Are these programs sizes normal?

[Anthony A]

I have a brand new Mac Book Pro. Came with Leopard 10.5.6 and iLife 09 installed. I spent some time looking through the files and folders with finder and was shocked at the massive sizes of some of the apps. For example:

Garage Band 536 MB

iWeb 517 MB

iPhoto 371 MB

Mail 289 MB

iMovie 287 MB

iTunes 129 MB

iDVD 126 MB

iChat 114 MB

Holy crap! I don't remeber seeing the iLife apps that big in iLife 08 when I looked at them. I haven't touched these apps yet so the size is not from anything I added. What is going on with this is this normal?

I remember the Mac commercial where the PC guy was fat and bloated obviously referring to PC's and Windows being bloated and Macs not being bloated. I have to say that is simply not my experience to date. Leopard and iLife 09 are taking up 18.96 GB of HD drive space. My Windows XP installs come in about 6 GB with all my programs installed. I also notice the massive sizes of many Mac apps compared to Windows. Although I am really liking the Mac it is seriously bloated compared to Windows XP.

 

[BlueRevolution]

They're normal. I haven't used iLife '09, but it looks like the themes are going inside the applications now, which is a good thing. '08 was just as big, but all of the biggest stuff was hidden in the library folder.

Whenever I get a new computer, I always format the drive first thing and reinstall the OS with only the extras that I need. I don't use any of the iLife apps, so I don't install them. That alone saves me about 10 GB of hard drive space. A barebones Leopard install is about 6 GB if memory serves.

 

[Anthony A]

They're normal. I haven't used iLife '09, but it looks like the themes are going inside the applications now, which is a good thing. '08 was just as big, but all of the biggest stuff was hidden in the library folder.

Whenever I get a new computer, I always format the drive first thing and reinstall the OS with only the extras that I need. I don't use any of the iLife apps, so I don't install them. That alone saves me about 10 GB of hard drive space. A barebones Leopard install is about 6 GB if memory serves.

I am pretty new to Macs so I need to learn some more before I attempt to do a reinstall.

The only iLife app I see myself using will be iPhoto. Can you uninstall all the other iLife apps and keep just one with out messing up that one app?

When/if I do a reinstall can I install just the just iphoto from the disk or does it have to go in as a suite?

 

[Ivan P]

I have a brand new Mac Book Pro. Came with Leopard 10.5.6 and iLife 09 installed. I spent some time looking through the files and folders with finder and was shocked at the massive sizes of some of the apps. For example:

Garage Band 536 MB

iWeb 517 MB

iPhoto 371 MB

Mail 289 MB

iMovie 287 MB

iTunes 129 MB

iDVD 126 MB

iChat 114 MB

Holy crap! I don't remeber seeing the iLife apps that big in iLife 08 when I looked at them. I haven't touched these apps yet so the size is not from anything I added. What is going on with this is this normal?

I remember the Mac commercial where the PC guy was fat and bloated obviously referring to PC's and Windows being bloated and Macs not being bloated. I have to say that is simply not my experience to date. Leopard and iLife 09 are taking up 18.96 GB of HD drive space. My Windows XP installs come in about 6 GB with all my programs installed. I also notice the massive sizes of many Mac apps compared to Windows. Although I am really liking the Mac it is seriously bloated compared to Windows XP.

You can clear a good 500MB of disc space by getting rid of all of the GarageBand sound loops (f you don't use GarageBand). Also, the space it's taking up is for a full install of OS X. If you customise an install you can remove the drivers for brands of printers that you won't use as well as the many, many different languages (so it just installs everything in English). My OS took up several gigabytes less by doing a custom install.

By the way, I think it's unfair to compare the sizes of Leopard and XP, considering XP is around 6 years older than Leopard. Of course it's going to take up less space. The fair comparison would be Leopard and Vista.

The only iLife app I see myself using will be iPhoto. Can you uninstall all the other iLife apps and keep just one with out messing up that one app?

When/if I do a reinstall can I install just the just iphoto from the disk or does it have to go in as a suite?

Typically it installs the entire suite, but you are free to uninstall the ones you don't use at any time. Just drag them to the trash and empty it. If you need to use them at any time, just insert the Applications Install disc that came with your computer, and reinstall them from there

 

[BlueRevolution]

Typically it installs the entire suite, but you are free to uninstall the ones you don't use at any time. Just drag them to the trash and empty it. If you need to use them at any time, just insert the Applications Install disc that came with your computer, and reinstall them from there

While the iLife apps aren't interdependent despite the suite's integration, I don't suggest uninstalling after the fact. They leave stuff everywhere.

 

[Anthony A]

You can clear a good 500MB of disc space by getting rid of all of the GarageBand sound loops (f you don't use GarageBand). Also, the space it's taking up is for a full install of OS X. If you customise an install you can remove the drivers for brands of printers that you won't use as well as the many, many different languages (so it just installs everything in English). My OS took up several gigabytes less by doing a custom install.

By the way, I think it's unfair to compare the sizes of Leopard and XP, considering XP is around 6 years older than Leopard. Of course it's going to take up less space. The fair comparison would be Leopard and Vista.



