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6GB Lighter.....

P

Pete99

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 13, 2008
15
0
One of my mates is really getting on my back at the moment saying that the only reason that Snow Leopard is 6GB lighter is because it doesnt have PPC support.

Surely this is bs, leopard wont install components that are needed for PPC on an intel would it?
 
Pete99 said:
One of my mates is really getting on my back at the moment saying that the only reason that Snow Leopard is 6GB lighter is because it doesnt have PPC support.

Surely this is bs, leopard wont install components that are needed for PPC on an intel would it?
Click to expand...

It's part of the reason. The built-in apps in Leopard are Universal, meaning they have both PPC and Intel code. All SL apps will be intel only. In the keynote they said they are also using compression technologies to free up space as well. PPC Support is still there in the form of Rosetta.
 
Related question...

I've got this app I absolutely love called DateTree. In Activity Monitor, it's listed as a PowerPC process instead of Intel like everything else.

It wont work with SL, right? :(
 
RKpro said:
Related question...

I've got this app I absolutely love called DateTree. In Activity Monitor, it's listed as a PowerPC process instead of Intel like everything else.

It wont work with SL, right? :(
Click to expand...

It'll work fine. Rosetta is still incorporated into Snow Leopard.
 
The code to support PPC is relatively small, and this is not responsible for much of the decrease. A bigger chunk of it than losing PPC support is from the HFS+ file compression bit that they mentioned in the Keynote (but did not detail).

However, my feeling is that the largest chunk of the savings probably comes from the idea that they are no longer including all of the printer drivers, but rather you download them as you need them (automatic process). The default in 10.5 was to install everything and that is a lot of wasted space in order for it should just be there if you ever need it.
 
larkost said:
The code to support PPC is relatively small, and this is not responsible for much of the decrease. A bigger chunk of it than losing PPC support is from the HFS+ file compression bit that they mentioned in the Keynote (but did not detail).

However, my feeling is that the largest chunk of the savings probably comes from the idea that they are no longer including all of the printer drivers, but rather you download them as you need them (automatic process). The default in 10.5 was to install everything and that is a lot of wasted space in order for it should just be there if you ever need it.
Click to expand...

Bingo.

Every since I found about how big the printer drivers are, I always reinstalled Mac OS X without them. It saved 2-3 Gigs.

So yeah, a combination of removed PPC and lack of printer drivers (which will be downloaded via internet once the printer is detected) is how Snow Leopard saves space.
 
I always skipped installing printer drivers anyway. It took about an hour to install 10.5 so I can assume it should take only forty minutes to install 10.6.

So when do you think Apple will drop Rosetta? 10.7?
 
many of the native apps have been redesigned to make them faster and smaller.....though Apple ended the hardware transition to Intel by 2007, they wanted to do the same for software.

IBM's PowerPC wasn't keeping pace with the performance and speed that Intel was offering, so that's one reason Apple chose to forego the PowerPC in favor of Intel. Also, Intel results have show significant gains.
 
KingYaba said:
I always skipped installing printer drivers anyway. It took about an hour to install 10.5 so I can assume it should take only forty minutes to install 10.6.

So when do you think Apple will drop Rosetta? 10.7?
Click to expand...

Apple didn't drop Classic OS9 support until the Intel version of Tiger. I don't think Rosetta will be dropped as quickly as 10.7. I wonder how many people are still relying on PPC binaries...
 
larkost said:
The code to support PPC is relatively small, and this is not responsible for much of the decrease. A bigger chunk of it than losing PPC support is from the HFS+ file compression bit that they mentioned in the Keynote (but did not detail).

However, my feeling is that the largest chunk of the savings probably comes from the idea that they are no longer including all of the printer drivers, but rather you download them as you need them (automatic process). The default in 10.5 was to install everything and that is a lot of wasted space in order for it should just be there if you ever need it.
Click to expand...

Exactly, installing all the printer driver options in 10.6 only amounts to a couple hundred MBs, instead of a couple of GBs.
 
larkost said:
However, my feeling is that the largest chunk of the savings probably comes from the idea that they are no longer including all of the printer drivers,
Click to expand...
So, a lot of that savings is attributed to just skipping the bloatware during the install? I suppose 'technically" Apple is telling the truth but I just thought it was *all* gained from writing tighter code. This revelation kind of makes me feel cheap.
 
Rosetta is not installed by default, you have to dig for it in the 'custom install' options (if you want it, I think it takes up an enormous 12MB of space). Interestingly, when the Install program tells you that it will take X gigabytes to install, it really seems to mean that it will take -X GB, because you end up with more free space after completion. That's pretty bitchin' if you ask me. I believe the part about the printer drivers is correct--they are no longer morbidly obese as they were in Leopard. It always baffled me: what in the hell could a printer possibly be doing such that it requires a 3.7GB driver?
 
Richard1028 said:
So, a lot of that savings is attributed to just skipping the bloatware during the install? I suppose 'technically" Apple is telling the truth but I just thought it was *all* gained from writing tighter code. This revelation kind of makes me feel cheap.
Click to expand...

This would be impossible. I doubt there's 6GB of code in the entire OS*, so even if you removed all of it it still wouldn't account for the savings.

*Most* hard drive space is taken up by resources (text, images, sounds, etc...), not code.



*compiled size. iirc uncompiled source size is ~50GB.
 
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