Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mountain Lion size ?
- Thread starter davidgnomo
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Man those days were a LONG time ago. Look at what an OS does know that it did not do back then in the single floppy days. Are we talking about 360K floppies BTW?
Looking up Lion I see size ranges from about 6GB to 10GB. My money is closer to 10GB based on a full, fresh install.
Looking up Lion I see size ranges from about 6GB to 10GB. My money is closer to 10GB based on a full, fresh install.
Yup. And icons on OS X have higher resolutions than the screens that those floppy OS' ran on.
Anyone have ANY idea of how long it will take to download all this???? I'm thinking it's going to be something like 8 hours with my DSL 3MB/s... Vz's idea of "high speed" internet. 
If this is true, are there other options? I've heard references to ordering the OS on something tangible.
If this is true, are there other options? I've heard references to ordering the OS on something tangible.
Anyone have ANY idea of how long it will take to download all this???? I'm thinking it's going to be something like 8 hours with my DSL 3MB/s... Vz's idea of "high speed" internet.
If this is true, are there other options? I've heard references to ordering the OS on something tangible.
I think it would take about 9.5 hours if you were to get a sustained throughput of 2Mbps during the whole download.
Currently you can buy Lion on a USB drive from Apple. I imagine that they may do the same for Mountain Lion as well.
I'm pretty sure that at WWDC 2011, Apple said that Lion was 4.2GB, on the App Store it's 3.89GB, so i really don't know why it would take up 10GB on some installs.
Mountain Lion will NOT be 8GB either. Look at the developer seeds, i think the biggest one has been about 4GB(?) that is around about what ML will be when it's released
Mountain Lion will NOT be 8GB either. Look at the developer seeds, i think the biggest one has been about 4GB(?) that is around about what ML will be when it's released
The developer seeds are one thing, but Apple's website says otherwise under General Requirements. Plus, I imagine that the download size is one thing, possibly smaller, then once it is installed, it is decompressed and then takes up more space.
Yeah, i saw your post at the start of the thread. But there is no way in hell that the OS is going to be an 8GB download.
Edit, for reference. The Lion page on Apple.com says 7GB of required, yet the download is 3.98GB
http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/specs.html
Something tells me it's much better waiting for ML to be released before getting my first Mac ...
That's always been the case for installers. When files are stored on your drive, they take up whole blocks, the remainder is empty (the block size is dependant on your FS setup). So a single text file with one character in it takes up one block, which IIRC is 4KB in a default OS X install. If you have a thousand of these files they will take up 4MB of space. If you compressed these it'll shrink it down to just the filename and the contents, maybe 2KB (at a guess).
There are also other means of compression, but that's one of the obvious ones. Especially when the app you're installing has numerous help files.
I think you mis-read that conversion utility. I have comcast high speed at about 30Mbps. The throughput is anywhere from 2.0 - 4.0 Mbps and I always download the seeds that run around 4GB in size and it usually takes me about 20-30 minutes.
The GM or final release will be around 3.5GB in size. The O/S needs 8GB free because the downloaded file expands to that.
30 mbps !!! I'm jealous! Wish I had that good a deal from Verizon's DSL. 3 just doesn't cut it. Guess I'm lucky I can at least stream Netflix.
I'm not trying to be an *** or boast or anything, but is it that bad in the US? Just interested why you're so jealous on 30 Mbs. We have almost the cheapest internet connection available in town (Netherlands) and have 50 Mbs…It goes up to 120 Mbs.
OT
I've asked this question before; can you finally type the name of someone in your Address Book in an iCal event in the 'location' info?? It is annoying that you type someones name and it doesn't link the persons address.
Yes, it really is that bad. I'm lucky enough to have a provider that sells 100 Mbps, but I realistically get 60-70, and if it weren't included in a cable and telephone bundle, its over $100/month. Slow connections are the norm over here, with most telcos advertising DSL at 3-5 as the usual, and cable operators marketing 10-20.
I hope its no more than 4GB. Even that size on my miserable internet here will take me roughly 12 hours to download. And that's only if its uninterrupted.
As much as I want to have the latest and greatest, I'm almost tempted to wait until I return home before downloading it. But I'm impatient, lol.
As much as I want to have the latest and greatest, I'm almost tempted to wait until I return home before downloading it. But I'm impatient, lol.
Yeah the US is just that bad… I used to live in Sweden and we would get at least 30 Mbps and go up from there. I also lived in Spain for a while and we would prob get around a sustained 20 Mbps…
Here in the US I only get around 10-15 Mbps.
If you look at http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/ and look at their like ave speeds and stuff the US ranks fairly low… just our luck I guess.
Where I live on the California Central Coast, Verizon offers what they call "Enhanced High Speed Internet" at 3 mbps. Verizon's regular internet is 1 mbps!!
I have a "dry" phone line for the DSL - no landline service - and pay $46/month for my 3 mbps. Cable offers up to 20 mbps, but the cable tv service is so very expensive it would almost double my overall costs. I use satellite for tv.
I checked with Vz today and the only option I have for faster internet (with them, that is) is to wait for FIOS in the area. Heaven knows when that will occur and, I'm positive, it will cost a WHOLE lot more!
It's such a balancing act these days to keep communication services costs down. PITA
I have a "dry" phone line for the DSL - no landline service - and pay $46/month for my 3 mbps. Cable offers up to 20 mbps, but the cable tv service is so very expensive it would almost double my overall costs. I use satellite for tv.
I checked with Vz today and the only option I have for faster internet (with them, that is) is to wait for FIOS in the area. Heaven knows when that will occur and, I'm positive, it will cost a WHOLE lot more!
It's such a balancing act these days to keep communication services costs down. PITA
You know that's because the OS needs space for swapping as well, right? So it's a requirement for the OS to run (unless you have lots of memory and want to manually disable swapping), even though the actual install won't be 8 GB. That's the reason why Lion says it requires 7 GB space even though the install is about 4 GB.
There's NO WAY Mountain Lion is going to be double the size of Lion.
This is so wrong. So very wrong.
First, swap space is generated as needed. It starts off as an empty 64MB file on a fresh boot and expands as needed (by creating new swap files). Of course, you do need some space after the install for smooth running but that's not counted either, rather it's recommended that users keep below 90% at most times.
Compression saves bandwidth. That's half of the job of an installer, to decompress (the other half being configuration and putting files into their correc places). That's why your ~4GB installer will take up 7-8GB of space when it's done.
I've not checked the installed sizes of either Lion personally but they appear to be in the vicinity of 8GB installed, from what I've googled.
You're right about the part that ML won't be double the size of Lion though
I couldn't find it ... than at number 78 it appeared !!! ITALY : 5,58 Mbps ... just to give you an idea, Kyrgyzstan is almost doubling us !!!
No, you just completely misread my post.
I know swap space is generated as needed. I understand very well the exact process it goes through. If you thought I meant that OS X uses dedicated swap space like Linux does, then you read more into my post than I put in it. But swap files can easily get into the 3 GB range (especially if you don't shut down your computer very often) which is why Apple includes that much in the space requirement. You seem to think that you need extra empty space unrelated to swap for smooth operation, but that's just not true. You should keep about 10% capacity available for the purposes of swap, primarily. There are a few other reasons, but swap is by far the biggest one.