macOS 15 No Longer Needs Twice the Free Space for App Store Installs

[ChrisA]

...If I am to install a system update, isn't it wise to keep the old installation before it can verify that the new one works correctly? ...

This is not for system updates. The article said it was for installing apps from the App Store.

 

[ChrisA]

Of course if the install or update gets interrupted you can’t revert to the previous install.

THis is what Time Machine is for. The restore process is very easy.

 

[ChrisA]

The other issue with Xcode is that it's tens of thousands of tiny individual files that all need to be updated. No computer handles that well.

This might help with that as well by minimizing writes.

How often do you update Xcode? It is not something you do every day. You can choose to do it when you are finished working or at night. So even if it takes 4 hours, you don't have to wait.

 

[Victor Mortimer]

I had no idea about this macOS Quirk.
On the other hand, I never really installed tons of apps.

I also had no idea.
On the other hand, I don't have any Macs with ridiculously small SSDs and I don't install anything from the stupid Apple app store if it's available from anywhere else.

 

[JosephAW]

THis is what Time Machine is for. The restore process is very easy.

Too bad iPhone backups don’t support this. You can’t really do this without configurator.

 

[johnediii]

If Apple is going to go to the extreme of integrating everything and charging for the nose for upgrades (which they are currently doing,) then they really need to get external devices up to near first-class citizen status.

Stuck with base storage, GPU, and RAM. In that order of importance and difficulty, they really should work on it. But they seem too distracted by AI and cars and regulatory hoops and everything else too work on core features anymore.

And Vision Pro which nobody wants or can afford.

 

[CarAnalogy]

And Vision Pro which nobody wants or can afford.

Ha oh yeah forgot about that one. A lot of people did apparently.

 

[svish]

Great! Should help with those having less free storage space available.

 

[johnediii]

Ha oh yeah forgot about that one. A lot of people did apparently.

Not enough.

 

[sunman42]

Wonder how this affects new OS version installer downloads. Put in quite a few hours with my sister, remotely, trying to clear enough free space on her 128 Gbyte (I know, really?) MacBook Air of ancient origin last fall so she'd be able in to install Sonoma. Even though we eventually cleared ~ 120% of the space supposedly necessary for the install it kept telling us we didn't have enough space. I ended up splitting the cost of an M2 MBA with 512 GByte of storage with her kids. Now, no space problems.