Ah, a clean install of Mac OS 10.4. Loverly. Think I’ll just download the latest nightly Minefield build and… MOTHER OF GOD!
This is one thing I simply cannot stand about OS X: the sheer size of almost every single application. If something is available for XP and OS X, it is almost guaranteed to be at least twice as big on the latter. VLC? 15MB on XP, 30MB on OS X. Dropbox? Same thing. And third-party apps aren’t the only ones: iTunes is infamously gigantic to download, along with every system update being apparently a complete reinstall — 80MB for a Java update? Give me a break! I have to stick to micro-sized free and open source apps just to avoid going over my bandwidth cap.
One of the big promises of Snow Leopard is that it will unify architectures (the universal binary is a start, but they’re going to nail it down further) and remove demonstrably unnecessary components to keep applications small in both download and install size. Hot damn will that be a relief.
And as long as we’re talking about Snow Leopard, it seems that the OpenCL spec, finalized in a hurry and presented to the partner companies, has been approved and released to the wild. Good times! Another reason Snow Leopard will be actually worth purchasing.
Update: Commenter MBob notes that the above filesize is due to a glitch on Mozilla’s side. I’m keeping the screenshot, though — it may be misleading, but it’s evocative!
i’m afraid there will be many bugs in snow leopard that i have to stick to 10.55 until 10.61/2/3 released.
According to nthomas from #firefox on the mozilla net at 00:04 on 2008/12/09:
“a temporary glitch meant there were lots of symbols included, it’ll be fixed in the next nightly build”
Good work making your point with what is a glitch!
It seems that, if downloading 80mb java updates once every three months* is going to effect your Comcast bandwidth cap … you have other issues.
Note: I’m not sure on the frequency of Apple’s Java updates, but they don’t appear to be that frequent.
Heh heh. Fair enough!
Still, the Minefield thing was just a reminder of issues I’ve always had with this OS. I’m just tired of the enormous size of practically everything on the OS. The included themes with iDVD, the printer library files taking up 20MB each…
Anyway, thanks for the info. I’ll update that. It seemed wrong to me in the first place, but it was too fun not to take a screenshot. :)
shut your mouth adi you whiney basturt.
LOL. wtf dude. it’s a major release, so it will have bugs. hope it’s not too problematic because i really love to use snow leopard.
Yeah, you do get a lot of crap pre-installed on macs. I don’t use any of iLife … so thus it is crap.
The reason is Universal applications – you in fact download two apps – PowerPC and Intel.
that’s right Ian, so better use xslimmer to make the apps smaller. but remember to backup because some of the applications eventhough it’s not being blacklisted will be refusing to work after getting slimmed. one example is CoverSutra.
Thankfully Adi can tell the future for use all.
Do you read tea leaves too?
By the way, when I upgraded to Leopard the day it was issued, I had ZERO problems. Not one. Please explain that while you tell me how many grandchildren I will have.
hey, i was talking about leopard. not snow leopard.
and if leopard have zero issues, why does apple update it from 10.51 to the recent released 10.55. to make change to the default wallpaper? you thick.
One thing overlooked here… Often with Windows application installers, the file you download is just a small installer.
Once you start up the installer, it completes the install by getting the actual data of the program over the internet… So the small download size of the initial file is a bit deceiving.
I suspect that Firefox installer is that small because of this.
what does the size of a third-party application have to do with the size of mac os x?
do you understand anything about computers?
Toss unnecessary localization files for smaller app sizes. I use Macaroni to do this automatically on a monthly basis. iTunes was 130 MB with them; now under 50 without.
Aha!
Mac OS X Apps are larger because:
1. They are two applications in one when Universal – i.e. one app for PowerPC, one app for Intel.
2. They have lots of localization files since they can run in multiple languages and countries.
Leopard will allow 64-bit apps, thus Apps will be also larger since they will contain 3 applications in one – a 32-bit PowerPC, a 32-bit Intel, and a 64-bit Intel.
In Windows, you have to use totally separate applications – one for 32-bit, one for 64-bit. One application can’t run both in 32-bit Windows and 64-bit Windows.
The price you pay for having extreme flexibility in underlying hardware and language support is in having larger files.
However, I love it.
This means, I can have a single drive containing my Mac OS X and Applications and have them run in PowerPC, 32-bit Intel, and 64-bit Intel and in several languages. This makes Mac OS X highly portable.
In fact, it is so portable, it comes in its own version for the iPhone and iPod Touch: OS X.
You certainly can’t say that about Windows.
What kind of bad reporting is this? If the glitch on the Mozilla web page has been updated, it is only right that you fix the screenshot. Aren’t you happy with a 100% increase in file size? Besides, what’s a few more megabytes here and there? Need that extra bandwidth to download HD pr0n I suppose.
And what’s to say that after Snow Leopard this will stop? Apple is slimming down their own apps, not Mozilla’s. Since Mozilla obviously will want Firefox to run on older PPC Macs, they will keep including all that code till way into the future. So keep your rant to your personal blog and bring in the professionalism.
(Prepared to bear the brunt of this rant)
i just check getfirefox.com and the download size is less than 20megs. maybe the website checks whether we are using PPC or intel.