#Mac os x programs for leopard mac os#

In fact, all compressed Snow Leopard files appear to contain zero bytes when viewed from a pre-Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X. Yikes! What's going on here? Well, what I didn't tell you is that the commands shown above were run from a Leopard system looking at a Snow Leopard disk. % file Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/MailĪpplications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail: empty

% ls -l 1 root wheel 0 Jun 18 19:35 Mailīoy, that's, uh, pretty small, huh? Is this really an executable or what? Let's check our assumptions. How compressed? Let's look: % cd Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS To give just one example, ninety-seven percent of the executable files in Snow Leopard are compressed. In Snow Leopard, other kinds of files climb on board the compression bandwagon. Images are PNGs or JPEGs, audio is AAC, video is MPEG-4, even preference files and other property lists now default to a compact binary format rather than XML. But most of those non-executable files have one thing in common: they're usually stored in compressed file formats. There are data files, images, audio files, even a little video. Of course, not all the files in the operating system are executables.

#Mac os x programs for leopard code#

Granted, very few applications in Leopard included 64-bit code of any kind, but it's a 50% reduction in size for executables no matter how you slice it. Now cross half of those architectures off the list. Recall the maximum possible binary payload in a Leopard executable: 32-bit PowerPC, 64-bit PowerPC, x86, and x86_64. The first is obvious: no PowerPC support means no PowerPC code in executables. Snow Leopard has several weight loss secrets. Though I come down pretty firmly on the powers-of-two side of the fence, I can't blame Apple too much for wanting to match up nicely with the long-established (but still dumb, mind you) hard disk vendors' capacity measurement standard. As you might have guessed, hard disk manufacturers use the powers-of-ten system.

For example, my '1 TB' hard drive shows up in the Leopard Finder as having a capacity of 931.19 GB. This has the effect of making your hard disk suddenly appear larger after installing Snow Leopard. The Snow Leopard Finder considers 1 GB to be equal to 10 9 (1,000,000,000) bytes, whereas the Leopard Finder-and, it should be noted, every version of the Finder before it-equates 1 GB to 2 30 (1,073,741,824) bytes. Snow Leopard has another trick up its sleeve when it comes to disk usage.

#Mac os x programs for leopard upgrade#

What's going to happen when all those users upgrade to Snow Leopard and then double-click what they've probably long since forgotten is a PowerPC application? Perhaps surprisingly, this is what happens: As far as Apple is concerned, PowerPC is an ex- ISA.īut not installing Rosetta by default? That seems a little harsh, even foolhardy. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. But the shorter wait for Spotlight indexing is worth noting because it's the first indication most users will get that Snow Leopard means business when it comes to performance.Īnother notable thing about installation is what's not installed by default: Rosetta, the facility that allows PowerPC binaries to run on Intel Macs. 3:20) and again, new installations on empty disks are not the norm. Here, Snow Leopard was 74% faster in my testing. What is striking about Snow Leopard's installation is how quickly the initial Spotlight indexing process completed. Both versions installed in less than 30 minutes. That's well short of Apple's 'up to 45%' claim, but see above (and don't forget the 'up to' weasel words). It should be noted that this change negates some of Snow Leopard's most important installation optimizations, which are focused on reducing random data access from the optical disc.Įven with this disadvantage, the Snow Leopard installation took about 20% less time than the Leopard installation. To eliminate as many variables as possible, I installed both Leopard and Snow Leopard from one hard disk onto another (empty) one. Still, if Apple's going to make such a claim, it's worth checking out. Installation also only happens once, and it's not really an interesting process unless something goes terribly wrong. Apple claims that Snow Leopard's installation process is 'up to 45% faster.' Installation times vary wildly depending on the speed, contents, and fragmentation of the target disk, the speed of the optical drive, and so on.