Mac OS X Snow Leopard Discussion

[.Neo]

Is it actually possible to install Mac OS X 10.6 Server on a ZFS formatted drive, or is support limited to non-startup disks?

[CPressland]

I doubt they'd let you boot from a ZFS drive until the final product, stability and all that nonsence

[jesseinsf]

This is not going to turn into an OS war thread.

I see you deleted my post because you thought it was a start of an OS war....it isn't....when people share opinions they tent to exagerate the reallity of things (Not all people do). Though the mac forums mostly do. I'm just quite shocked to see this over exageration when I actually use both current models myself (Mac and PC). And I'm quite understanding on how computers work since I Majored in Computer networking and repair.

[giga Veteran]

I see you deleted my post because you thought it was a start of an OS war....it isn't....when people share opinions they tent to exagerate the reallity of things (Not all people do). Though the mac forums mostly do. I'm just quite shocked to see this over exageration when I actually use both current models myself (Mac and PC). And I'm quite understanding on how computers work since I Majored in Computer networking and repair.

Doesn't matter. The silly arguments for Vista this, Leopard that had started.

[Julius Caro]

I think comparison between the OSs are inevitable, and well, the argument in this thread has been going well, politely. I see no reason to panic (yet)

[Cara Veteran]

I doubt they'd let you boot from a ZFS drive until the final product, stability and all that nonsence

How do you test something though if you don't let people replicate it? :)

[.Neo]

Exactly. I really wonder if Apple will introduce ZFS as a full replacement for HFS+ rather than limiting support tot read/write to non-startup disks.

[CPressland]

Exactly. I really wonder if Apple will introduce ZFS as a full replacement for HFS+ rather than limiting support tot read/write to non-startup disks.

It's a very nice thought, I'd prefer to know my data is getting written properly at the cost of a little CPU time

[Hurmoth]

Myths of Snow Leopard 1: PowerPC Support & Myths of Snow Leopard 2: 32-bit Support can be found here.

Myths of Snow Leopard 3: Mac Sidelined for iPhone

Apple?s limited comments on Snow Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X due in about a year, have opened the playing field for rampant speculation. Here?s a look at a series of myths that have developed around the upcoming release. The third myth of Snow LeoparApple is de-emphasizing the Mac as it centers its attention on the iPhone.

Pundits were quick to pounce on the idea that Snow Leopard would be ?taking a break? from adding major new marketing features. Many jumped to the conclusion that Apple was simply putting Mac development on hold while it shifts its resources and attention to the iPhone. After all, Apple delayed the release of Leopard last year, ostensibly to put its engineers to work on deploying the iPhone. Is the supposed lack of new features in Snow Leopard an indication that the Mac will drift into irrelevance as the iPhone consumes Apple?s focus?

That idea certainly isn?t new. From the moment that iTunes and the iPod began to take off around 2004, critics began insisting that Apple would drop the Mac and become the iPod company, some even saying that the company could/should/would embrace Windows as the operating system for its computers.

The shift to Intel Macs heightened the pulse of Windows Enthusiasts who so desperately wanted Mac OS X to go away. John Dvorak baited Mac users with the idea as recently as early 2006, suggesting that the only ?fly in the ointment? facing Apple?s adoption of Windows would be containing the hysterics of its fans. Dvorak recommended Apple specialize in the GUI with an ?executive software layer? ?fitted onto Windows to keep the Mac look and feel? and ?leave the grunt work to Microsoft.? By the end of the year he was complaining about Vista being terrible.

2007 turned out to be even worse for Windows Enthusiasts. The iPhone, announced at the same time Apple dropped the word Computer from its corporate name, gave them another reason for repeating the ?Apple is probably dumping Mac OS X at some point? line, but none of those predictions have materialized and MacThe Vistapocalypse.nding.

The Vistapocalypse.

The extended multi year failure of Microsoft?s Longhorn project, juxtaposed with the celebrity treatment of Tiger and Leopard in the media, lead up to a disastrous debut of Windows Vista in 2007. As Microsoft?s consumer brand wilted, Apple reaped a windfall of new Mac sales that exceeded previous sales records for the company.

Apple postponed Leopard?s release on the Mac in order to prepare for the iPhone debut, not because it decided Mac sales weren?t important, but because Mac sales were through the roof and didn?t need Leopard to accelerate them.

