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Leopard Under The Hood And Requirements Analysis

iBunny said:
9 Gigs... Why is this alot?

There are hard drives now that are 1TB large. Why is 9GB such a concern?
Click to expand...

It's not that space is expensive but geez, we are talking about a system here, not any i-media-pro-sound-video app... 😱

My iBook (1.33 GHZ) has a HD of 30 GB... take out 9... 😕

Of course, I got a few external HDs but still... 😀
 
64 bit is the answer

Foxglove9 said:
9 Gb is crazy, all those features use up that much more hard drive space? Yikes. I'd like to know ram usage as well, on average if it will use more or about the same.

Either way, I can't wait to hear early reviews this should be a great upgrade!
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This article has a little info on 64bit computing: http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2007/10/16/64-bit_more_than_just_the_ram/5

It may give a little insight on why full 64bit programs (which I believe all the leopard programs are) would be bigger. Basically, low level processor instructions and data blocks are twice as large. This doesn't necessarily make the programs larger, but it can.

Sorry, but this is the price of progress.
 
0racle said:
Because people don't have 1TB drives and 9GB in many cases is 10% or more of their HDD space.
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You have to look at it like this. We are moving forward in computing. You cant stay the same forever. How does 1 expect faster better performance, more features, and all that at a reduced cost of HDD space? You cant perform miracles.

Would you be happy with 16MB of Ram? No? But you had it 10 years ago.... You have to expand is what im trying to say here.

In Retrospect, 9GB may seem alot compared to Tiger. But When you look at it with todays eyes, 9GB is not alot of HDD space whatsoever.

The technical reason has got to be 64 bit code is larger than 32 bit code. And didnt apple say that Leopard will be 64 bit around the board for CPU's that can support it? Im sure thats the reason. XP 64 Bit was larger than XP 32 Bit. Even more so for Vista.
 
toontra said:
You've heard of laptops? The basic Macbook has an 80g drive. 9g for the OS, 15% for system swap files (which I always leave empty) and that's only 59g left.

This is bloatware. I sincerely hope that I will have the choice to leave a lot of this stuff out on install.
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Language localization is one thing I will be removing, printer drivers (except GIMP), TimeMachine (if the option is given). That should save me plenty of space. I am on the fence with the DevTools. I only use 1.6-2.1 Gigs to install Tiger at present so I am hoping the 10.5 install come in around 6 Gigs. 🙂
 
081440 said:
I completely agree! I don't see how a 32 bit intel can out pace a 64 bit loaded G5 tower!? 😱

I hope this little chart isn't the whole truth.
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SSE3. Altivec either can't do the instant-image motion comparisions, or APple can't be bothered.

SSE3, (or SSSE3) have some instructions specifically targeting this type of thing for video encoding. Background detection is a similar problem.
 
mkrishnan said:
It is kind of odd, considering for instance that the 867MHz Powerbook G4 has an inferior (AFAIK) video card to the 800MHz iBook G4. Most likely it makes little or no difference, but they decided to draw a line (there are G4s in Cubes and other Macs well below 800 MHz, so it isn't like they only excluded the 800MHz iBook).
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I think it is more about the cache size and memory bus on those machines.
 
morespce54 said:
It's not that space is expensive but geez, we are talking about a system here, not any i-media-pro-sound-video app... 😱

My iBook (1.33 GHZ) has a HD of 30 GB... take out 9... 😕

Of course, I got a few external HDs but still... 😀
Click to expand...

Well look at it this way. maybe you should stay on Tiger then. Or get a new computer.
 
Transeau said:
Though I'm not sure why they need the Intel 32Bit support as all of the Intel CPU's support 64Bit processing.
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Unfortunately, that isn't the case. Core Duo is 32-bit. I think it was a mistake of Apple to allow x86 in their OS. It should have been AMD64 only from the very beginning. 64-bit mode has twice as many registers as x86, while PowerPC has twice as many as AMD64. Going to 32-bit x86 was a huge shock.
 
So, if I'm going to upgrade (NOT archive and install and NOT fresh install) a Tiger installation, is it really going to take 9gigs? I'm a little confused.... I've only got about 12 gig free on my laptop drive right now...
 
toontra said:
You've heard of laptops? The basic Macbook has an 80g drive. 9g for the OS, 15% for system swap files (which I always leave empty) and that's only 59g left.

This is bloatware. I sincerely hope that I will have the choice to leave a lot of this stuff out on install.
Click to expand...

You might be able to lipo the OS or something like that. I think it is larger because it can boot and run PPC or x86. I don't know if x86 10.4 did that as well, but it will definitely be new to PPC users.
 
longofest said:
Apple has developed the Accelerate Framework, where one of its specific advantages is that it can run on both Altivec (for PPC) and SSE* (for Intel) without architecture-specific commands.
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:apple:If you believe in magic...:apple:

Apple can't invent instructions that don't exist.

By which I mean, if SSE3/SSSE3 has an instruction that is not directly matched in Altivec, then Accelerate Framework is basically useless. Oh sure, maybe they could emulate it in software, but if it was that simple, you wouldn't need Altivec or SSE3 in the first place.
 
iBunny said:
In Retrospect, 9GB may seem alot compared to Tiger. But When you look at it with todays eyes, 9GB is not alot of HDD space whatsoever.

