiful piece of technology. Impressive hardware, well-conceived software, snappy performance. What it does it does well. Better than well. As Walt said, it’s fun to use.Note: That’s not a real iPhone in the picture.
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Murphy took a field trip to the Park Road AT&T store to visit two friends who were waiting in line. Check out the pictures, it’s one seedy looking strip mall. The crowd didn’t look like Apple marketing materials either. Meaning they hadn’t fallen from a J. Crew catalog - pretty people just back from snowshoeing or sailing. Or playing rugby by a rustic cabin with a calm lake in the background. They looked like……nerds. They hadn’t been there long, but a few looked a little rough - like they’d spent the night in the parking lot.
The Park Villa strip mall hosting the AT&T store is only a five minute drive from Southpark Mall, where the Apple Store is located. But the Apple Store is surrounded by Burberry, Hermes, Tumi, and Louis Vuitton. You can read the sign to see what’s parked next to the AT&T store.
Sean May (NBA - Charlotte Bobcats) was waiting in line. But he blended right in with everyone else. (photos) His shorts looked like they were two days late for the laundry hamper. Why did he wait in line himself? He wasn’t talking Mac shop with the nerds. Seems like he could have come up with $15 an hour to have someone wait in line for him. Wasn’t that the going rate?
Murphy’s friends were queued about 40 people back - and the person in front of them got the last phone! Looks like the 40 phones per store information was accurate. Update: They got their phones at the Apple store a couple hours later.
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