Aladdin Systems, Inc. Announces Spring Cleaning, A New Utility Designed to Clean up Macintosh Hard Drives; Aladdin Systems Acquires New Utility Package.WATSONVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 30, 1996--Aladdin Systems, Inc., developer of the worldwide Macintosh compression standard, StuffIt, has acquired LaundroMac from The Excelsior Group. Aladdin is working closely with the original developer and will release a new version called Spring Cleaning Spring cleaning is the period in spring time set aside for cleaning a house, normally applied in colder climates, where the house is difficult to clean during winter. in November. Spring Cleaning is the first uninstaller Software that helps uninstall applications from a computer. See uninstall. (operating system) uninstaller - A utility program to remove another application program from a computer's disks. for Macintosh users and helps them to optimize their hard drive by targeting and removing redundant and unnecessary files, folders, and fonts. Spring Cleaning's eight utilities search a user's hard drive to safely uninstall To remove hardware or software from a computer system. In order to remove a software application from a PC, an uninstall program, also called an "uninstaller," deletes all the files that were initially copied to the hard disk and restores the AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS, WIN.INI and SYSTEM. old applications, remove duplicate and unused fonts, find invalid alias files, trim fat binary Software that is distributed in two formats in order to ease transition to a new hardware architecture. For example, when Apple switched from Motorola 68K CPUs to PowerPC (PPC) chips in 1994, it provided a fat binary format containing both 68K and PPC machine languages. applications, find orphaned help files, and clean out users' Preferences folders. "Spring Cleaning is the safe and easy way to clean up your Mac. It is a perfect addition to the Aladdin line of utility software," said Hillel Cooperman, Spring Cleaning product manager. "We have always stayed in close contact with our customers and do all we can to meet their needs. Spring Cleaning fits a niche that currently is unavailable on the Macintosh. We expect this suite of housekeeping utilities to be a big hit with Macintosh users." Spring Cleaning helps to save disk space by tidying up a user's files. Each utility is designed to search for specific types of files, folders, or fonts that may be wasting disk space. The utilities include: MacUninstaller (removes applications and associated titles), Alias Resolver (repairs invalid aliases), Application Slimmer (slims applications), Folder Remover (clears empty folders), Font Remover (removes unnecessary fonts), Help Remover (finds unneeded help and documentation files), Orphan orphan: see adoption; foundling hospital; guardian and ward. See widow & orphan. Orphan See also Abandonment. Adverse, Anthony finally, at middle age, discovers origins. [Am. Lit. Adopter (assigns orphans to new applications), and Prefs Cleaner (cleans out Preferences folder). MacUninstaller is designed to help a user safely remove an application and its related files completely to eliminate unneeded, space-wasting files. "As applications grow more complex, software developers include more related files and folders with each installation and upgrade. MacUninstaller removes or moves these files without hassle," said Jonathan Kahn, vice president and general manager, consumer group. Alias Resolver searches for invalid alias files. (An alias file is a file that is used to point to another file). Alias Resolver will repair alias files found during the search and display any that cannot be repaired. The user can then delete the files, move them to another location, redirect re·di·rect tr.v. re·di·rect·ed, re·di·rect·ing, re·di·rects To change the direction or course of. n. A redirect examination. re the alias, replace the alias, or add it to the Alias Resolver memory so it will be ignored in future alias searches. Application Slimmer searches for fat binary programs. Fat binary applications are programs that contain a full set of program code for both PowerPC and Motorola 680x0 systems. Depending on whether a user has a PowerPC or a 680x0 based Macintosh, Application Slimmer will allow the user to delete the unnecessary code. For example, a Power Macintosh See Power Mac. (computer) Power Macintosh - Apple Computer's personal computer based on the PowerPC, introduced on 1994-03-14. Existing 680x0 code (both applications and device drivers) run on Power Macintosh systems without modification via a Motorola 68LC040 emulator. user could have all 680x0 code removed from their selected applications. Folder Remover searches for empty folders. Although these folders