8 ms·

macOS Sonoma is setting records for update size

61 points by ingve 3y ago

marban 3y ago
From a consumer perspective, who actually cares?
- baz00 3y ago
  Yeah I don't give a shit myself. I mean 850 meg is what an hour of decent quality streaming and we get one of these every month or two. Meh. Even when I was stuck tethered on 4G for 9 months this wasn't a big issue.
- jasoncartwright 3y ago
  Users on slower, lower quality, or metered internet connections
- harha 3y ago
  Not macOS but my iPhone is struggling with space to update and there’s a ton of data I just can’t delete like data X stores somewhere or WhatsApp that duplicates photos in addition to a massive amount of system files that aren’t specified.
  - bradknowles 3y ago
    On the iPhone and iPad, there are options you can select to let Apple unload certain applications or data to iCloud, where you can re-download them again in the future if you need them. This lets the system clear space for large downloads like this. You just have to know which options to enable.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    I mean, that's what you get for buying a device that nanny doesn't let you have complete access to.
    - danielheath 3y ago
      You mean, not a pinephone / framework laptop?
      - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        Well, Android was the more obvious implication, but I bet you know that and disagree. Which is weird because many manufacturers don't restrict flashing a different rom, and even with standard Android you have more access than iPhone gives you.
        majewsky 3y ago
        > many manufacturers don't restrict flashing a different rom Manufacturers don't, but app makers do. I know people running on LineageOS that have to keep a second smartphone on stock Android for their banking authenicator app (which fails on Lineage because it's not the manufacturer-supplied ROM and that supposedly means it's been hacked).
        PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        If it couldn't be fooled through software (and there are sandboxing solutions to run stuff that needs google services etc) I don't think I'd stay with such a bank.
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      I would prefer to have access to the filesystem too but this isn't really a solution to the problem. People shouldn't have to go around deleting System32 to make space on their device so they can update…
      - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        At least if you could access the file system you could remove a lot of junk, like the duped picture files you referenced. I agree though software updating is widely inefficient given how it could be done.
- whatever1 3y ago
  In the US many internet providers have data caps. And very frequently there is no alternative provider in the same area, so no pressure to lift the caps. Comcast for example has an 1.2TB per month cap and $10 for each additional 50GB chunk. With 4k shows on Netflix, online gaming, and 60gb device updates it’s very easy to hit the cap.
  - Osiris 3y ago
    I got a deal on Comcast to get 1.2Gbps + unlimited bandwidth for $80. I was previously using Century Link Small business at 150Mbps + unlimited. According to their app, I'm consistently using 3-4TB per month. I don't know what the breakdown is but my guess is it's mostly streaming video and video game downloads.
  - fransje26 3y ago
    https://youtu.be/vbHqUNl8YFk?feature=shared&t=31 https://youtu.be/vbHqUNl8YFk?feature=shared&t=31
- rekoil 3y ago
  We need to look at this from several angles. Yes, most have fast internet these days, which means that for a single person the time spent downloading a 1GB update isn't really a problem like it might have been 10 years ago, but what about the literal hundreds of millions of other macOS users? We're talking hundreds of petabytes of network traffic that happens multiple times a year. Say that update could have been optimised down to say 100MB through shipping only binary diffs instead of complete executables, that's hundreds of petabytes of network traffic that doesn't need to be transferred, which means less link congestion, less packet processing, less data temporarily stored not just on customer machines but in datacenters as well. Unnecessarily large updates in systems with hundreds of millions of users has a non-negligible environmental impact.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    It's still pretty negligible. Take public transport once instead of driving and you've more than offset a lifetime of downloading OS updates. There are so many low hanging enormous fruit to pick that it makes almost no sense to start with the very difficult and insignificant ones.
    - rekoil 3y ago
      I'm not 100% convinced it's all that negligible, but in general I agree with your sentiment. Inefficient software updates are a pet peeve of mine. If I download 5GB of software patches I'd expect to see major differences after applying the patch, but most of the time these days it's barely noticeable changes, yet the patches are still huge. Just look at the iOS 17 OTA packages for iPhone 14 Pro. - 16.6.1 -> 17.0: 3.3GB - fair enough, new major version - 17.0 -> 17.0.1: 452MB - security updates and bugfixes - 17.0.1 -> 17.0.2: 384MB - security updates and bugfixes - 17.0.2 -> 17.0.3: 450MB - security updates and bugfixes - 17.0.3 -> 17.1: 1.35GB - this one is interesting, an update from 17.0.2 to 17.1 is actually about 150MB smaller than from the latest version which uses the same upgrade package as 17.0 GM - 17.1 -> 17.1.1: 395MB - security updates and bugfixes - 17.1.1 -> 17.1.2: 414MB - security updates and bugfixes In total, I've downloaded about 3.44GB of updates for my iPhone since the iOS 17 upgrade in September, and have received WiFi AirDrop support, some security fixes, and better Home app Matter support. Security fixes are in general just a few lines of changed code, and should result in minimal changes to a binary, so if you just diff the new binary with the old one it should come out pretty minimal, yet the patches are several hundred megabytes. Someone in a different thread suggested Apple were doing partial binary patching, but I don't see it.
