Love to see upgrades with a negative net size lmao. Software should get more optimized with time, not more bloated. Oop, just got the gnome console popup notification saying that my install command finished running, sweet – it took as long as making this post

  • kryptonidas@lemmings.worldEnglish
    731·
    8 days ago

    Back in the day there was a Mac OS update (Snow Leopard) that took gigabytes off. They dropped support for PowerPC CPUs. So the compiled binaries basically got slashed in half.

    The goals of Snow Leopard were improved performance, greater efficiency and the reduction of its overall memory footprint, unlike previous versions of Mac OS X which focused more on new features. Apple famously marketed Snow Leopard as having “zero new features”.[13] Its name signified its goal to be a refinement of the previous OS X version, Leopard.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

    • boonhet@lemm.eeEnglish
      22·
      7 days ago

      Might happen again one day if they decide to drop x86 support. Which they likely will.

        • boonhet@lemm.eeEnglish
          14·
          7 days ago

          Well they haven’t made a single x86 machine in what, 4 or 5 years?

          The 2024 version of MacOS doesn’t support anything older than 2017 and for most models it’s more like 2018-2020

          I’d say in 2-3 years they’ll drop support for all x86 machines, at which point first party binaries can stop shipping with x86 code. Then eventually, several years later, they’ll drop support for x86 emulation via Rosetta 2, so that’s another thing they can drop from the OS. And once xcode stops giving you those fat dual-arch binaries, other software will also take a bit less space.

          • Estebiu@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            5 days ago

            Oh i though you were talking about discontinuing x86 in general, even for non-apple devices. Yeah I agree, x86 macbook have maybe another 4-5 years max

        • Irelephant@lemm.eeEnglish
          6·
          7 days ago

          idk, apple is very trigger-happy when it comes to discontinuing things (outside of the iphones, strangely.) i think by 2030 we will be long gone from apple x86 machines.

      • Cenzorrll@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        7 days ago

        As an avid apple disliker, they really got a lot of things right with 10.x, with snow leopard hitting it out of the park. Everything from them around that era was slick. If I wasn’t a poor college kid running a 5 year old eBay Thinkpad I would have been sucked into their oppressive ecosystem in a heartbeat.

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          7 days ago

          There’s a different timeline where the board also brought back Wozniak, OS X has linux under the hood and all third party software was cross compatible.

          I wouldn’t imagine iTunes on Ubuntu, but think if all that annoying office software that keeps workplace from switching to linux was suddenly available?