“In response to a report earlier this week pointing out that many of the applications in early builds of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard are dramatically smaller in size, a number of developers have weighed in to explain where all those missing megabytes went,” Prince McLean reports for AppleInsider.
“While Apple may likely be expanding the use of background file compression to save space in Snow Leopard, today’s Mac OS X Leopard is unnecessarily overweight due to an error Apple made when packaging the system, according to a developer who asked to remain anonymous. Leopard apps all contain superfluous designable.nib files that should have been removed in the Golden Master. ‘Mail alone has around 1400 of these files, taking up almost 200 MB of disk space,’ he noted,” McLean reports.
“Other suspected reasons for the dramatic weight reduction included lighter weight, resolution independent vector graphics and the removal of PowerPC code,” McLean reports. “However, the same developer explained that ‘most of the artwork in the applications is the same as it was in Leopard. Snow Leopard is, sadly, not much further along in resolution independence than Leopard, at least in the developer preview.'”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ampar” for the heads up.]
I say they are brining back OpenDoc technology. Safari will morph to Cyberdog X.
With obesity being such a big of an issue in the States, perhaps Apple has to release a Diet Leopard
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woz is back! he was all about efficiency!
After reading this article, I right-clicked on Mail, clicked on show package contents, searched for files named “designable.nib” and deleted all of them. Mail shrank from 289 MB to 87 MB.
The “designable.nib” files are analogous to sponges left in the patient after surgery. I found them in applications that are part of Leopard, but not in any iLife or iWork applications. Taking them out doesn’t change a thing but disk space.
Extracting the Intel code isn’t worth it. There’s not enough difference to matter.
Mail.app is 288.9 MB! Mon Dieu!
ZFS anyone?
I’m still on Tiger, and my mail.app is 7.5 MB after removing all the extra languages.
To Harvey,
Q: If I delete them — will my Mail run faster?
Did yours?
Any adverse affects?
Thanks.
– Doga
Without more info, I couldn’t say I’m comparing the same things, but in Leopard .3 I’m showing only 24.9 mb for mail, less all languages other than English and American English.
Wouldn’t removal of these “designable.nib” files be possible for 10.5 via Software Update? Doesn’t sound like the space savings need be 10.6-specific then, in which case it’s a bit misleading to tout that as a “feature” of Snow Leopard.
I recently upgraded my mom’s old iBook to Leopard, and there’s not much space left on its hard drive now. If this “designable.nib” thing is indeed the solution, I’d prefer Apple fix this problem with a Software Update, rather than me going in and mucking about with stuff that could break things (though I may still give it a try anyway).
Damn, argh…so that’s what they are. I found those .nib files in my iTunes library, they had replaced some m4a files. iTunes would not play them unless I delete them and drop the original m4p files back in. Weird, and there are some other file extensions too doing the same thing. Good thing is that this is happening only on one computer.
I’m sure cleanapp or appzapper will pick up on this and add a “kill the nibs” feature. I’d rather wait for them to engineer a solution than try myself.
Simple, deleting all that legacy software for PPC. Didn’t you get the memo?
Hm, this is interesting. Safari shrunk from 60+ MB to 11 MB after getting rid of languages other than English and Polish, and removal of remaining designable.nib files.
If only developers of Monolingual would incorporate designable.nib removal routine into their otherwise excellent software…
Never heard of Monolingual? Go get it from VersionTracker – your Mac will loose over 3GB of language resources once all is said and done.
@ YoYo
If you’re seeing those in your iTunes library that sound’s like there could be a directory issue on the drive. I’d back up and then run Disk Utilities or Disk Warrior on the drive if I were you.
Removing all designable.nib files on a full Leopard install will only free up about 30MB of hard drive space, so this is hardly a significant factor in the smaller size of the Snow Leopard OS. 30MB is a mere drop in the bucket these days.
Anyone else notice that one of the languages in Monolingual is “Klingon”?
couldn’t it just be they are all Intel only? they just dropped the PPC part?
I looked at three of the so-called reduced Snow Leopard files, Safari, iChat and calculator. The total shown in the link, after reductions, was 114 mb. Those same three on my PPC .3 shows a present total of 24.9. The Mail app that they show 91, I show 24.9 (only coincidental to the other three examples).
I also did a file search of my computer and did not find any .dib files. Am I on the same page here, or is AppleInsider full of crap?
Easy, they are stripping all the Power PC code
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Ampar is going for the cycle.
My guess: trucker speed.
Cubert: “Ampar is going for the cycle.” Sounds fab.
Maybe the non-default languages will be able to be installed on the fly.
I, for one, am worried. Remember last year when Jobs demoed the new system: 10.5 looked healthy and robust. In 10.6 I see a gaunt, emaciated collection of system code. I imagine Apple will deny any illness and claim it’s “more effecient” and that it’s “lighter is better.”