- ChrisRR 3y ago
  Given that Apple often comes under fire for using non-upgradable storage, a lot of people care
troupo 3y ago
So right now I'm looking at Sonoma's 14.1.2 update. It's not a minor version, it's a patch that "provides important bug fixes". It's 845 MB in size. I can't even begin to imagine what can weigh in at 845 MB for a bug/security release.
- inferiorhuman 3y ago
  Well it seems to have made the Finder worse for me, so there's that. And, yeah, it's not particularly quick to install (M2 Pro, 512GB SSD). I hope Apple can stop faffing about with new whiz bang features for a few iterations and instead focus on working down the ridiculous list of bugs in Sonoma. Somehow they've managed to utterly fuck up application switching, the mind boggles. Edit since I'm being throttled: I wholeheartedly agree (and I'm sure I've commented to this effect on HN before): this is probably the nicest Apple laptop I've laid my hands on and nearly the worst version of MacOS I've seen in three decades. I really like the 14" pro form factor. Thankfully I have until January to decide if I want to keep the laptop. Keyboard focus does not reliably follow you to the new foreground application. I saw this mentioned in the comments in the Ars review but it seems to be worse for me than that guy. Finder does not reliably display a progress indicator when copying big files, and quick look is as unreliable as ever. AFP support is completely broken. Apple should just rip that code out instead of letting it rot like that. It's particularly frustrating because Apple dropped support for the version of SMB where Samba "properly" supported unix-y permissions. SMB support worked for a while in the Finder, but would corrupt metadata from the command line. With 14.1.2 it seems like creating/modifying files on an SMB share from the Finder is as unreliable as the command line.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Like what? Haven't seen anything fishy in either Finder or application switching.
  - huijzer 3y ago
    "Apple Inc. hit pause on development of next year’s software updates for the iPhone, iPad, Mac and other devices so that it could root out glitches in the code." [1] [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-07/apple-delays-work-on-ios-18-macos-15-watchos-11-due-to-problems-with-bugs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-07/apple-del...
tuzemec 3y ago
To put things in perspective: the last update to Baldur's Gate 3 was ~100 GB (via GOG).
- huytersd 3y ago
  Holy shit are you serious. I haven’t played video games in a few years. That’s crazy.
  - tuzemec 3y ago
    Not sure if that was something GOG specific, but basically had to download the whole game again. The official specs are that the patch is 30GB, but requires 130GB free disk space.
    - Springtime 3y ago
      GOG has has some strange calculations it performs for free space, particularly for its offline installers. One of the Cyberpunk 2077 updates required 400GB+ free space to install a sub 50GB patch, which was ludicrous and I think under-reported due to most using the Galaxy install process.
  - sdflhasjd 3y ago
    I don't know how GOG delivers updates, but 100GB is basically the download size of the whole game, so it sounds like it's downloading it again. On Steam, the update was ~20GB. Still pretty ridiculous for what is essentially a patch though.
  - mock-possum 3y ago
    Storage space is cheap. Fast internet is ubiquitous. Both are required to effectively distribute high quality assets.
    - leononame 3y ago
      Fast internet is not that ubiquitous. There are plenty of people in rural and even urban areas with 16 Mbit or less even in developed countries. Game downloads are extremely frustrating to some friends of mine because it takes literally 20 hours to download sometimes.
seeknotfind 3y ago
This is the type of article that can be published continuously for all of history. The computers get bigger and bigger. It would be more impressive if the updates were smaller for a while.
- rekoil 3y ago
  I thought one of the features of having signed and verified boot partitions was that you could know exactly what's in it and can thus do cool things like binary diff patching where it makes sense (which should be like >90% of all files in an update), and only ship complete binary images where absolutely necessary. Obviously this means you have to maintain 2 update tracks, one optimised flow for all the normies, and one for everyone who has disabled SIP. But the benefits are worth it when you consider all the electricity and bandwidth used by all the excess data you're no longer sending over the network. Combine this with APFS snapshotting and it should make for a resilient update schema which uses minimal amounts of data. Or am I completely wrong in my assumptions about binary diff patches?
  - AdamN 3y ago
    iirc Windows already does this - MacOS is just behind the curve here. Perhaps there are security/stability edge cases that make this more difficult than it would seem?
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    They do this.
- sdflhasjd 3y ago
  Download size inflation seems to be outstripping improvements in my internet connection.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - xethos 3y ago
    I hadn't realized any country was getting progressively slower internet speeds. Per TFA: > Since Big Sur, updates have reduced in total size, and in Ventura were close to or below earlier versions Apple is shipping smaller updates over time, not larger (any more).
VBprogrammer 3y ago
My TV downloaded a 1.2GB update the other day. Things are out of control. Games are the worst. If you haven't started one up in a week you need to download an important patch - somehow using 6GB in the process. I'm pretty sure there is just next to no effort put into keeping the file sizes down.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  My wife plays a lot of Counter Strike, but she is also a busy person with a stressful day job. She can't play every day, but because of this, every time she wants to play she has to sit there for 30 minutes to an hour to wait for the update to download.