The technical reason has got to be 64 bit code is larger than 32 bit code. And didnt apple say that Leopard will be 64 bit around the board for CPU's that can support it? Im sure thats the reason. XP 64 Bit was larger than XP 32 Bit. Even more so for Vista.
Click to expand...
Leopard is 3 times the size of Tiger.

9GB is over 10% of my MacBooks drive, a machine that is 1 year old. I'm not asking for it to fit on the 20MB HDD that was in my SE, but yes, tripling the size of the OS alone bugs me.

Tiger is 64bit on G5's. Installing it on G5's did not produce 3GB install compared to a 1GB on a 32bit Intel. The OS got 3 times larger, that it supports 64bit operations on 2 processors does not come close to explaining it.
 
Naimfan said:
If I'm reading the chart correctly, Leopard will run on my PB G4 1.33 GHz, but DVD player won't work? Or is the earlier poster correct when they say that only the advanced interleaving won't work? I'm a bit confused on that one!
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No the DVD Player will work - just not the advanced de-interlacing.


http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html#dvdplayer
Video Quality Improvements
Enjoy even higher-quality video with Adaptive Video Analyzation technology that applies deinterlacing and inverse 3:2 pulldown on demand.


http://www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs/
DVD Player requires a 1.6GHz processor or faster for improved de-interlacing.
 
iBunny said:
Well look at it this way. maybe you should stay on Tiger then. Or get a new computer.
Click to expand...

Well, lucky me, I got two more that I can update 😀
I guess this will be a chance to see how Leopard and Tiger can work together, on the same network! 🙄
 
Transeau said:
Well, it supports 4 different processors.

G4 (PPC 32Bit)
G5 (PPC 64Bit)
Intel 32Bit
Intel 64Bit

Though I'm not sure why they need the Intel 32Bit support as all of the Intel CPU's support 64Bit processing.

So, that accounts for 2~4 gigs... (at least that was xslimmer comes up with)

Then you add in all the extra languages and the amount of new hardware it supports..
Click to expand...

The Core Duo doesn't support 64-bit, so my MacBook wouldn't run Intel 64-bit binaries.
 
0racle said:
Because people don't have 1TB drives and 9GB in many cases is 10% or more of their HDD space.
Click to expand...

0racle said:
Leopard is 3 times the size of Tiger.

9GB is over 10% of my MacBooks drive, a machine that is 1 year old. I'm not asking for it to fit on the 20MB HDD that was in my SE, but yes, tripling the size of the OS alone bugs me.

Tiger is 64bit on G5's. Installing it on G5's did not produce 3GB install compared to a 1GB on a 32bit Intel. The OS got 3 times larger, that it supports 64bit operations on 2 processors does not come close to explaining it.
Click to expand...


you can save HD space on your Macbook by not installing things like various localizations and Garage Band sample loops. etc..

That in itself will save 2 gigs.

and Tiger is not 64-bit.
 
Transeau said:
Well, it supports 4 different processors.

G4 (PPC 32Bit)
G5 (PPC 64Bit)
Intel 32Bit
Intel 64Bit

Though I'm not sure why they need the Intel 32Bit support as all of the Intel CPU's support 64Bit processing.

So, that accounts for 2~4 gigs... (at least that was xslimmer comes up with)

Then you add in all the extra languages and the amount of new hardware it supports..
Click to expand...

Errr... my Macbook here is running a 2.0 GHz Core Duo. This thing is 32 bit... It would make sense though to skip the parts of the OS that are PPC when installing on an intel machine and vice versa. Or maybe it isn't to make it cross compatible, i.e. backup your intel machine, destroy your intel machine, restire the system on a PPC machine. Makes sense.

And 9 GB is not that much, Tiger is pretty close to that actually. Either way, did you miss that macrumors story of 1TB laptop drives in a few years? There are already 250GB 5400rpm drives on the market so... yea 😉
 
OK I know we can assume around 2GB of disk cache and x for safe sleep, where X is the amount of RAM you have. That would typically leave at least 5GB of used space. What in the name of all that is good and holy is Apple using 5GB of space for? Drivers? Maybe...if they have every driver known to man since the dawn of time. Possibly some of the more potent indexing that is being done with Time Machine and Spotlight. But even then...Gah. That being said I have a 160GB hard drive. So while I can run it without any problems....the amount is still high nonetheless.

geerlingguy said:
AutoFS/separate threads is probably the best thing to happen for networking on Macs since the integration of SMB mounting!!!
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Yah this is easily the single biggest thing that interests me in Leopard. The concept of no more BBoD when I wake from sleep and it can't find the share makes me all tingly in the pants. 😛 OK maybe not but the idea of me not wanting to throw my MBP across the room in frustration is a happy thought. Tiger and I have not gotten along very well. :\
 
No Photo Booth backdrops for me? No DVD Player? No Front Row? Ouch! 🙁

I can't believe I will not even be able to use DVD Player. That's a bit much, isn't it? Not a big deal since there are other apps I can use, but still.

With those small complaints aside, I still can't wait for Leopard. 😀
 
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