That was in marked contrast to the stagnant PC market, which observers had repeatedly blamed on the delays of Vista. Microsoft was desperately working to ship Vista because higher end consumers appeared to be bored with the existing Windows XP, particularly in contrast to flashy new Macs running the no longer new but still competitive Tiger. In the fall of 2006, Microsoft even began handing out vouchers for Vista to new PC buyers and started fraudulently labeling PCs that could not possibly run the new OS acceptably as ?Vista Capable? iOversold, Overpriced, Under Delivered..

Oversold, Overpriced, Under Delivered.

Vista tumbled out of the gate with the usual set of minor problems any new software release would need to get through, but the real problem for Vista was that it had been greatly oversold to PC users. Vista demanded far more overhead than the existing Windows XP because it included a imitative, immature copy of Mac OS X?s sophisticated graphics compositing engine. It also required a revised set of drivers for devices Windows XP already worked with well enough.

On top of all this, Microsoft raised the price of Vista dramatically and set up a confusing hierarchy of editions, selling neutered versions of Vista to OEMs for bundling on new PCs, a trick that Microsoft hoped would result in forcing users to upgrade to the more functional premium versions of Vista at full retail prices.

Microsoft?s pricing shenanigans only exaggerated the performance problems and compatibility flaws of Vista, resulting in a backlash that included everyone from end users to corporations to Microsoft?s OEM PC partners. Dell and HP demanded the ability to continue selling Windows XP, while Acer was so miffed about Microsoft?s Vista hardball tactics that it has launched a new Linux strategy.

Gianpiero Morbello, vice president of marketing and brand at Acer told VNUNet reporter Iain Thomson, ?We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft. Microsoft has a lot of power and it is going to be difficult, bThe Leisure Leopard Launch.lop the Linux market.?

The Leisure Leopard Launch.

Columnists looking for a dramatic angle on things tried to pit Leopard against Vista. They were therefore confused when Apple pushed the Leopard launch out into the end of the year. Why was Apple not pouncing on the opportunity afforded by the weak Vista launch with a rush to advertise Leopard? The answer was that Apple didn?t need Leopard to sell new Macs, as record unit sales throughout 2007 bore out.

Vista had originally been compared to 2005?s Tiger. Vista?s years-long delays didn?t demand an immediate response from Apple the moment it finally arrived. Apple was so far ahead that it had the luxury of devoting its resources to the more pressing launch of the iPhone. That launch certainly did more to draw attention to the Mac than an accelerated release of Leopard would have.

When Leopard did launch it was scheduled for the winter quarter, a timing that would ensure the best possible retail sales. Both Mac and Leopard sales also benefitted significantly from the foot traffic generated by the iPhone, then in full swing along with the new iPod touch and companion iPods. Leopard wasn?t delayed by problems in the sense Vista was; it was fashionablyThere Can Be Only One?9.tinypic.com/120h3xt.jpg[/img][/center]

There Can Be Only One?

The Highlander?s high concept doesn?t apply to Apple?s hardware businesses. Rather than overshadowing the Mac, iPod sales dramatically helped erect a halo over Apple?s other products, helped finance its retail store rollout, and widened the potential audience for the Mac.

The iPod also drove a critical mass of buyers to the iTunes Store, which existed primarily to ensure that commercially licensed music would remain compatible with the Mac platform rather than being shackled to Windows by Microsoft?s Windows Media DRM.

The iPhone is doing similar things to support both Apple?s iPod and Mac businesses. Analysts feared that iPod sales would dry up once enough smartphones added MP3 features. However, Apple cut out a strategy around the problem, dropping those fears out of the picture wiApple?s Adventures in Product Cross-Selling. called its ?best iPod ever.?

Apple?s Adventures in Product Cross-Selling.

Over the last winter, Apple still maintained the same level of iPod sales despite the addition of millions of new iPhones. This was in a competitive market during an economic downturn where other makers saw negative growth in their MP3 offerings.

Apple also released an iPod-only version of the iPhone which helped to spread the iPhone platform into markets where the iPhone wasn?t available, and to individuals who had decided they couldn?t switch to the iPhone. The iPod touch has sold more than few iPhones to users who, once touched by the interface, decided they wanted their smartphone to work the same way.

