Safari 4 (beta)

Of course, if they now start increasing the size of Leopard, they can
claim later that they reduced it in Snow Leopard. The adding of code to
Leopard now is a sign that Apple doesn't know what it's doing when it
promises smaller files for SL.
Please stop supporting Apple for the most ridiculous reasons. You are
an Apple groupie, who talks out of the back of his neck.

 

Have a look at the iWeb forum discussions.[/QUOTE]

Sorry, but I don't do web-based discussion forums. If you would care to
provide a link to specific messages, I'll look at them. Or you could
copy and paste to post the information here.

I haven't found anything that's slowed down, but I don't have a MobileMe
account, so I haven't accessed anything there.

I doubt that you'll find consumer software that never crashes. I've had
software crash, but very infrequently.

I can't parse that.

That's essentially what I have with Apple's apps.

 

Ha! You finally admit that Safari4 needed tweaking.
You made my day.

 

By bitching at us.

 

Well, get used to it.[/QUOTE]

Oh, I got used to it decades ago. Mostly I laugh at them, because
whining for the sake of whining shows the meaninglessness of their lives.

 

Bling is unnecessary stuff.[/QUOTE]

And of course, you are the supreme arbiter of what is necessary and what
isn't.

 

Safari is not the best browser at all.[/QUOTE]

Considering that that's a matter of opinion, there is no such thing as
best browser.

 

Of course, without Time Machine, there would be no Back-In-Time. But
based on what you wrote about it, I'll give it a try.

 

Further to Michelle's comment: the size of software updates for Leopard
(and other software) is due to the total size of the individual files in
the update which are either adding to or replacing existing files in the
system, and the vast majority is due to replacements (bug fixes and
security updates in existing files). There may also be file deletions as
part of an update.

The resulting updated system may be larger, smaller or the same size as
the pre-updated system, though on average I expect it would grow
slightly (and nowhere near as much as 440 MB).

For example, in /System/Library/Extensions there is a file
GeForce8xxxGLDriver.bundle, which is 13.6 MB. If a Leopard system update
includes a new version of that driver, it is likley that most of it will
be replaced, so this will account for about 13.6 MB of the update. (The
updates are compressed, so it would actually be smaller than that as
part of the download.)

Most of the updated files are a lot smaller, but multiply it by hundreds
or thousands of files being replaced, and you quickly get up into the
hundreds of megabytes.

A good piece of evidence for this is the size of past updates to
Leopard.

Each of the "delta" updates contains files which modify the most recent
system version to create the next one in order.

Each of the "combo" updates contains files which modify all previous
versions to bring it up to the latest ones.

If the "delta" updates were mostly adding files, you would expect the
size of the "combo" updates to be nearly the sum of all the previous
"delta" updates. This is not the case.

I don't have a copy of the early delta updates handy, but here are the
sizes of the rest of them. Security updates also come into this, because
they modify a base version of the system, and are superseded by the next
version update.

10.5.2 combo: 343.4 MB

Security update 2008-002: 50.9 MB

10.5.3 combo: 530.8 MB. I didn't bother getting the 10.5.3 delta update,
because it was only a few MB smaller than the combo update, indicating
that 10.5.3 replaced nearly every file which had been modified in the
10.5.1 and 10.5.2 updates. Note that this includes or supersedes
everything in the prior security update as well.

10.5.4 delta: 87.5 MB. This is just the changes since 10.5.3 and the
smallest update so far.

10.5.4 combo: 554.3 MB. Note that it is smaller than the sum of the
10.5.3 combo and 10.5.4 delta.

Security update 2008-005: 64.7 MB.

10.5.5 delta: 316.9 MB. Lots of changes in this version. This will
include or replace everything in the previous security update.

10.5.5 combo: 601.1 MB. Note that this is only 50 MB bigger than the
previous combo. Most of the changes in 10.5.5 replaced earlier changes.

Security update 2008-007: 31.5 MB.

