Although Apple is marketing Mac OS X Snow Leopard as an operating system update with "no new features," under the hood improvements will actually translate into a slew of new enhancements, five of which are described herein.
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Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:2005-06-29
I thought about that right after I posted. I always strip out every language but US English when I install OS X; even though I speak Spanish and a little Japanese, I don't work in those languages or any of the others so they are unnecessary.
I still think it's a sensationalist article though. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if their "Snow Leopard" figures are actually just plain Leopard with the languages removed.
Member since:2006-01-02
Member since:2007-07-01
Maybe you've used Xslimmer, removed languages or whatever. The original sizes were pretty accurate. From Macbook Air 10.5.3 with default install:
Mail: 289 MB
iCal: 91 MB
TextEdit: 22 MB
For TextEdit, the universal binary itself is only 264 kB. Every language seems to consume about 1 megabyte of space, and there are many languages. The language packs consist of lots and lots of files, 8 to 200 kB in size. Strings, html help texts (400 kB), icons (200 kB) etc.
Member since:2006-02-05
in fact, apple takes it even further with both PPC and Intel binaries shipping in every package.
proper package management and deployment stories deal with the issues around shared libraries. on modern windows and linux machines, it is a complete non issue, and keeps the size of binaries very small.
Member since:
2005-06-29
Those are bogus sizes. Here's what I get on my Mac (rounded to nearest MB):
Automator -- 2 MB
Calculator -- 2 MB
Chess -- 4 MB
Dictionary -- 1 MB
Font Book -- 2 MB
iCal -- 28 MB
iChat -- 22 MB
Image Capture -- 2 MB
iSync -- 15 MB
Mail -- 45 MB
Preview -- 3 MB
QuickTime -- 31 MB
Safari -- 51 MB
Stickies -- 1 MB
TextEdit -- 1 MB
Stickies and TextEdit are actually less than one MB each (444 KB and 992 KB respectively), but I rounded them up. The only ones even close to the chart are Safari and Chess, and some are down right laughable! A 13 MB calculator? A 22 MB rich text editor? I know AppleInsider has been prone to speculation and exaggeration in the past, but what the hell?
As others have pointed out, one must consider that a Mac .app is actually a special folder with all components necessary to run the application; it's roughly equivalent to compiling every necessary library and support file into the executable on other platforms. Because of this, Mac apps are generally a little bit bigger than their Windows and *nix counterparts, but not by nearly as much as the article makes out. This method also nullifies dependency hell (DLL hell for the Windows camp) which means much less stress on the end user.