The iPhone has also been reaching out to persuade Windows users to consider the Mac platform. That?s happening both as consumers and executives get the iPhone and are tempted by the similar simplicity of the Mac, but also as developers flock to the iPhone SDK aThe Flow of Technology.coa development tools, which work the same way as on the Mac side.

The Flow of Technology.

The iPhone, iPod, and Mac have been cross pollinating in terms of technology as well. The MacBook Air is a hardware example of Apple?s reuse of design and touch interface ideas between the iPhone and Mac. Another example is in the core OS shared by both products.

Apple didn?t just repackage the Mac OS into a smaller form factor. It developed an entirely new interface paradigm and discarded ideas that make less sense in a mobile device, such as multitasking, windowed applications. Apple also took the opportunity to rethink how a number of development conventions should work. It constructed the iPhone?s UIKit from a retooling of Mac OS X?s AppKit, adding the modern convention of properties as a way to simplify the class interfaces. It then added properties to the desktop AppKit in Leopard.

QuickTime X is another example of repurposing code retooled for the iPhone to provide a highly efficient media playback. Desktop users running Snow Leopard will benefit from that advance as well. And of course there?s also the extensive work in developing push support for Exchange Server on the iPhone, work that will be included in Snow Leopard. Those efforts are also being used to power MobileMe?s push messaging and Snow Leopard Server?s push services.

There is a fourth application of push: Apple?s new Push Notification Service, which allows iPhone and iPod touch users to set up server side notification alerts that don?t require any mobile applications to stay running in the background. Along with Bonjour discovery, PNS will keep iPhones wiWhere?s the Beef?l sorts of sophisticated ways that third party developers imagine in their applications.

Where?s the Beef?

All these technologies are flowing back and forth between products in a way that not only shares and builds upon existing ideas, but also creates combined value that is greater than the sum of its parts. Anyone who thinks Apple needs to break off one of the existing legs of the stool in order to attach a new one hasn?t spent much time observing the cross selling going on in Apple?s retail stores.

When Chrysler invented the minivan, did pundits insist that it was getting out of the pickup and car business? When McDonalds began selling Chicken McNuggets, did anyone fear that sales of its hamburgers were going to tank? Apple?s iPod and iPhone investments have been wildly successful in expanding the company?s business and its Mac audience. Both have also resulted in new injections of technology, complementary functions, and third party development interest that all raise, not lower, the profile of the Mac platform.

Finally, the entire idea of the Mac platform being pushed aside by the iPhone is humbled by the fact that out of 147 sessions at WWDC this year, only 62 were iPhone related. That?s less than half, and many of those iPhone-related sessions were also relevant to Mac developers.

The next myth of Snow Leopard looks at what Apple itself is calling the product?s ?only new feature,?Myths of Snow Leopard 4: Exchange is the Only New Feature!06/20/myths-of-snow-leopard-4-exchange-is-the-only-new-feature/"]Myths of Snow Leopard 4: Exchange is the Only New Feature![/url]

Apple?s limited comments on Snow Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X due in about a year, have opened the playing field for ramSnow Leopard?s only significant new feature will be Exchange Server support.he upcoming release. The fourth myth of Snow Leopard:

Snow Leopard?s only significant new feature will be Exchange Server support.

This myth has been invented by Apple itself, apparently to simplify its marketing. The company seemed quite pleased with its concept of Snow Leopard being a tight code refactoring that focuses on engineering fundamentals rather than marketing-driven bullet points. However, Apple can?t help itself but add in a lot more than it is currently advertising.

That?s good news for anyone who has no need for Exchange support and is worried that Snow Leopard won?t offer anything else but a series of bug fixes. Prior to considering some of the new technologies in Snow Leopard, this artThe Luxury of Code Refactoring. the idea of ?no new features? and promising an overall improvement in how Mac OS X works under the hood.

The Luxury of Code Refactoring.

Once software to perform some task is written, there are two ways to go about improving it. The first is to add features that make it do new things. The second is referred to as ?code refactoring,? a term that describes the practice of optimizing and improving code without changing what it actually does; it just does the same thing better.

Imagine a car maker releasing a new model year by adding tinted windows, a fancy sound system, and new colors and shapes for its sheet metal. That?s adding features. An example of the idea of code refactoring in an automobile might be reworking its suspension for a better ride, tuning the performance of its engine to make it more efficient and powerful, and stress testing its seat belts to ensure they won?t tear or break in an accident.

