Developer Coach

Many modern operating systems offer compression at the individual file level.  This is most useful when it is transparent, allowing all programs and utilities to take advantage of compression without a need for specific programming.  Contrast this with compressed file or archive formats, such as zip, bzip2, gzip, which aren’t typically handled directly by applications and therefore cannot be described as transparent.  As we…

A common question asked by Mac users is: Does my HFS+ file system get fragmented and what should I do about it?  This question is most often asked by those who have experience with the Windows operating system, where defragmentation tools are readily available, visible to the user, and frequently recommended (at least historically).  Apple does not generally recommend defragmentation for HFS+, but let’s…