Snow Leopard

Rhisiart · #1 June 24th, 2008, 01:54 AM

So 10.6, due to be released next Spring, will not include any new features, but will be slimmer with a greater focus on performance.

The Utilities folder will slim down from 468 MB to just 111 MB. Mail will go from 287 MB to 91MB and iCal & iChat will both half in size (source here).

I wonder whether the cost of Snow Leopard may slim down too?

Viro · #2 June 24th, 2008, 02:12 AM

Quote:

I wonder whether the cost of Snow Leopard may slim down too?

Many cars have a sports GT version, that is slimmed down and the excess baggage all removed. No carpets, no stereo, lighter seats, etc. You'd think that with less material being put into the car, it'd be cheaper...

Same deal here with OS X. Performance optimization can frequently be a daunting challenge. Sometimes, even more daunting than writing the app in the first place.

pds · #3 June 24th, 2008, 03:58 AM

On RoughlyDrafted I saw a graphic of the savings in different apps... amazing.

From what I see there, a large portion of the savings will come in the localization files. Because of the resolution independence, screen characters will be all vector graphics, totally scalable to a look good at any resolution, so that the many sized bitmaps that were packaged to make the screen font look smooth can be eliminated.

There are lots of other things Snow Leopard will do, but I understand that this is what will give the size savings.

Rhisiart · #4 June 24th, 2008, 09:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viro

Many cars have a sports GT version, that is slimmed down and the excess baggage all removed. No carpets, no stereo, lighter seats, etc. You'd think that with less material being put into the car, it'd be cheaper...

Same deal here with OS X. Performance optimization can frequently be a daunting challenge. Sometimes, even more daunting than writing the app in the first place.

So you watch Top Gear too?

ElDiabloConCaca · #5 June 24th, 2008, 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pds

On RoughlyDrafted I saw a graphic of the savings in different apps... amazing.

What's strange is that my TextEdit is already 2MB, not 22MB as that graph claims. My Stickies is also 1MB, not 9MB as the graph claims.

Both of those applications of mine report that they're "Universal", and sure enough, when I copy them to my PowerPC Mac, they open and run just fine.

What's going on here?

Viro · #6 June 24th, 2008, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rhisiart

So you watch Top Gear too?

Yeah. I love it

Viro · #7 June 24th, 2008, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElDiabloConCaca

What's strange is that my TextEdit is already 2MB, not 22MB as that graph claims. My Stickies is also 1MB, not 9MB as the graph claims.

Both of those applications of mine report that they're "Universal", and sure enough, when I copy them to my PowerPC Mac, they open and run just fine.

What's going on here?

The 22 MB that article quotes is counting the 18 translations that TextEdit supports. You've either used xslimmer or you've been sensible and chosen not to install the languages you do not need.

**Giaguara** · #8 June 25th, 2008, 02:54 AM

I just tested slimming down manually TextEdit.

In my 10.5.3, the original installation (10.5) was made using ONLY English and 2 selected languages out of way too many.

On every subsequent Apple software update, the initial selection of installed languages is not respected, and all language packs are installed for all installed applications. This has been occurring since Mac OS X first versions came out, and has never been fixed, and most likely will never be fixed (even to have only two software update options: English only vs International including all localizations).

So, my system that was installed in 3 languages in total, not all 20+ included in system, has all the added localizations I will never need, every time softwareupdate is run.

Because of this, TextEdit in 10.5.3 was 22.1 MB. After manually removing all the localizations no one will ever use on the Mac, the size of the application went down from 22.1 MB to 4.2 MB. If I removed the other 2 out of 3 remaining localizations, I would be at 2 MB.

And a similar space saving can be done additionally to all those universal applications that install PPC code on your Intel Mac, or Intel code on your PPC.

Monolingual and Delocalizer remove the localizations you don't need but it can also be done manually.

I hope this marketing material for Snow Leopard will mean that your 2 MB TextEdit that gets to a bloated 22 MB with all the localizations you'll never use (the maximum languages I know anyone know is barely around 10, and even they don't use their computers in ALL the languages they know) will be 2 MB if you select to install it in English only, and stay 2 MB because it will never add Korean, Polish, Norwegian, Dutch, Portuguese of Portugal, Greek, Russian, Traditional Chinese and a number of other languages.

I find it huge bandwidth waste to force all downloads be with both architecture and all languages even when user has indicated in initial installation that they want US English (or some other language) only. In 10.4 the updates were in average 100-200 MB as they had a few less localizations, and were hardware specific (PPC and Intel versions separate). Now they seem to be over 300 MB for each . update. 300 + MB for 10.5.1, the same for 10.5.2 and so on.
Anyone remember how small and compact 10.0 or 10.1 updates were?