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    This is the exact reason I pulled 1Gbit ethernet to my wifes PlayStation. It's so rare that she has the time to play, so spending 30 minutes or more to pull in updates is preventing her from enjoying what little time she has to play. Switching out the wifi for a physical connection have reduced those download time to just few minutes. The amount of updates to what should be more or less finished products is just insane and I can't understand why the industry doesn't see it as a issue... Well, money but still.
  - VBprogrammer 3y ago
    I feel her pain. My 4 year old girl asked really nicely to play "the flying game" (Microsoft Flight simulator 2020) the other week. I got her out of the bath and we were both looking forward to playing but it the downloaded a major update which was still running when I started work the next morning.
  - mock-possum 3y ago
    Can’t you set it to auto updated?
    - bowsamic 3y ago
      We only use that computer for Counter Strike right now, it's our old "gaming PC", from when we had more time for that
andersrs 3y ago
As the owner of a 2012 iMac I fear this because eventually I'll be forced to upgrade due to some application requiring the latest OS. The process for installing a new SSD involves, I shit you not, taking a razor blade to the glue between the glass screen and the chassis. I could be a wasteful consumer and buy a new one every 3 years but it's about the principle. It's a great tidy computer to have for casual use in a shared family room and it's a shame that a software issue might be the death of it.
- jahnu 3y ago
  I have a 2016 MBP and it's already stuck on Monterey. How are you planning to upgrade a 2012 iMac beyond Catalina anyway?
  - 3guk 3y ago
    At a guess I would say probably using OCLP - https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher - lots of life left in old Mac’s using that tool !
    - walteweiss 3y ago
      And when that comes to an end, you can try Fedora Linux and it may serve very well. Especially if for a shared computer you need browser plus some other popular apps. I use Fedora on my old Hackintosh (that served me well for over a decade) and I hadn’t noticed any difference with macOS software and aesthetics-wise.
    - drukenemo 3y ago
      OLP made Mac unusable. Too slow to even load icons in the system settings. Had to revert back to Catalina.
23kl333 3y ago
Sonoma is also setting records for the number of bugs. Now even the buggiest windows version ever feels like an etalon of stability comparing to Sonoma.
- smikhanov 3y ago
  What is etalon?
  - fransje26 3y ago
    Think of it as a horse. So, it looks like OP is referring to a very stable horse. Although it would probably be a stretch to call it a dependable workhorse.. https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9E2797 https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9E2797 https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9E2798 https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9E2798
  - thiht 3y ago
    Not sure if it’s used a lot in English, but in French a « valeur étalon » is a value of reference. Like you measure something precisely, define it as standard and it becomes your étalon for future measures I guess it’s used in this sense here
    - Fluorescence 3y ago
      Not heard this used before so nice to learn something, thanks! Is it said in a neutral sense like yardstick or is it an ideal to aspire to like exemplar or paragon?
      - thiht 3y ago
        It's neutral. For example, it was used with metric system definitions: at some point the "kilogramme-étalon" was literally an object weighing 1kg (by definition, the kg was this object). You can see here a kilogramme étalon: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Standard_kilogram%2C_2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Standard... and a mètre étalon: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Mètre-étalon_Paris.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Mètre-ét... Edit: for completeness sake, a litre and décalitre (10L) étalon: https://portail.polytechnique.edu/musx/sites/pf_191/files/accueil/litre_decalitre.jpg https://portail.polytechnique.edu/musx/sites/pf_191/files/ac...
LeeroyWasHere 3y ago
Planned obsolescence through bloated updates and or push consumers towards live services. They still sell 256GB base models when 1tb is $50.
- tallytarik 3y ago
  The article actually says the latest updates are the smallest in years.
pazimzadeh 3y ago
Why would they plot the cumulative size of the updates? That's always going to go up.. Just plot the size of each update over time? The trend is linear so, it doesn't look like the updates are actually getting bigger over time, rather is a new paradigm of overall larger updates with Apple Silicon Macs.
tallytarik 3y ago
Many here seem to have taken the wrong implication from the headline and graph. This article is saying Sonoma has the smallest updates in years, and that installation time is decreasing.
- kmlx 3y ago
  i think most people never make it past the title.
1letterunixname 3y ago
The annoying thing is: If you also want to download an updated full installer app to archive elsewhere, then it has to download that and the update.
LegNeato 3y ago
I was running software updates at Apple and I remember the concern and effort when the "full" update first went over a gig. We were able to get it back under a gig for a release or two but it was hopeless without major new engineering work which would take time. Leadership kept yelling that there must be a way, and they didn't abate until we pointed out that Windows full updates had been over a gig for months. Of course, Apple used binary patching and compression and all that jazz... this was for the "full" version that delivered entire files.
ChrisRR 3y ago
As an embedded developer who measured code size in KB, I'm still absolutely baffled why desktop software is GB in size. Why oh why does a basic Windows/MacOS desktop use tens of GB to install and use gigs of RAM? When it's sitting at an empty desktop, what is it really doing that's multiple orders of magnitude bigger than Windows 2000 on 64MB RAM?

