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One of my first jobs was as a technician at a tech support call center. For a while around 1997-1998, a good 1/3 of our calls were customers who ordered a new s

One of my first jobs was as a technician at a tech support call center. For a while around 1997-1998, a good 1/3 of our calls were customers who ordered a new system with a hard drive over 2.1GB, but Windows/DOS could only make partitions as large as 2.1GB. Customers wondered why they got a smaller hard disk than they ordered, not realizing the extra space was that Drive D under My Computer. Fast forward to today, where my MacBook keeps nagging me that my "hard disk" (actually an SSD) is "full" because I only have 3GB of free space. In 20 years, what was once considered the maximum is now considered negligible. Optimization is important, but regardless, software size is going to keep growing. Wringing hands over it doesn't help much.

saagarjha 9y ago
> my MacBook keeps nagging me that my "hard disk" (actually an SSD) is "full" because I only have 3GB of free space That's because it will use that space for caches and swap, and you're preventing it from doing so and making the system slower.
- DamnInteresting 9y ago
  Yes, I know. My point was that today's "practically none" was 20 years ago's "more than the OS can handle."
fireflash38 9y ago
This misses a large point of the article: It's not the storage size that is problematic as much as the transfer size. Websites and developers really need to be aware how long it will take for someone to even get your product. If a website doesn't load in X seconds, you're losing Y customers. If your app takes an hour to download, your customer has probably already moved on in frustration.
- cakedoggie 9y ago
  Yes, this guy doesn't seem to care at all about it, beyond writing a blog post. If he did, he would remove those huge apps and find alternatives.
  - chii 9y ago
    Perhaps the lament is that because nobody else cares, you can't actually find an app that is small to replace with!
    - cakedoggie 9y ago
      There are lots of apps smaller and better than some of these. Consider the running app? Or using facebook in Safari.
- juiyout 9y ago
  OP is saying that what we think is large now could be considered negligible tomorrow. storage or transfer alike.

saagarjha 9y ago

> my MacBook keeps nagging me that my "hard disk" (actually an SSD) is "full" because I only have 3GB of free space That's because it will use that space for caches and swap, and you're preventing it from doing so and making the system slower.

DamnInteresting 9y ago
Yes, I know. My point was that today's "practically none" was 20 years ago's "more than the OS can handle."

fireflash38 9y ago

This misses a large point of the article: It's not the storage size that is problematic as much as the transfer size. Websites and developers really need to be aware how long it will take for someone to even get your product. If a website doesn't load in X seconds, you're losing Y customers. If your app takes an hour to download, your customer has probably already moved on in frustration.

cakedoggie 9y ago
Yes, this guy doesn't seem to care at all about it, beyond writing a blog post. If he did, he would remove those huge apps and find alternatives.
- chii 9y ago
  Perhaps the lament is that because nobody else cares, you can't actually find an app that is small to replace with!
  - cakedoggie 9y ago
    There are lots of apps smaller and better than some of these. Consider the running app? Or using facebook in Safari.
juiyout 9y ago
OP is saying that what we think is large now could be considered negligible tomorrow. storage or transfer alike.