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The iPad's storage would've been adequate 10 years ago? I'm pretty sure I didn't have a laptop with 32-64GB of storage in 2000 and I did just fine. My current

by dlsspy 16y ago

The iPad's storage would've been adequate 10 years ago? I'm pretty sure I didn't have a laptop with 32-64GB of storage in 2000 and I did just fine. My current laptop drive is about 100GB (SSD) and it's pretty roomy (considering I store my big media on an external 1TB USB drive).

catch23 16y ago
I remember back in the day, my first very own computer (Pentium 2, 266Mhz) had a 6.4GB drive and I could still put a bunch of games & applications on it without worrying about disk space. These days, a single game like starcraft 2 requires around 9 gigs of disk space. It's crazy to think that 10 years from now, your average application will require 100GB of disk space, which will still be nothing compared to your 10TB drive. Maybe future games will be packaged in their own virtual machine since everyone will be running a hypervisor normally.
- shadowpwner 16y ago
  Assuming a linear model, and that compression won't improve.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > It's crazy to think that 10 years from now, your average application will require 100GB of disk space Doubtful. Outsite of games, "your average application" is still mostly in the 10~100MB range, and generally on the lower end of the spectrum. And I'm talking desktop: on OSX, Acorn is 35MB, Address Book is 20MB, Adium is 73MB, Camino is 48MB, Colloquy is 22MB, Delicious Library 2 is 42MB, Divvy is 3.7MB, ForkLift is 25MB, Handbrake is 15MB, iCal is 53MB, mail is 77MB, Reeder is 9.3MB, RipIt is 6.6MB, … Of course on the other hand Emacs is 133MB, iMovie is 256MB, iTunes is 158MB. But really, games and multimedia (video and audio) are the eaters of disk space. In no small part because games are full of multimedia data and multimedia files are simply huge as they're continuously increasing in quality.
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    OS X programs are a really bad benchmark for average program size. Many of them contain two binaries -- one for PPC and one for Intel -- so that inflates the size significantly. OS X also just tends to have bigger applications, I'm not sure what all is in there; maybe larger icons or maybe OS X just requires a lot of extra big files somehow. For instance, the VLC 32/64-bit package for Intel on OS X, which is the first linked download and the one users are mostly likely to click, is ~40MB whereas the Windows download is ~20MB (the OS X 32-bit only is ~24MB). The Arch Linux package is a 6MB download. Stuff on OS X just takes a _lot_ more disk space. Arch Linux's package for emacs (http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/ http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/) is 89.7MB installed, whereas your post indicates that on OS X emacs consumes 133MB. So really the space requirements will even less for non-OS X users.
    - bradleyland 16y ago
      You pretty much nailed it, but one additional factor is that application "bundles" in OS X frequently include all the required libraries required to run the application, rather than linking against shared libraries. The only shared libs you can really count on are the ones provided by the OS, so if you need something newer, or different, many app developers simply bundle the library with their application.
    - masklinn 16y ago
      > Many of them contain two binaries -- one for PPC and one for Intel Actually, most of them nowadays would contain i386 and x86_64 code, but for most big software the major contribution to size is (as with games) assets rather than binaries. For instance, Acorn has a dual-arch binary weighting 5.5MB, or about 15% of its total. A single-arch binary file would shave about 7% off the application. Not exactly significant. For Address Book, the dual-arch binary is 319K (out of 20MB), Adium packs two architectures in a 3.9MB binary (about 5% of the total package size), … > Stuff on OS X just takes a _lot_ more disk space. Arch Linux's package for emacs (http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/ http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/) is 89.7MB installed, whereas your post indicates that on OS X emacs consumes 133MB. Not all of the difference comes from the binary by a long shot: the binary itself is 33MB and triple-architecture, even single-arch the package would be around 110MB. The Arch Linux package might not contain compiled elisp files for instance.
- Leptosiphon 16y ago
  In the early 1980s my dad brought home a 5mb hard drive. It connected to our Atari 800 through the Atari's four joystick ports, and cost $5000. A lot can change in 25 years.

by dlsspy 16y ago

catch23 16y ago

I remember back in the day, my first very own computer (Pentium 2, 266Mhz) had a 6.4GB drive and I could still put a bunch of games & applications on it without worrying about disk space. These days, a single game like starcraft 2 requires around 9 gigs of disk space. It's crazy to think that 10 years from now, your average application will require 100GB of disk space, which will still be nothing compared to your 10TB drive. Maybe future games will be packaged in their own virtual machine since everyone will be running a hypervisor normally.

shadowpwner 16y ago
Assuming a linear model, and that compression won't improve.
masklinn 16y ago
> It's crazy to think that 10 years from now, your average application will require 100GB of disk space Doubtful. Outsite of games, "your average application" is still mostly in the 10~100MB range, and generally on the lower end of the spectrum. And I'm talking desktop: on OSX, Acorn is 35MB, Address Book is 20MB, Adium is 73MB, Camino is 48MB, Colloquy is 22MB, Delicious Library 2 is 42MB, Divvy is 3.7MB, ForkLift is 25MB, Handbrake is 15MB, iCal is 53MB, mail is 77MB, Reeder is 9.3MB, RipIt is 6.6MB, … Of course on the other hand Emacs is 133MB, iMovie is 256MB, iTunes is 158MB. But really, games and multimedia (video and audio) are the eaters of disk space. In no small part because games are full of multimedia data and multimedia files are simply huge as they're continuously increasing in quality.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  OS X programs are a really bad benchmark for average program size. Many of them contain two binaries -- one for PPC and one for Intel -- so that inflates the size significantly. OS X also just tends to have bigger applications, I'm not sure what all is in there; maybe larger icons or maybe OS X just requires a lot of extra big files somehow. For instance, the VLC 32/64-bit package for Intel on OS X, which is the first linked download and the one users are mostly likely to click, is ~40MB whereas the Windows download is ~20MB (the OS X 32-bit only is ~24MB). The Arch Linux package is a 6MB download. Stuff on OS X just takes a _lot_ more disk space. Arch Linux's package for emacs (http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/ http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/) is 89.7MB installed, whereas your post indicates that on OS X emacs consumes 133MB. So really the space requirements will even less for non-OS X users.
  - bradleyland 16y ago
    You pretty much nailed it, but one additional factor is that application "bundles" in OS X frequently include all the required libraries required to run the application, rather than linking against shared libraries. The only shared libs you can really count on are the ones provided by the OS, so if you need something newer, or different, many app developers simply bundle the library with their application.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > Many of them contain two binaries -- one for PPC and one for Intel Actually, most of them nowadays would contain i386 and x86_64 code, but for most big software the major contribution to size is (as with games) assets rather than binaries. For instance, Acorn has a dual-arch binary weighting 5.5MB, or about 15% of its total. A single-arch binary file would shave about 7% off the application. Not exactly significant. For Address Book, the dual-arch binary is 319K (out of 20MB), Adium packs two architectures in a 3.9MB binary (about 5% of the total package size), … > Stuff on OS X just takes a _lot_ more disk space. Arch Linux's package for emacs (http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/ http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/) is 89.7MB installed, whereas your post indicates that on OS X emacs consumes 133MB. Not all of the difference comes from the binary by a long shot: the binary itself is 33MB and triple-architecture, even single-arch the package would be around 110MB. The Arch Linux package might not contain compiled elisp files for instance.
Leptosiphon 16y ago
In the early 1980s my dad brought home a 5mb hard drive. It connected to our Atari 800 through the Atari's four joystick ports, and cost $5000. A lot can change in 25 years.