do not take up a lot of space, there are limits on the number of files and folders on any hard disk. Removing the empty folders helps users avoid reaching this limit, improves file searching speed, and helps clean up a cluttered hard disk. Font Remover builds a list of the installed fonts on a computer and searches for all three types of fonts: bitmap fonts See bitmapped font. (text) bitmap font - A font where each character is stored as an array of pixels (a bitmap). Such fonts are not easily scalable, in contrast to vectored fonts (like those used in PostScript). , TrueType outline fonts A type of font made from basic outlines of each character. The outlines are scaled into actual characters (bitmaps) before printing. See scalable font. (text) outline font - (Or "vector font") A font defined as a set of lines and curves as opposed to a bitmap font. , and PostScript font files. Font Remover will group these fonts into their appropriate families and allow you to work with them individually or in groups. Help Remover searches for the most common types of help and documentation files. A user has a choice of deleting or moving these files to create more room on their system. Orphan Adopter finds files that do not have the original application that created them and lets users assign them to another compatible application. Then users can open and print these files using their newly assigned "parent" applications. Prefs Cleaner searches for Preference files that are no longer needed. Power Macintosh users tend to accumulate many unneeded Preference files through installing demonstration software and shareware Software on the "honor system." The concept is that users try a product, and if they like it, they voluntarily pay a set registration fee or make a donation to the program's creator. There are tens of thousands of shareware programs; some fantastic, some awful. . Prefs Cleaner will eliminate these orphaned Preference files. "We have worked hard to bring Spring Cleaning to market as quickly as possible," Cooperman continued. "As we work on version 2.0 we are excited to include our customers in the development process. We will be encouraging our customers to register their comments about Spring Cleaning on our web site and will be offering free upgrades over the Internet of version 2.0 for registered users of version 1.0." Availability and Requirements Spring Cleaning has a street price of $69.95 and will be available in November from major distributors (Ingram Micro Ingram Micro, Inc. NYSE: IM a Fortune 100 company founded in 1979 and based in Santa Ana, California. It is the world’s largest technology distributor and a leading technology sales, marketing and logistics company. , Merisel), mail order catalogs and Aladdin Systems directly. An introductory price of $49.95 and a free upgrade to version 2.0 is being offered for a limited time. Spring Cleaning requires a Macintosh or MacOS compatible computer running System 7.0 or later. Four megabytes of RAM is recommended. Spring Cleaning is 680x0 and PowerPC native, and takes advantage of features in System 7.5 or later. About Aladdin Aladdin Systems, Inc. is the developer of the best-selling best·sell·er also best seller n. A product, such as a book, that is among those sold in the largest numbers. best compression software on the Macintosh. The award-winning StuffIt family of software is the Macintosh compression standard for desktop and Internet users Internet user n → internauta m/f Internet user Internet n → internaute m/f . Over 4,000 software developers, including Apple, Claris, Intuit in·tu·it tr.v. in·tu·it·ed, in·tu·it·ing, in·tu·its Usage Problem To know intuitively. [Back-formation from intuition. , and Microsoft, have licensed Aladdin's data compression data compression Process of reducing the amount of data needed for storage or transmission of a given piece of information (text, graphics, video, sound, etc.), typically by use of encoding techniques. and installation technology. Aladdin is located at 165 Westridge Drive, Watsonville, CA 95076, USA; telephone: (408)761-6200; URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. : http://www.aladdinsys.com: e-mail: info@aladdinsys.com. -0- NOTE TO EDITORS: Spring Cleaning and the Aladdin Logo are trademarks of Aladdin Systems, Inc. Spring Cleaning copyright (c) 1996 The Excelsior Group, portions copyright (c) 1996 Aladdin Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. MacUninstaller is a trademark of The Excelsior Group. Macintosh is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. All other product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective holders. CONTACT: Aladdin Systems Jennifer Lyng, 408/761-6200 x251 pr@aladdinsys.com |
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