New features are nice, but refactoring the existing dBill Gates Defined the Software Market with New, not Better.t it?s harder to sell ?better? than ?new,? even though better is certainly, well, better.

Bill Gates Defined the Software Market with New, not Better.

As the founder of a marketing-driven rather than engineering-driven software company, Bill Gates recognized the shortcut of selling new over better early on. Back in 1995, Gates explained to Focus magazine why his company cared more about adding new features than refactoring code to fix bugs.

?The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs,? Gates said. ?It?s absolutely not. It?s the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard. When we do a new version we put in lots of new things that people are asking for. And so, in no sense, is stability a reason to move to a new version. It?s never a reason.?

Because new features were easier to sell to consumers than the concept of good software, Microsoft took the low road of selling the absolute bare minimum in code quality while touting (or at least promising) all You Can?t Always Have What You Want.usinesses fell for this hook, line, and sinker, enriching Microsoft while driving the software industry to embarrassingly low new depths.

You Can?t Always Have What You Want.

Few software engineers have the privilege of writing whatever code they wish to write. Those that work for large companies are often pushed to add Microsoft-style, customer-facing features that will help sell the product. Even developers who run their own operation are often compelled to spend most of their time thinking up features to convince customers to buy their titles rather than being able to focus on building the best software they can.

The problem lies with the public perception of the value of software. Consumers happily pay for hardware, but hate having to buy software. They are well aware that the hardware they buy will soon be replaced by a faster model with more RAM at perhaps a lower price, but when it comes to software, every new release that ?only? fixes bugs is regarded as something that ?should have been? offered for free.

But why? It is typically much harder to track down and eliminate bugs than to simply tack on more new features. That should suggest that highly refined software should cost more than buggy software that has only been painted with a fresh coat of features. In the enterprise world, highly reliable, mission critical code does cost a lot. High quality software is very hard to find in the consumer market because consumers How to Escape the Trap of Bad Software.o a legacy of sloppy coding and apparent price undercutting perpetuated by Microsoft in the race to control markets rather than sell quality code.

How to Escape the Trap of Bad Software.

Is it possible to sell quality to a population that has become complacent in consuming quantity on the cheap? Yes, it just requires adding some education to your marketing. Informed users will pay more for a better quality product, but only if they understand why it?s better. Once it was discovered that consumers would pay more for higher quality food, efforts shifted toward selling organic, healthy alternatives to cheap junk food.

Apple has the luxury of taking on such a challenge because it isn?t facing an immediate need to out-feature Windows Vista. The company has announced that Snow Leopard will involve a lot of code refactoring to tighten up performance, improve reliability, and slim down disk consumption. The only new feature, according to Apple, will be new support for push messaging with Exchange Server. That isn?t exactly accurate however.

In some respects, many of the new features in Snow Leopard can be regarded as a form of code refaTen Big New Features in Mac OS X Snow Leopardrk, rather than adding extensive new features. But there will also be a lot of new features that are just plain new.

The next article will present Ten Big New Features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

[Hurmoth]

Ten Big New Features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Apple is marketing the idea of there being ?no new features? for Snow Leopard and instead promising an overall improvement in how Mac OS X works under the hood, thanks to a diligent code optimization and refactoring cycle discussed in the previous article. At the same time, there are plenty of significant new features coming in Snow Leopard to look forward to. Here are ten big new features (plus a few minor ones) that you probably haven?t heard much about from anywhere else, including my previous articles on the subject that already descQuickTime X XGrand CentralalOpenCLCL<Pulling Invisible New Features into Snow Leopard.d.

Apple?s increasing collaborations with the open source community have pulled back the veil of secrecy on several new but mostly invisible enhancements that will be showing up in Snow Leopard.

One relLLVMLLVM, the Low Level Virtual Machine compiler architecture project originally founded at the University of Illinois. Apple began contributing to LLVM development in 2005, and started using it Leopard to expand support for OpenGL hardware features. Lower-end Macs that lack the silicon to interpret that specialize graphics code can now do it in software.

LLVM is also working its way into Apple?s Xcode IDE, initially as a highly efficient optimizer and code generator that works as a bolt-on upgrade to components of GCC, but eventually as a complete compiler replacement. That project, known as Clang, was opened up last year. LLVM compiler technology not only makes developers more productive, but also results in code that runs significantly faster on the same hardware.