61 points by ingve 3y ago

marban 3y ago

From a consumer perspective, who actually cares?

baz00 3y ago
Yeah I don't give a shit myself. I mean 850 meg is what an hour of decent quality streaming and we get one of these every month or two. Meh. Even when I was stuck tethered on 4G for 9 months this wasn't a big issue.
jasoncartwright 3y ago
Users on slower, lower quality, or metered internet connections
harha 3y ago
Not macOS but my iPhone is struggling with space to update and there’s a ton of data I just can’t delete like data X stores somewhere or WhatsApp that duplicates photos in addition to a massive amount of system files that aren’t specified.
- bradknowles 3y ago
  On the iPhone and iPad, there are options you can select to let Apple unload certain applications or data to iCloud, where you can re-download them again in the future if you need them. This lets the system clear space for large downloads like this. You just have to know which options to enable.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  I mean, that's what you get for buying a device that nanny doesn't let you have complete access to.
  - danielheath 3y ago
    You mean, not a pinephone / framework laptop?
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      Well, Android was the more obvious implication, but I bet you know that and disagree. Which is weird because many manufacturers don't restrict flashing a different rom, and even with standard Android you have more access than iPhone gives you.
      - majewsky 3y ago
        > many manufacturers don't restrict flashing a different rom Manufacturers don't, but app makers do. I know people running on LineageOS that have to keep a second smartphone on stock Android for their banking authenicator app (which fails on Lineage because it's not the manufacturer-supplied ROM and that supposedly means it's been hacked).
        PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        If it couldn't be fooled through software (and there are sandboxing solutions to run stuff that needs google services etc) I don't think I'd stay with such a bank.
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    I would prefer to have access to the filesystem too but this isn't really a solution to the problem. People shouldn't have to go around deleting System32 to make space on their device so they can update…
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      At least if you could access the file system you could remove a lot of junk, like the duped picture files you referenced. I agree though software updating is widely inefficient given how it could be done.
whatever1 3y ago
In the US many internet providers have data caps. And very frequently there is no alternative provider in the same area, so no pressure to lift the caps. Comcast for example has an 1.2TB per month cap and $10 for each additional 50GB chunk. With 4k shows on Netflix, online gaming, and 60gb device updates it’s very easy to hit the cap.
- Osiris 3y ago
  I got a deal on Comcast to get 1.2Gbps + unlimited bandwidth for $80. I was previously using Century Link Small business at 150Mbps + unlimited. According to their app, I'm consistently using 3-4TB per month. I don't know what the breakdown is but my guess is it's mostly streaming video and video game downloads.
- fransje26 3y ago
  https://youtu.be/vbHqUNl8YFk?feature=shared&t=31 https://youtu.be/vbHqUNl8YFk?feature=shared&t=31
rekoil 3y ago
We need to look at this from several angles. Yes, most have fast internet these days, which means that for a single person the time spent downloading a 1GB update isn't really a problem like it might have been 10 years ago, but what about the literal hundreds of millions of other macOS users? We're talking hundreds of petabytes of network traffic that happens multiple times a year. Say that update could have been optimised down to say 100MB through shipping only binary diffs instead of complete executables, that's hundreds of petabytes of network traffic that doesn't need to be transferred, which means less link congestion, less packet processing, less data temporarily stored not just on customer machines but in datacenters as well. Unnecessarily large updates in systems with hundreds of millions of users has a non-negligible environmental impact.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  It's still pretty negligible. Take public transport once instead of driving and you've more than offset a lifetime of downloading OS updates. There are so many low hanging enormous fruit to pick that it makes almost no sense to start with the very difficult and insignificant ones.
