Recovering space on a sparseimage file

If you’re like me and use sparseimage files for backing up your hard drive, you’ll notice that the disk can expand and shrink. But the cost is that, while the content on the image shrinks, the sparseimage file itself doesn’t, and you’re left with an ever-expanding image file.

The solution is to use hdiutil compact in the Terminal to reclaim the empty space:

localuser$ hdiutil compact /Volumes/HardDiskName/DiskFileName.sparseimage

Better yet, set up a script that runs as a cron job to do this automatically for you periodically!

Windows on an Intel Mac? It's here!

I never thought I’d see the day Apple first adopted Intel as its processor supplier, and I definitely didn’t see Apple opening up to let the Mac boot/run Windows. But that’s finally happened.

This should allow Apple to eventually control more of the home computer/notebook market share and compete heavily with other PC manufacturers, such as Dell. It also makes Intel and Microsoft happy! Bottom line is that Apple, MS, and Intel will all go on growing and cooperating to a certain extent, which is great for the computer user (and especially the Mac user).

More can be found here. Apple apparently will support dual booting, but 3rd party developers will have to save the day to allow simultaneous operation of both systems with a small performance hit. Either way this will solve many compatibility problems that plague Mac users, and this could even grow interest in Apple’s OS, as more PC users will be drawn to the Mac now.

Good business move Apple! And to think of the numerous reports of Apple’s demise over the years (check out Mac Observer’s Apple Death Knell Counter).

10.4.6 Update Problem and Fix

When I applied the 10.4.6 Combo updater for Tiger I couldn’t boot up again. The first symptom something was wrong was when I hit the restart button after installation; the thing hung up so I had to do a hard reboot. Afterwards, it would hang once the progress bar of the “Welcome to Macintosh” dialog went all the way across, or in other cases the desktop and cursor would appear and nothing else (no menu bar, dock, etc.).

Running the Applejack suite did nothing to fix the issue (in single-user mode), and I couldn’t boot up in safe mode. Reinstalling the update from another partition didn’t work either.

So while booted in the other partition, I deleted the cache files. The next reboot was fine, and it has been fine since.