Have your say about Apple issues
The section of the mag where you get the chance to speak your mind on everything Apple-related
I really love your magazine and look forward to receiving it each month here in the United States. My question is one I think a lot of other readers would find interesting if they have an iPhone. How do I remove the ‘Other’ data that shows up in iTunes and takes up space on my iPhone?
I have been through most of the suggestions on the Apple Community Forums, as well as the suggestions found on internet searches, and none of these have been particularly successful.
If someone out there is clever enough to create an app to do this, I’m sure it would be a big best-seller! Until that happens, if there’s any information you could offer to reduce usage space on the iPhone, that would be much appreciated. Thanks! Patty Woodbury
Matt Bolton says: Ah, the mysterious ‘Other’ world! There are many tricks and ideas to try to get it down in any one instance, but we’ll assume from what you say, Patty, that you have indeed tried all the key ones. The thing is, ‘Other’ data really can be anything. Apple stores some things there, including Messages data, so if you send and receive and lot of media messages, that can cause it to grow, but many apps actually store their data in a way that appears as 'Other'. You can usually see which ones are taking up the most space on your phone by going to Settings > General > Usage, and looking at which apps are eating up your valuable storage. If even that seems unclear, the ultimate way to really know what's going on is to use a Mac app such as iExplorer or PhoneView to inspect the many hidden folders inside your iPhone, and see which are huge. Just don’t delete anything without knowing exactly what it is!
If you like your apps to be good looking, I won’t deny it’s a little Eighties in appearance, but once installed it’s very quick to enter transactions. My advice is to read the manual – you cannot use it without knowing a few things first!
For anyone buying and selling shares, it’s invaluable. Attempting to make the calculations and produce the reports it creates instantly in Excel is a monster job, otherwise.
The one drawback for Grahame is it only works in Windows. We have VMware Fusion installed just for this very one program, and I have to say it’s well worth it. Chris
Tom Harrod says: I suppose some people will bridle that Chris is suggesting a Windows app in the hallowed pages of MacFormat, but we’re pretty pragmatic here; whatever works for you. That’s actually one of the great things about using a Mac; it’s possible to run Windows apps if you need or want to. And it’s easy to do, too. Either use the bundled Boot Camp Assistant to partition off a section of your hard disk or SSD to install Windows onto – a process that’s actually much less painful than installing Windows on many PCs, just because Apple bundles all the drivers into one installer – or by using virtualisation apps such as Parallels Desktop or, as you do, VMware Fusion. Virtualisation apps mean you don’t have to reboot your Mac into Windows just to use one app; Windows and Mac apps can run side-by side.
That said, of course we prefer working in OS X when we can, so we might take a closer look at share-tracking software if there’s much appetite for it.