10.5.6 delta: 372.8 MB. Biggest update since 10.5.3. This will include
or replace everything in the previous security update.

10.5.6 combo: 668.7 MB. Again only about 60 MB bigger than the previous
combo, so most of the changes in 10.5.6 replaced code which changed
already in 10.5.5 and earlier.

Security update 2009-001: 46.5 MB.

It isn't possible to tell how much code was added each time, but it
cannot be more than the uncompressed difference between the sizes of the
consecutive combo updates. It will probably be much less, because some
of the increased size is due to more existing files being replaced for
the first time since Leopard was released (or a file was added by a
previous update).

The reports say that the early developer release of the 10.5.7 update is
about 440 MB, but that number could change before it is released, and
early developer updates might include extra debugging code.

Assuming that number is accurate, it means that 10.5.7 is changing more
files than any update since 10.5.3, but I'd expect its combo update to
only be a little larger than that of 10.5.6.

 

There is no evidence that they're going to start increasing the size of
Leopard.

That sentence is a sure sign that you don't know what you're talking
about.

Please stop criticizing Apple for the most inane reasons; you are a
whiner who screams for attention.

 

Ha! You finally admit that Safari4 needed tweaking. You made my day.[/QUOTE]

I admitted no such thing. I installed it to see what it would do.

It is now perfectly obvious that you are a troll.

 

How do you know? It says the update is 440 MB but applying it could just
as easily reduce the size of your Leopard install as increase it.

People have already provided plenty of answers to this question but you
trollishly ignore them. I will repeat a few:

a) By dropping support for PowerPC
b) By moving stuff into new shared libraries
c) By re-writing code that had accumulated cruft

In general, when you set out to re-engineer a complex software system
from the ground up, improved performance and decreased size go hand in
hand. With 10.6, Apple did not set out to make Mac OS X smaller, they
set out to make it more focused and to rebuild it around some new core
technologies with the goal of increasing performance and reliability and
(perhaps most importantly) create a more solid foundation for 10.7 and
beyond. Of course they will point out the benefits of saving a bit of
disk space but that was clearly not a primary goal.

Ian

 

Fine for desktop systems. On my laptop every MB counts....

-Stephen

 

Well, I sent the a bug report from a run this morning. I do hope they
will address this.

There are a couple of CSS3 features I'd like to try out on a web site
and I'll need Safari -- especially if it will pass and render all of
the ACID3 CSS -- to see how these things look and behave.

--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

Today's commodities market: Snake Oil: $787B/bbl

"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"

 

EASILY. Compression, removal of stuff that doesn't apply anymore (not
features, but compatibility with older hardware), smarter file layouts,
tuned code, etc, etc.

Consider this in English. These are two sentences, in context of
describing an old help feature in Mac OS 9:

"Developers were encouraged to include help text with a certain level of
descriptiveness: to not only name the object being looked at, but also
explain to the user any state it might have."

"Developers were encouraged to not just name an object, but to describe
its function and explain its state."

The second one is roughly half the length, but in context conveys the
same amount of information.

This is just English. Very often code size can be massively reduced --
far more than half -- without losing functionality. In fact, this should
be done on a regular basis.

Nothing screams that you've been in an abusive relationship with
Microsoft for too long more than not understanding that you can get
better performance and efficiency without giving up features.
Steve

 

I want a browser, not a platform on which to find, install, and debug
low-quality themes (including the built-in one) and plugins. Ugh.

There was a time I liked Firefox. I don't know if it got worse, or my
standards went up. I think it was probably a combination...
Steve

 

That reminds me of this old slogan: "We've upped our standards, now up
yours."

-- Michelle

 

It seems that those who whine the most about their freedom of speech are
among the first to try to shut up those who disagree with them. And
they have no idea what the amendment actually means.

-- Michelle

PS I think you mean the first amendment, not the fifth.

 

I did. Somehow I typed Fifth when I meant First. Ooops.