  - rekoil 3y ago
    I'm not 100% convinced it's all that negligible, but in general I agree with your sentiment. Inefficient software updates are a pet peeve of mine. If I download 5GB of software patches I'd expect to see major differences after applying the patch, but most of the time these days it's barely noticeable changes, yet the patches are still huge. Just look at the iOS 17 OTA packages for iPhone 14 Pro. - 16.6.1 -> 17.0: 3.3GB - fair enough, new major version - 17.0 -> 17.0.1: 452MB - security updates and bugfixes - 17.0.1 -> 17.0.2: 384MB - security updates and bugfixes - 17.0.2 -> 17.0.3: 450MB - security updates and bugfixes - 17.0.3 -> 17.1: 1.35GB - this one is interesting, an update from 17.0.2 to 17.1 is actually about 150MB smaller than from the latest version which uses the same upgrade package as 17.0 GM - 17.1 -> 17.1.1: 395MB - security updates and bugfixes - 17.1.1 -> 17.1.2: 414MB - security updates and bugfixes In total, I've downloaded about 3.44GB of updates for my iPhone since the iOS 17 upgrade in September, and have received WiFi AirDrop support, some security fixes, and better Home app Matter support. Security fixes are in general just a few lines of changed code, and should result in minimal changes to a binary, so if you just diff the new binary with the old one it should come out pretty minimal, yet the patches are several hundred megabytes. Someone in a different thread suggested Apple were doing partial binary patching, but I don't see it.
ChrisRR 3y ago
Given that Apple often comes under fire for using non-upgradable storage, a lot of people care

troupo 3y ago

So right now I'm looking at Sonoma's 14.1.2 update. It's not a minor version, it's a patch that "provides important bug fixes". It's 845 MB in size. I can't even begin to imagine what can weigh in at 845 MB for a bug/security release.

inferiorhuman 3y ago
Well it seems to have made the Finder worse for me, so there's that. And, yeah, it's not particularly quick to install (M2 Pro, 512GB SSD). I hope Apple can stop faffing about with new whiz bang features for a few iterations and instead focus on working down the ridiculous list of bugs in Sonoma. Somehow they've managed to utterly fuck up application switching, the mind boggles. Edit since I'm being throttled: I wholeheartedly agree (and I'm sure I've commented to this effect on HN before): this is probably the nicest Apple laptop I've laid my hands on and nearly the worst version of MacOS I've seen in three decades. I really like the 14" pro form factor. Thankfully I have until January to decide if I want to keep the laptop. Keyboard focus does not reliably follow you to the new foreground application. I saw this mentioned in the comments in the Ars review but it seems to be worse for me than that guy. Finder does not reliably display a progress indicator when copying big files, and quick look is as unreliable as ever. AFP support is completely broken. Apple should just rip that code out instead of letting it rot like that. It's particularly frustrating because Apple dropped support for the version of SMB where Samba "properly" supported unix-y permissions. SMB support worked for a while in the Finder, but would corrupt metadata from the command line. With 14.1.2 it seems like creating/modifying files on an SMB share from the Finder is as unreliable as the command line.
- coldtea 3y ago
  Like what? Haven't seen anything fishy in either Finder or application switching.
- huijzer 3y ago
  "Apple Inc. hit pause on development of next year’s software updates for the iPhone, iPad, Mac and other devices so that it could root out glitches in the code." [1] [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-07/apple-delays-work-on-ios-18-macos-15-watchos-11-due-to-problems-with-bugs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-07/apple-del...

