Membranophonist’s Ramblings

During my holiday visit to Seattle, I helped two people address disk space shortages on their Macs. While purchasing additional storage was not the solution I recommended in either case, it got me thinking about the issue.

There are many places to buy storage online, and a few of them allow you to filter the options based on the Mac the drive will be in or attached to. This is helpful, but it would be better to filter the list automatically based on the known system configuration without requiring user input.

1. The Warning Dialog
   
   I didn’t have a screenshot of the actual current dialog, so I had to work off an old screenshot I found. Regardless, the only important difference is the addition of the Additional Storage button.

   

2. 1. Compatible Storage List with Item Details
      
      The list is generated based on your hardware. For example, if you have added an eSATA controller, eSATA drives would also be shown.

      Showing the formatted capacity makes it easier to determine exactly how much additional storage you will get. The filesystem type in parentheses could be a pop-up menu to select different formats.

      Additional item details could include cache size, noise levels, power consumption and conservation features, seek times, etc.

      

   2. Compatible Storage List with Item Reviews
      
      The value of reviews really depends on the number provided, but even one can contain useful information not provided elsewhere.

      

3. Reviewing Your Storage Order
   
   
4. Placing Your Storage Order
   
   All credit card type logos would be fully opaque until the first digit is input. Once input, the matching logo remains opaque while the others become semi-transparent.

   Checking “Ship to a different address…” would vertically expand the window to accommodate another set of fields for shipping information. Billing and shipping fields would be auto-completed based on your address book.
   

The Mac Pro, FireWire, Internal, USB, and generic External icons are property of Apple. The Cuica hard drive icon is Metal OS from Carlos Reyes' Carlito Drives set.

An Alternate Approach

System information could be sent to a web-based store as part of a generated URL (similar to Google Charts) after clicking Additional Storage on the warning dialog.