Universal Binaries are great. One file to download, and it works on any machine. It’s the epitomy of apple engineering, and the adage that the less the user has to think the better, works magnificently in this situation. Now, for most users the thought of extra wasted space in the universal binary never really crosses their mind. The ends justify the means. Users can download one file, and their problems are fixed, so who cares if the files are a little bigger than the ppc counterpart, or the intel only code base. But, for those “in the know” these files can eat up your hard drive space pretty quickly when they are installed. If you’re working on an older machine, say an iBook with a stock 30gb drive that ships with the G4 model, ever little MB counts. Xslimmer cleans up the code base, and only keeps the code that is need to work on your architecture. In short, it does away with all that Intel, or PPC goodness that you don’t use.
There are some huge concerns when using an application that strips code from your installed applications, most notably, is it going to mess up my install and leave me with a completely unusable program…
For the most part, every account i’ve seen by users of this program indicate that it works exactly as advertised, and I have to agree, I’ve yet to mess up any programs. Now, a word of caution, any time you install and use an application that alters system settings, or cleans up your hard drive it is probably a good idea to make sure you have a backup in place in case things hit the fan quickly. So, take this reminder as a public service announcement and go back up your system. Xslimmer is a nice little app and does what it says it will really well, so check it out.