tuzemec 3y ago

To put things in perspective: the last update to Baldur's Gate 3 was ~100 GB (via GOG).

huytersd 3y ago
Holy shit are you serious. I haven’t played video games in a few years. That’s crazy.
- tuzemec 3y ago
  Not sure if that was something GOG specific, but basically had to download the whole game again. The official specs are that the patch is 30GB, but requires 130GB free disk space.
  - Springtime 3y ago
    GOG has has some strange calculations it performs for free space, particularly for its offline installers. One of the Cyberpunk 2077 updates required 400GB+ free space to install a sub 50GB patch, which was ludicrous and I think under-reported due to most using the Galaxy install process.
- sdflhasjd 3y ago
  I don't know how GOG delivers updates, but 100GB is basically the download size of the whole game, so it sounds like it's downloading it again. On Steam, the update was ~20GB. Still pretty ridiculous for what is essentially a patch though.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  Storage space is cheap. Fast internet is ubiquitous. Both are required to effectively distribute high quality assets.
  - leononame 3y ago
    Fast internet is not that ubiquitous. There are plenty of people in rural and even urban areas with 16 Mbit or less even in developed countries. Game downloads are extremely frustrating to some friends of mine because it takes literally 20 hours to download sometimes.

seeknotfind 3y ago

This is the type of article that can be published continuously for all of history. The computers get bigger and bigger. It would be more impressive if the updates were smaller for a while.

rekoil 3y ago
I thought one of the features of having signed and verified boot partitions was that you could know exactly what's in it and can thus do cool things like binary diff patching where it makes sense (which should be like >90% of all files in an update), and only ship complete binary images where absolutely necessary. Obviously this means you have to maintain 2 update tracks, one optimised flow for all the normies, and one for everyone who has disabled SIP. But the benefits are worth it when you consider all the electricity and bandwidth used by all the excess data you're no longer sending over the network. Combine this with APFS snapshotting and it should make for a resilient update schema which uses minimal amounts of data. Or am I completely wrong in my assumptions about binary diff patches?
- AdamN 3y ago
  iirc Windows already does this - MacOS is just behind the curve here. Perhaps there are security/stability edge cases that make this more difficult than it would seem?
- saagarjha 3y ago
  They do this.
sdflhasjd 3y ago
Download size inflation seems to be outstripping improvements in my internet connection.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- xethos 3y ago
  I hadn't realized any country was getting progressively slower internet speeds. Per TFA: > Since Big Sur, updates have reduced in total size, and in Ventura were close to or below earlier versions Apple is shipping smaller updates over time, not larger (any more).

VBprogrammer 3y ago

My TV downloaded a 1.2GB update the other day. Things are out of control. Games are the worst. If you haven't started one up in a week you need to download an important patch - somehow using 6GB in the process. I'm pretty sure there is just next to no effort put into keeping the file sizes down.

bowsamic 3y ago
My wife plays a lot of Counter Strike, but she is also a busy person with a stressful day job. She can't play every day, but because of this, every time she wants to play she has to sit there for 30 minutes to an hour to wait for the update to download.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  This is the exact reason I pulled 1Gbit ethernet to my wifes PlayStation. It's so rare that she has the time to play, so spending 30 minutes or more to pull in updates is preventing her from enjoying what little time she has to play. Switching out the wifi for a physical connection have reduced those download time to just few minutes. The amount of updates to what should be more or less finished products is just insane and I can't understand why the industry doesn't see it as a issue... Well, money but still.
- VBprogrammer 3y ago
  I feel her pain. My 4 year old girl asked really nicely to play "the flying game" (Microsoft Flight simulator 2020) the other week. I got her out of the bath and we were both looking forward to playing but it the downloaded a major update which was still running when I started work the next morning.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  Can’t you set it to auto updated?
  - bowsamic 3y ago
    We only use that computer for Counter Strike right now, it's our old "gaming PC", from when we had more time for that

andersrs 3y ago

As the owner of a 2012 iMac I fear this because eventually I'll be forced to upgrade due to some application requiring the latest OS. The process for installing a new SSD involves, I shit you not, taking a razor blade to the glue between the glass screen and the chassis. I could be a wasteful consumer and buy a new one every 3 years but it's about the principle. It's a great tidy computer to have for casual use in a shared family room and it's a shame that a software issue might be the death of it.

