Originally Posted By: hybrid8
Do any of the idiot reviewers out there actually know why there's a storage space savings with Snow Leopard? It doesn't seem they know that most of it comes from dumping all the PowerPC code. I've seen smeone speculating about "better compression" and "less printer drivers installed" - OMG.

One of the reviewers did talk with Apple, and it was pointed out that while PowerPC code is gone, the addition of 64 bit Intel code alongside the 32 bit code adds back in similar amounts of space usage.

Checking an app that doesn't appear to have changed much somewhat confirms this.:
Leopard:
Code:
-rwxrwxr-x+ 1 root  admin   261K Sep 23  2007 /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit (for architecture i386):	Mach-O executable i386
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit (for architecture ppc7400):	Mach-O executable ppc

Snow Leopard:
Code:
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   280K Jun 27 01:06 /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit (for architecture x86_64):	Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit (for architecture i386):	Mach-O executable i386