I'm glad to see Apple is focusing on optimization in Snow Leopard, but I'm curious -- how do they "optimize" their apps? For instance, iWork '08 included more features and goodies than iWork '06 did, but was over 3x smaller (1.76 GB v. 470 MB). Several apps from Snow Leopard are smaller than their Leopard counterparts. What are they doing? Compressing localization strings and binaries and decompressing them on the fly? That'd work with more powerful processors. What else could they be doing? If they can save gigs and gigs, what the heck aren't they doing to do so in the first place?
That difference between iWork '06 and '08 is in disc image size, and I'm not sure how the installed suite differed in size. But there are some definite space savings going on. Does anyone have insight into what exactly Apple is doing to save gigs of hard drive space in Snow Leopard and in general with their other software?
posted by Trollaxor
on Wednesday June 04, @05:32AM
Novicus wrote
Obviously ad-hungry TUAW is talking about Mac OS 10.6 being announced and/or previewed in just a few days at this year's WWDC. WTF? This doesn't make any sense -- didn't Jobs talk about longer release cycles? Leopard isn't even nine months old and, if TUAW is accurate, they'd release it in January, when Leopard would only be 15 months old. What is going on? Where are these rumors coming from?
I imagine it comes from the text strings referring to the new operating system version hidden in software updates of late. If 10.6 ditches PowerPC and 32-bit support, as TUAW speculated, Apple could optimize Mac OS X more readily than they do now. But that's a foregone conclusion.
As for the timing issue, perhaps Apple will offer 10.6 as a free or cheap update for 10.5 like they did with 10.1 for 10.0 users. Or, it's all a bunch of overblown rumors. Just keep in mind that Mac rumor speculation is five-nines pointless and you will, indeed, make it through the day without knowing what Apple has up its corporate sleeves.
A friend of mine who works as an Apple Genius sent me this email:
There is a reported issue with the current 10.5.3 update & photoshop CS3; reportedly files saved over a network after 10.5.3 update corrupts PSD files. stray from running current OS X update till more info is available.
I don't know what "reported" means in this context. A user reported it to the Genius? Apple issued word to their Geniuses? Some guy left this message in TextEdit on a Mac at an Apple Store? "Stray" put and offer your feedback on the issue — has anyone seen this bug yet? If so, are there any workarounds?
I've had several dozen websites running on a dual 533 Power Mac G4 with 1.5 GB RAM since 2001. The sites are for local school districts and have been low-traffic, but recently we started hosting more of them and they're growing in complexity, offering data entry, scheduling portals, and student records retrieval. The G4 is currently groaning with high load averages and I want to upgrade to a new system. The question here is, for the workload I described, would a mini configured with max memory do the trick, or do I really need to invest in something like a Pro or rack Mac? I'm not familiar with how much more powerful newer Intel systems are than their PowerPC counterparts. Opinions? Thanks!
I'd definitely look at an Xserve since the hardware redundancy means you won't have the week or more of wait if something in the system actually fries. Your nightly backups won't make much of a difference there. The extra horsepower an Xserve would provide just means you'll be able to keep the system all the longer before having to replace it. A mini might be too few upgrade options too soon.
dwhite21787 writesII attach and detach many disk images in a day, and it seems that the available /dev/disk? devices fill up. Is there a way to "flush" these? I have to reboot now to keep working, and that can't be the only way. I'm on a G5 Xserve running 10.4.
According to the Twitter stream of Rick LePage and a story at Macsimum News, Stan Flack has died at his home in Canada. Stan was a founder of the iconic MacCentral publication and later ran MacMinute. Stan was kind to MacSlash when we were first getting started, and continued to be a friend to the site over the last 8 years. Our thoughts are with his family.
The final step in my move from Windows to OS-X is my document management solution. I'm using Paperport on Windows with my Brother MFC-8500 document-fed scanner/printer/fax. Where things are falling flat is in the scanning department. Paperport has an excellent feature that helps import double-sided pages by scanning the front of the document stack, then scanning the back of the document stack and automatically collating the pages together to create a nice PDF. Does anything with this capability exist for Leopard yet? VueScan seemed like it might, but it doesn't work with Brother devices. Scanning in DevonThink is broken under Leopard. Brother's included scanner software is as minimalist as possible.
I need to open 4 text files at once, for a particular task. Right now, I highlight them in Finder and use TextEdit to open them. Then I have to resize the windows and move them so they tile the whole screen. Is there a way to script or tweak TextEdit to open four windows of specific size at determined locations? Or can someone suggest an app that can? Thanks - Doug
Caroline Merchiers writes "According to The Mac Observer, 40% of retail sales are represented by 'switchers'. It would be safe to assume that another portion of Mac sales are made by users new to computers entirely.
Last time I checked, Macs come with a rather bare bones instruction manual, if they come with anything at all. While most of us feel OS X is designed so well, it is self documenting, not all users have such an easy time.
OS X Help made it's first post on January 06th 2008, in an effort to guide a new user though the process of becoming proficient with OS X.
Most of the readers here on MacSlash probably are well beyond these types of tutorials. That being the case, we feel the site is a great starting point for new users. Rather than pulling your hair out trying to teach basic concepts to whoever you convinced to buy a Macintosh, just send them our way." Kinda' weird that a site for new mac users uses the geekiest and most obscure Mac-related mascot, Hexley. (Also, my personal favorite mascot ever. )
kwiens writes "We just finished dissecting our MacBook Air. Our online disassembly shows Apple's elegant internal design with high resolution photos and notes about interesting design decisions. As we already knew, Apple is using industry standard 5mm tall Samsung PATA 1.8" 80 GB single-platter drives. The 160 GB dual-platter drive used in the iPod Classic is 3mm too tall to fit in the super-thin new enclosure. Turns out that the battery is fairly easy to replace after all, for those of you who don't feel like giving up your baby to Apple for service. And most surprisingly, we learned that Apple is using the same Broadcom BCM5974 touch controller chip that they ship with the iPhone and iPod Touch. That's one sophisticated trackpad!"