Another openly hidden secret in MaCUPSb>CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. Beginning with Jaguar in 2002, Apple adopted and licensed CUPS from its developer as Mac OS X?s printing engine. It then purchased the project outright. CUPS is also the de facto printing system for Linux distros and is available for BSD and other commercial Unix systems.

That means Apple owns the project that develops the printing architecture for Linux. That?s not an issue because Apple has established a reputation in open source as a strong contributor and open sharer. According to a review of bug fixes and improvements in CUPS software, 24% of the enhancements came from Apple while 76% came from free and open source software contributors working with Linux, OpenSolaris, and other projects. Of course, 100% of both sides benefited from that sharing.

CUPS collaboration has resulted in high quality code and the advancement of new features. CUPS 1.4, the version sources say Snow Leopard will use, adds performance enhancements and a variety of security improvements that use sandboxing to prevent malware attacks on the printing system from being able to read sensitive documents that may be in use by printers.

A third significant new feature originating from an open source project in SnZFS supportFS support, portions of which come from the OpenSolaris project (aloDTrace?s DTrace technology, which Apple uses in its Instruments performance profiling tool). Leopard debuted read-only ZFS features, but Snow Leopard and Snow Leopard Server will provide both read and write support for Sun?s new 128-bit file system. ZFS was designed to provide ?simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability.?

ZFS hype during the development of Leopard helped the new file system reach buzzword status as news of the three letter acronym swept through blogs and the tech media. It is frequently described as being the imminent replacement for the Mac?s native HFS+. However, the benefits of ZFS including as storage pooling, data redundancy, automatic error correction, dynamic volume expansion, and snapshots all apply primarily to servers and higher-end workstation users who deal with multiple disk drives.

ZFS isn?t going to replace HFS+ outright in Snow Leopard, and has limited relevance today to desktop and laptop users, particularly those who never move beyond the single disk drive ins>Pushing Visible New Features in Snow Leopardures in Snow Leopard.

Apple?s extensive work in d>Exchange Serve for Exchange Server on the iPhone will also be included in Snow Leopard?s Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Push support in those client side apps >MobileMused to power MobileMe?s push mess>Snow Leopard Serve and Snow Leopard Server?s push messaging services. Apple will be offering both in parallel as alternatives to Exchange, thanks to smart planning on the part of Apple?s engineers to develop an interoperable push architecture in Mac OS X and on the iPhone.

There is also a fourth application of push that has developed alo>Push Notification Servic new Push Notification Service. PNS allows iPhone and iPod touch users to set up server side notification alerts that don?t require mobile applications to stay running in the background just to update users of the external events they track. Along with Bonjour discovery, PNS will keep iPhones wirelessly connected in all sorts of sophisticated ways that third party developers can imagine in their applications.

Whether Apple will integrate a listener for the same PNS system into the desktop side of Mac OS X remains to be seen, but it would allow a single, unified interface for alerting client users of new events. I proposed a system wide, Growl-style notification system in the Leopard Wish List published back in 2005.

With the strong push into push messaging, Apple will make mobile devices even more tightly integrated with its desktop products. Leopard delivered >Wide Area Bonjoul way to use Wide Area Bonjour?s dynamic service registration as a mechanism for sharing resources served from home to any location without configuring static naming services for address lookups. Because any software can register itself with .Mac/MobileMe, this opens the door to third party developers with the vision to exploit the potential of these enabling technologies.

Among the technologies profiled earlier in Myth 3 that have been trickling from the iPhone into Mac OS X, there?s at least one idea I proposed for the iPhon>self contained web app?s Safari: self contained web apps. The new feature will allow users to run web applications as a local app in its own window, essentially making the web platform into a native-looking app that can run outside of Safari.

I proposed a similar feature as a possibility for the iPhone prior to the announcement of the Cocoa Touch SDK: web apps packaged up into a set of files that could be run on the device as a Dashboard widget-like standalone app, even when off the network. Why Apple hasn?t pursued such an obvious strategy is a little hard to figure out, but it seems they?ve got the ball rolling on the desktop.

