file size
Why are Apple applications are so much larger than similar Microsoft applications. Some examples: Word -12.7 MB and Pages - 273.4 MB: Excel - 11.7 MB and Numbers - 138.6 MB. Both Word and Excel are sophisticated programs and I would have assumed they would be large, and that since Pages and Numbers are relatively new so they would be lean, but the opposite seems to be the case. They all work well except Numbers is slow. Is that a function of size? Is obesity epidemic in programming as well as programmers?
Comments
Inside Keynote.app the two biggest folders are:
Frameworks - 100MB
Resources - 143MB
'Frameworks' is most likely huge because iWork is compatible with both Tiger and Leopard, so Apple probably backported a bunch of frameworks to Tiger and bundled them into the app to ensure compatibility.
Next, 'Resources' which is mostly take up by the keynote themes. There's well over a hundred variations, most of them using high resolution images as backgrounds and so on. Compare this to the themes you get with PowerPoint which contain mostly bland vector clip art.
Pages.app and Numbers.app are pretty much the same - massive amounts of high quality themes and several frameworks.
Now, my Address Book.app is only 4.7MB. Mail.app is 27MB and iCal.app is 13MB.
Why? I removed all the localised files. If you do a standard install of Mac OS X you'll get 18 or so languages installed. Each application has these languages available. Check for yourself by choosing File > Get Info on an app and expand the 'Languages' section. You can switch languages on and off, even delete them completely.
Office on the other hand comes only with English language files, hence it is smaller.
Also, don't confuse size with speed. Just because these apps contain a huge number of files does not necessarily make them slow. They're slow because they have flashy interfaces which I would argue makes them friendlier and more fun to use.
Numbers.app is probably slow because it's a version 1.0 app. Typically, the first version of any application Apple makes is horribly slow, then with each new version they get progressively faster. See Apature.app or iCal.app for example.
2004 wasn't Universal, it only contains PowerPC code. The Apple apps are all fat binaries, which would make them quite a bit larger.