Five undisclosed features of Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard

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  • Reply 41 of 98
    The majority of the large Apps sizes are related to localisation of the NIB files, and also if they strip the PPC code making them intel-only binaries, I can see how they can get these large size reductions.



    Anyway, if these large app sizes bother anyone else, you can try xslimmer on your leopard apps and strip out a lot of extra files. By removing localizations, My Mail.app is 24MB, down from 278!
  • Reply 42 of 98
    palplepalple Posts: 35member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jasonfj View Post


    Text Edit is 22mb?!?



    Text Edit is 5.4MB on my system, 5.1MB of which are interface related files (the UB code is less than 300Kb, so stripping out the PPC code would result in a minimal gain).
  • Reply 43 of 98
    ouraganouragan Posts: 437member
    I've got to have Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Now, I'm likely to buy it as the operating system that is included with a brand new iMac.



    Apple, if you read me, don't spoil the prospects of Mac OS X Snow Leopard by delaying it unduly. Ideally, it should come out at MacWorld 2009 along with brand new quad core iMacs. If it's impossible, Mac OS X Snow Leopard should be launched no later than April 2009.



    The Developper Preview of Mac OS X Snow Leopard is quite buggy if I am to believe what I read on the internet. Please iron out the bugs ASAP. Thanks, and keep working hard for the next chapter in Mac OS X history.



  • Reply 44 of 98
    hattighattig Posts: 860member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by gmaletic View Post


    That seems unlikely as well: most apps don't have very many bitmaps in them at all. (A few toolbar icons, an app and document icon, etc. We're talking about 200K here.)



    What else could it be?



    Most likely a combination of compiling tighter code bases (and I don't think they'll stop supporting PowerPC myself) using more modern compilers and LLVM perhaps, removing extraneous language packs apart from those desired (these are very large, multiplied by dozens of languages), removal of cruft, etc.
  • Reply 45 of 98
    inklinginkling Posts: 768member
    They'd also do well to add GREP search and replace to the text engine. That's add GREP's well-honed abilities to almost all text applications.
  • Reply 46 of 98
    hattighattig Posts: 860member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by minderbinder View Post


    And won't it stop doing it if you add it to the dictionary?



    I'm more annoyed by the windows habit of capitalizing the beginning of a line whether you want it or not...and defaulting to pasting text with style included. I'm still looking for a way to turn that off.



    Auto-capitalise is the most annoying thing ever. I only use Word to create documents that are technical in nature, for in-house use, and sometimes you want your words to not start in upper case. I hate having to delete it and redo it to keep it correct. Someone mentioned shift-space, I'll try that, but hidden workarounds are not the way to implement things like this.



    On the other hand, automatic em-dash and arrows and the like are handy.



    Auto-correct spelling is annoying because I see my typo, am already hitting delete when it corrects it. Delete de-corrects it. Annoying.



    Oh, and pasting with styles is so annoying, and having to always do paste special doubly so. Never mind I tried pasting in Excel data into Word today, and it came out way too wide, with no option to resize (nor intelligently fitting the mere five columns into the available page width) unless I pasted as Windows metafile format. Resizing it was an exercise in futility - no resize to page layout markers, not even an outline of the resized item, just plain guessing.
  • Reply 47 of 98
    henriokhenriok Posts: 537member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post


    indicates to me a new set of Frameworks and dylibs that are used across many applications instead of having custom dylibs per application that added bloat to the general applications.



    Exactly!

    If they move the frameworks out of the applications, the only things left are localizations! All the applications listend are pretty much just frontends to Frameworks.



    Apple could even make a large repository of vectorized standard widgets and icons that can be used by any application. Put those great icon artists at Apple at work for everyone's benefit.
  • Reply 48 of 98
    wheelhotwheelhot Posts: 465member
    Hmm, I always love AI but I found it odd how this post say how things that are not confirmed like it is confirmed. Apple Newton? There is some rumors here and there but no solid evidence. MB and MBP revamp? So far we heard news about new MB somewhere in the Apple factory but no real pictures or evidence like the iPhone 3G.
  • Reply 49 of 98
    minderbinderminderbinder Posts: 1,703member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by the_snitch View Post


    The majority of the large Apps sizes are related to localisation of the NIB files, and also if they strip the PPC code making them intel-only binaries, I can see how they can get these large size reductions.



    As said earlier, they haven't stripped out the PPC code yet - the 10.6 preview ships with universal apps, meaning PPC code intact.
  • Reply 50 of 98
    jmadlenajmadlena Posts: 43member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Henriok View Post


    Exactly!

    If they move the frameworks out of the applications, the only things left are localizations! All the applications listend are pretty much just frontends to Frameworks.



    Apple could even make a large repository of vectorized standard widgets and icons that can be used by any application. Put those great icon artists at Apple at work for everyone's benefit.