T>SquirrelFislling even faster thanks to SquirrelFish, a new JavaScript interpreter that will make Safari and any other WebKit-based browsers, standalone self contained apps, and Dashboard widgets all a lot faster. Apple?s MobileMe, Yahoo?s Flickr, and Google various web apps will all gain new speed thanks to faster JavaScript execution. SquirrelFish will also raise the bar in performance and efficiency in the Rich Internet Applications sector in general, giving Flash, Silverlight, and Java a faster, simpler, and more>Microsoft?s Application Features in Mac OS X, System Wide?s Application Features in Mac OS X, System Wide.

Microsoft?s business model of tacking on features hasn?t been a total wash. The company?s desperate efforts to invent novel marketing features for every new release of Windows and Office have pioneered a number of ideas that have later found their way into Mac OS X. One example is the idea of Fast User Switching, which Apple added to Panther. Windows XP pioneered the trick, but built it upon the kluge that is Terminal Services.

Microsoft also helped originate the basis of Ajax web apps by inventing XMLHttpRequest in order to make its Outlook Web Access 2000 web app work decently within Internet Explorer. Today, standards-based web apps are eating a hole into Microsoft?s mob>SproutCoprietary desktop platform, and tools such as SproutCore and resulting products such as MobileMe are poised to tear down interoperability barriers and level the playing field. Microsoft may now regret having opened Pandora?s Box in terms of standards-based web applications, but its efforts to seal the web back up with the proprietary Silverlight plugin, which turns web apps into .NET programs, will now be next to impossible.

Another example of a Microsoft innovation are the fancy text features in Word, such as red underlining to highlight spelling mistakes and the green squiggle for grammar errors. Word also featurb>text replacement featurtion, smart dash insertion, and text replacement features (such as typing TM to get the ? character). The former have already become system-wide features in Mac OS X, while sources indicate that the latter text processing features will find their way intb>Super Size Mherefore every application that runs on it.

Super Size Me.

On top of injecting Word features into its OS for the use of every application, Apple will also expand the use of its own Data Detectors, a technology it invented in the mid 90s for identifyingb>Data Detectoand making it actionable. Leopard introduced Data Detectors in Mail as a way to extract contacts and events for use in Address Book and iCal, but Snow Leopard will expose Data Detectors everywhere it draws text.

Sources alsob>Auto Activati will expand upon Font Book to provide full Auto Activation of any fonts requested by any application, using Spotlight to track them down. Snow Leopard is also suggesb>multitouch trackpad gestur specifically for working with multitouch trackpad gestures, patterned after those introduced with the MacBook Air.

Speaking of the ultra-thin Air, sometimes less is more. However, the high cost and relatively low capacity of Solid State Drives like the $1000, 64 GB SSD option offered for the Air means that one Microsoft feature Snow Leopard could do without is bloat. As one reader noted, ?Currently, Leopard requires 9 GB of available disk space for installation and iLife requires an additional 3 GB. This means that a product b>Think SmalacBook Air comes with the hard drive 20% full.?

Think Small.

Snow Leopard aims below the bloat to accommodate the coming wave of SSDb>losing weigh dramaticalild, sources say Apple?s own apps are losing weigh dramatically across the board. The apps in the Utilities folder all drop from 468 MB to 111.6 MB, for example. Other apps are similarly svelte, as the graph below indicates.

Is this the product of just code b>Resolution Independences? One factor likely relates to work on Resolution Independence, which substitutes bitmapped raster graphics (which define every pixel) with smaller vector graphics files (which draw GUI elements and controls by recipe).

Vector graphics can be scaled to any size while retaining a high quality appearance, while bitmapped graphics can quickly look blocky when scaled up. Adding larger bitmapped versions can solve that problem, but at the cost of consuming more disk space. Apple earlier told developers it would be providing a library of shared, high quality vector graphics they could use instead of each packaging their own bitmapped art into every app.

The b>Localizatitions in these apps must also involve more efficient Localization. For example, Mac OS X Leopard?s Mail currently weighs in at over 285 MB, but the majority of its bulk comes from 18 language localizations inside the application bundle that consume 276 MB. The actual Universal Binary code is only a few megabytes and even its associated graphics and other resources only amount to 2.8 MB.

Why does Apple default to dumping support for 18 or more languages in every app without providing any simple, centralized way to get rid of the unnecessary ones? Perhaps that question is answered in Snow Leopard, where Mail is reportedly just 91 MB. That?s too big to simply to be an English-only, stripped down version for developers, but still far smaller than than Leopard?s. Across the board, it appears Snow Leopard apps are about a third as large as their Leopard equivalents.