jahnu 3y ago
I have a 2016 MBP and it's already stuck on Monterey. How are you planning to upgrade a 2012 iMac beyond Catalina anyway?
- 3guk 3y ago
  At a guess I would say probably using OCLP - https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher - lots of life left in old Mac’s using that tool !
  - walteweiss 3y ago
    And when that comes to an end, you can try Fedora Linux and it may serve very well. Especially if for a shared computer you need browser plus some other popular apps. I use Fedora on my old Hackintosh (that served me well for over a decade) and I hadn’t noticed any difference with macOS software and aesthetics-wise.
  - drukenemo 3y ago
    OLP made Mac unusable. Too slow to even load icons in the system settings. Had to revert back to Catalina.

23kl333 3y ago

Sonoma is also setting records for the number of bugs. Now even the buggiest windows version ever feels like an etalon of stability comparing to Sonoma.

smikhanov 3y ago
What is etalon?
- fransje26 3y ago
  Think of it as a horse. So, it looks like OP is referring to a very stable horse. Although it would probably be a stretch to call it a dependable workhorse.. https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9E2797 https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9E2797 https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9E2798 https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9E2798
- thiht 3y ago
  Not sure if it’s used a lot in English, but in French a « valeur étalon » is a value of reference. Like you measure something precisely, define it as standard and it becomes your étalon for future measures I guess it’s used in this sense here
  - Fluorescence 3y ago
    Not heard this used before so nice to learn something, thanks! Is it said in a neutral sense like yardstick or is it an ideal to aspire to like exemplar or paragon?
    - thiht 3y ago
      It's neutral. For example, it was used with metric system definitions: at some point the "kilogramme-étalon" was literally an object weighing 1kg (by definition, the kg was this object). You can see here a kilogramme étalon: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Standard_kilogram%2C_2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Standard... and a mètre étalon: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Mètre-étalon_Paris.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Mètre-ét... Edit: for completeness sake, a litre and décalitre (10L) étalon: https://portail.polytechnique.edu/musx/sites/pf_191/files/accueil/litre_decalitre.jpg https://portail.polytechnique.edu/musx/sites/pf_191/files/ac...

LeeroyWasHere 3y ago

Planned obsolescence through bloated updates and or push consumers towards live services. They still sell 256GB base models when 1tb is $50.

tallytarik 3y ago
The article actually says the latest updates are the smallest in years.

pazimzadeh 3y ago

Why would they plot the cumulative size of the updates? That's always going to go up.. Just plot the size of each update over time? The trend is linear so, it doesn't look like the updates are actually getting bigger over time, rather is a new paradigm of overall larger updates with Apple Silicon Macs.

tallytarik 3y ago

Many here seem to have taken the wrong implication from the headline and graph. This article is saying Sonoma has the smallest updates in years, and that installation time is decreasing.

kmlx 3y ago
i think most people never make it past the title.

1letterunixname 3y ago

The annoying thing is: If you also want to download an updated full installer app to archive elsewhere, then it has to download that and the update.

LegNeato 3y ago

I was running software updates at Apple and I remember the concern and effort when the "full" update first went over a gig. We were able to get it back under a gig for a release or two but it was hopeless without major new engineering work which would take time. Leadership kept yelling that there must be a way, and they didn't abate until we pointed out that Windows full updates had been over a gig for months. Of course, Apple used binary patching and compression and all that jazz... this was for the "full" version that delivered entire files.

ChrisRR 3y ago

As an embedded developer who measured code size in KB, I'm still absolutely baffled why desktop software is GB in size. Why oh why does a basic Windows/MacOS desktop use tens of GB to install and use gigs of RAM? When it's sitting at an empty desktop, what is it really doing that's multiple orders of magnitude bigger than Windows 2000 on 64MB RAM?