12 Comments

Own an Intel Mac? Slim down your apps!

November 16, 2006 by in Apple,Downloadable with 12 Comments

xslim.jpg

I switched to an Intel based Macbook this week and was amazed to see 15 gigabytes of free space required to install the included Dual binary Mac OS 10.4 operating system. I was even more amazed when I ran the utility Xslimmer and saw that I could save over 1Gb in space by removing all extreneous source code from my Applications folder. Applications like Google Earth and Firefox moved from 101 and 50.2 megabytes to 52.8 and 30 megabytes respectfully. The application saved tons of space and I wish there was a source code slimmer for my entire dual binary operating system.

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  • http://www.pjllobell.com PVL

    How about one of those for windows?

  • Rob D

    PVL…How about you switch to Mac?

  • http://www.digitalknk.com/ KNK

    This also works for PPC based Macs :) Not just for intel.

  • http://www.zeusbox.org kuswanto

    The Link the Xslimmer page is broken.

  • http://5thirtyone.com Derek

    @KNK: True. For the most part, PPC users enjoy the convenience of PPC downloads on some application pages. However, more often than not, Intel users are forced to download heavier UB versions. Good point though slimming down apps on both sides of the fence.

  • xSmurf

    P.S. This can also be done using, the built in, “ditto” command from the terminal.

    $ man ditto
    –arch arch Thin multi-architecture binaries (“fat binaries”) to the
    specified architecture. If multiple –arch options are
    specified then the resulting destination file will contain
    each of the specified architectures (if they are present in
    the source file). arch should be specified as “ppc”,
    “i386″, etc.

  • Brandon

    Be careful with this program, I stripped down several apps and 2 of them stopped working, i think it was Toast and World of Warcraft.

  • Ben

    World of Warcraft craped out on me and made another app of my not work. Use with caution. It didnt really save a lot of room for me anyway.

  • http://5thirtyone.com Derek

    Make sure that the backup option is enabled in the Preferences. I’ve tested with success the following:

    TextMate, KIT, iChat, Firefox, CSSEdit, OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, Aperture, Image Tricks, iTunes, iCal, CandyBar, Disco, Garageband, essentially all the iApps & iWorks, MusicCast…

  • Numper

    WoW is in the blacklist of the app. I don’t have it installed, but from what I’ve heard even the slightest modification to WoW is considered a hack attempt by the program. For example, changing the app icon.

    I did drop the entire app folder to Xslimmer, slim down everything, and, so far, I have not had any issues.

  • Charlie

    I had an unregistered copy of Reason (the music program) and it stopped working after slimming it down. And I use Reason everyday so it was working ok. I’m on a PPC.

  • louis

    where did you find the unregistered version of reason?lostr3m3dy@mac.com….please contact me

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