And so while Snow Leopard paradoxically gains more useful features through code improvements and under-the-hood retooling rather than from a Microsoft-style new feature focus that aims to deliver ?wow? with flashy marketing gimmicks, the system is also getting smaller and tighter. There must also be some other subtraction, right? Will Snow Leopard scrape away the old Carbon API? That?s the next myth.

[1759]

Where is RoughlyDrafted pulling out some of those numbers for the 10.5 vs 10.6 app sizes?

On my Mac, Mail is close to theirs, at about 289 MB, so is QT & iChat, but Safari 4 Preview is 10.2 MB, TextEdit in 1.9 MB, Preview is 18.3 MB, iSync is 21.5 MB...I only have English installed as a language pack, so maybe some of the extra bloat is due to that, but there seems like there would be more to it.

[Aperture]

Where is RoughlyDrafted pulling out some of those numbers for the 10.5 vs 10.6 app sizes?

On my Mac, Mail is close to theirs, at about 289 MB, so is QT & iChat, but Safari 4 Preview is 10.2 MB, TextEdit in 1.9 MB, Preview is 18.3 MB, iSync is 21.5 MB...I only have English installed as a language pack, so maybe some of the extra bloat is due to that, but there seems like there would be more to it.

Yeah if you read the actual article

The dramatic size reductions in these apps must also involve more efficient Localization. For example, Mac OS X Leopard?s Mail currently weighs in at over 285 MBbut the majority of its bulk comes from 18 language localizations inside the application bundle that consume 276 MB.b> The actual Universal Binary code is only a few megabytes and even its associated graphics and other resources only amount to 2.8 MB.

[osirisX]

They didn't reduce the size of Chess! I am SHOCKED! We must start online petitions for Apple to fix this horrific mistake!

[MasterC]

They didn't reduce the size of Chess! I am SHOCKED! We must start online petitions for Apple to fix this horrific mistake!

Show me where to sign :p

[osirisX]

An explanation for the small app sizes in Snow Leopard: http://www.pipian.com/hacking/explaining_s..._app_sizes.html

Mostly due to the removal of designable.NIB from all NIB files.

[CPressland]

I really love the new file sizes in Snow Leopard, I always thought the apps were too big, going to be interesting to see what'll happen after running an app like XCleaner or whatever it was called, the one to remove languages :D

[theyarecomingforyou]

Those are some serious reductions in memory usage.

[Xero]

I wonder how these programs run compared to Leopard ones.

[Hurmoth]

I wonder how these programs run compared to Leopard ones.

I'd imagine they'd have a smaller footprint, so they should take up less memory?

[.Neo]

At this stage I don't really notice much of a difference compared to Leopard.

[nomis_nehc]

+1

Leopard's unified GUI looks and feels a lot better. There still some traces of Aqua here and there but overall its an advancement.

It's not so much the unified GUI look I particularly care for. Obviously, applications (3rd party especially) are going to look however the authors intend it to. I personally don't like the sad shade of gray Leopard has gone. I am, actually, a whole lot more preferential to lighter color themes. I guess my real thing about it is that Shape Shifter no longer works. =/

On Macthemes, there are a few efforts in theming Leopard, but available themes = only 2. Nickel Cobalt is my favorite theme, and I want it to work on my MAC!

[osirisX]

It's not so much the unified GUI look I particularly care for. Obviously, applications (3rd party especially) are going to look however the authors intend it to. I personally don't like the sad shade of gray Leopard has gone. I am, actually, a whole lot more preferential to lighter color themes. I guess my real thing about it is that Shape Shifter no longer works. =/

On Macthemes, there are a few efforts in theming Leopard, but available themes = only 2. Nickel Cobalt is my favorite theme, and I want it to work on my MAC!

Should we go back to this?

[Cara Veteran]

Should we go back to this?

http://mt11.quickshareit.com/share/macosxdp4c1e61.jpg

Wow, pre 10.0... Pardon me while I get nostalgic. :)

[PL_ Veteran]

I keep forgetting how retarded the Finder dude looked before.

[giga Veteran]

Finder smile ftw. I use Ekisho myself.