Typically it installs the entire suite, but you are free to uninstall the ones you don't use at any time. Just drag them to the trash and empty it. If you need to use them at any time, just insert the Applications Install disc that came with your computer, and reinstall them from there

OK thanks for the info and you are right about Vista as a proper comparison. Why do you think I bought a Mac in the first place? It's because I hate Vista.

One question. I know they say with Macs you just drag the app to the trash to uninstall but whenever I have done that and than used Spotlight to check the whole computer for the files associated with the app there are often many left over. iLife being so huge probably has a ton of junk laying around. Any suggestions on the folders/files that I should dump or not dump after I trash the app from the apps folder?

 

[Anthony A]

While the iLife apps aren't interdependent despite the suite's integration, I don't suggest uninstalling after the fact. They leave stuff everywhere.

You posted while I was writing my previous post and touched on what I was asking about uninstalling the iLife apps and the junk they will leave behind. Any suggestions on what to look for and where?

 

[miles01110]

While the iLife apps aren't interdependent despite the suite's integration, I don't suggest uninstalling after the fact. They leave stuff everywhere.

You posted while I was writing my previous post and touched on what I was asking about uninstalling the iLife apps and the junk they will leave behind. Any suggestions on what to look for and where?

If you use a program like AppCleaner, AppZapper, AppDelete, or AppTrap, they do a pretty good job of cleaning out everything.

 

[Locoweed]

I have been down this road a time or two. Finally realized it wasn't worth my time. Are you really that short of hard drive space or you just exhibiting your "controlling" facet of your personality.

If you really feel that this issue is worth your time and trouble, keep track of how much time it takes to resolve. If you had to pay a computer tech to accomplish this, would it be worth the money?

Chances are, you have a lot of hard drive space available anyway. Why waste your time?

 

[Cboss]

Most of the size of those apps is due to them being universal binaries. I use Xslimmer to get rid of the PPC code and extra languages I don't need. Here are my app sizes after using Xslimmer:

Garage Band: 157.1 MB
iWeb: 218.4 MB
iPhoto: 258.2 MB
Mail: 24.7 MB
iMovie: 158.8 MB
iTunes: 36 MB
iDVD: 46.4 MB
iChat: 11.4 MB

Here is how much you could save using xslimmer, and this is only for the apps you mentioned. I'm sure there are other, free programs like Xslimmer you can use if you don't want to pay for it. In all I've saved 4.4 GB of space.

Before: 2369 MB
After: 911 MB
Savings: 1458 MB


You can also delete many of the printer drivers you'll never use. This also saves a few GB.

 

[BlueRevolution]

I have been down this road a time or two. Finally realized it wasn't worth my time. Are you really that short of hard drive space or you just exhibiting your "controlling" facet of your personality.

If you really feel that this issue is worth your time and trouble, keep track of how much time it takes to resolve. If you had to pay a computer tech to accomplish this, would it be worth the money?

Chances are, you have a lot of hard drive space available anyway. Why waste your time?

I disagree completely. First, it's a lot more inconvenient to reinstall an OS after you've been using the system for months and start to run low on space. Also, in my mind, the only thing that it is worth paying a computer tech to do is fix a hardware problem you can't fix yourself.

 

[clevin]

you think garageban is only 500MB? lol, try goto the library and remove the hidden garageband files,

You will save 2G space.

mac is anything but space saving. for example, safari program needs 80MG, and its new preview function consumes GB HDD space (hopefully a bug and be fixed, but you never know with apple), you ever seen any browsers use that much HDD space?

I know nowadays the HDD space is not a big issue, but dont be fooled to think OSX is slim, because its not.

 

[clevin]

delete.

 

[Anthony A]

I have been down this road a time or two. Finally realized it wasn't worth my time. Are you really that short of hard drive space or you just exhibiting your "controlling" facet of your personality.

If you really feel that this issue is worth your time and trouble, keep track of how much time it takes to resolve. If you had to pay a computer tech to accomplish this, would it be worth the money?

Chances are, you have a lot of hard drive space available anyway. Why waste your time?

No Hard drive space is not an issue for me right now. As for "exhibiting your "controlling" facet of your personality" that could be part of it

Really I just am starting out with Macs and want to get my knowledge level up to where I am with Windows. That means learning everything I can about Macs. With windows I'm very anal about bloat so these massive programs sizes in Mac are very surprising to me. I already know when the time comes for a reinstall of OS X I will not be installing iLife thats for sure.

 

[Locoweed]

Yep, like I said, been there. Finally stopped worrying about it and started enjoying my computer more.

To Blue Revolution

I think that part of my past obsession with things like that was the challenge of making it happen. Mostly I won, but as I got older, I found that if I concentrated on enjoying life more and stopped concentrating on the things that irritated me, I was a happier person. The old is the glass half full or half empty thing. Am I totally successful implementing this? Nope. Lots of things have been irritating in my transition to Mac. The trick is to keep things in perspective. I still struggle with this some.

 

[BlueRevolution]

It's true. I just think it's good to worry about these things now rather than in 6 months when you start to run out of space.

Actually, I have 70 GB free on my system partition, and partly in response to this thread I have started rooting about deleting stuff. Turns out I had two copies of my Aperture library...