    With that type of architecture, aren't we in danger of Window type DLL-hell? What if you (think) you no longer need a framework, delete it, only to find that one more app still needs it. That has happened to me on Windows a couple times, and it was not fun.



    I think I know what I'm talking about, kinda sorta...
  • Reply 51 of 98
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    No. Frameworks solve most of the DLL hell issues outright, with intelligent versioning. All it would take is a little bit of logic in the OS to alert you to which apps need which frameworks prior to deletion.



    There is *zero* reason why libraries, plugins, extensions, etc, should be subject to versioning crises. Eclipse, I'm looking in your braindead direction. (I mean come on... putting the version information for a feature or plugin in the *file name*?? How stupid do you have to be? What is this, 1975??)
  • Reply 52 of 98
    stormchildstormchild Posts: 104member
    If it hasn't already happened, Snow Leopard's apps will no doubt lose even more weight by dropping all the old PowerPC code.



    Maybe they've also got more intelligent OS X installer defaults that don't assume you need to run the entire OS in every possible language. Even today, if you turn off all the extra localizations (a lot of people leave these on because they confuse this with the ability to read or input other languages, which is always included), many of your apps will be smaller by not including the files (.nibs and strings and such) for localizations you don't use.
  • Reply 53 of 98
    haggarhaggar Posts: 1,568member
    I would really like to see Apple's Installer include built in support for uninstalling applications. Simply telling users "Just drag it to the trash" is not enough. Even applications that have drag-and-drop installation may automatically install files in several other locations during the first launch. EyeTV and Microsoft Office 2004 do this. And I would like smart uninstall support which can check for dependencies and warn users when removing applications that are needed by other applications.
  • Reply 54 of 98
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Haggar View Post


    I would really like to see Apple's Installer include built in support for uninstalling applications. Simply telling users "Just drag it to the trash" is not enough. Even applications that have drag-and-drop installation may automatically install files in several other locations during the first launch. EyeTV and Microsoft Office 2004 do this. And I would like smart uninstall support which can check for dependencies and warn users when removing applications that are needed by other applications.



    That would be nice. I don't think it would be too hard to create a deamon that would monitor what files/folders are created by an app while it's running, that would then create a small DB of the apps that would delete the appropriate files.
  • Reply 55 of 98
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by elron View Post


    Please don't let this be true. Underlining misspelled words is good enough. Please don't correct them for me. Most of the time I mean what I typed, not what Word thinks I thought I typed.



    Why would anyone take UI cues from Microsoft Word? Are they going to introduce the line you can see but for some reason can't delete as well? Or the table that used to be there but isn't there anymore but for some reason you can't reclaim the space where it used to be? Maybe the image that looks like you can drag it where you want it but will really stay exactly where it is no matter what? So many features to copy, so little time.



    please, dont even joke about that stuff.. its taken me long enough to wash most of it from my mind!
  • Reply 56 of 98
    The huge reductions in file size would probably be from a combination of lacking localizations, and from using more efficient compilers. I don't think the frameworks will disappear from apps in SL, because this will require more complicated program installs, and an "Add or Remove programs" prefpane.



    As far as the spellcheck/auto correct goes, am I the only one hoping that this will be in there? I am not that great of a typer, and I find word's auto-correct the only useful future in Word. As long as they would throw in a preference pane to handle it and the system-wide spellcheck.



    I hope this doesn't go too far though... Soon we won't be able to select text properly, and whenever we open Safari, Clippy will ask us "I see you are trying to read Appleinsider. Would you like some help?"
  • Reply 57 of 98
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jmadlena View Post


    With that type of architecture, aren't we in danger of Window type DLL-hell? What if you (think) you no longer need a framework, delete it, only to find that one more app still needs it. That has happened to me on Windows a couple times, and it was not fun.



    I think I know what I'm talking about, kinda sorta...



    No, you won't have DLL-hell. The frameworks will becomes system components that other apps can use, most likely a part of cocoa. Because they are standard system frameworks, there will be less space consuming code duplication and no one will ever think of deleting them because /System is sacred.
  • Reply 58 of 98
    charlesscharless Posts: 301member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by minderbinder View Post


    And won't it stop doing it if you add it to the dictionary?



    The ones you catch aren't the issue - the issue is the ones you miss. If Word "corrects" someone's name, an obscure word that's not in the dictionary, or something that's not a word (like correcting "NaOH" to "Noah" in a chemistry paper). and you don't notice it, that's when the really embarrassing situations come into play if you don't eventually end up catching the misspelling.
  • Reply 59 of 98
    This is just pitiful!



    Where have you people been living?
  • Reply 60 of 98
    all i ask for is that Apple finally include FLAC support in iTunes.....





    i'm this close to installing Linux on my mac pro so I can use Amarok....





    there is absolutely no excuse for not having flac support or at least creating a framework where a 3rd party could implement it
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