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cryer · Jun 20, 2006, 11:31 PM

I'm on a powerbook (PPC of course) and have the choice of downloading an app in its PPC version or the UB version. Does it matter which I run? Will using the PPC version be faster or any better since I'm on a PPC machine? Or is there no difference whatsoever?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help

wataru · Jun 20, 2006, 11:43 PM

The only difference is that the UB version will take up more disk space. How much more depends on the application.

The only reason I can see for preferring the UB version is if you plan to keep the installer to use on an Intel Mac, or if you're going to copy your applications directly to an Intel Mac in the future.

ghporter · Jun 21, 2006, 10:05 AM

On a PPC-based Mac, just get the PPC version. A Universal Binary program is built so that the publisher only has to make one version because it will work on both PPC and Intel-based Macs. But as wataru points out, a UB version will be much bigger because it has the machine code for both processors in it.

tooki · Jun 21, 2006, 10:55 AM

Except that it's not "much bigger" at all. For most apps, it's just a few KB of difference, since actual machine code is only a tiny percentage of a modern app. The application resources such as images, sounds, window layouts, etc. outsize the actual code by a very wide margin.

tooki

Catfish_Man · Jun 21, 2006, 01:21 PM

Originally Posted by tooki

Except that it's not "much bigger" at all. For most apps, it's just a few KB of difference, since actual machine code is only a tiny percentage of a modern app. The application resources such as images, sounds, window layouts, etc. outsize the actual code by a very wide margin.

tooki

Adium has around 1-2MB of binaries, actually, but you're right that it's a small percentage.

Tomchu · Jun 21, 2006, 01:22 PM

Except that the difference isn't "just a few KB".

Handbrake (Universal) - 11.6 MB
Handbrake (Intel-only) - 6.3 MB

Transmit (Universal) - 8.4 MB
Transmit (Intel-only) - 4.7 MB

... And so on.

ghporter · Jun 21, 2006, 04:42 PM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Except that the difference isn't "just a few KB".

Handbrake (Universal) - 11.6 MB
Handbrake (Intel-only) - 6.3 MB

Transmit (Universal) - 8.4 MB
Transmit (Intel-only) - 4.7 MB

... And so on.

Tooki said "often" not "always." I got the point. Maybe I should have said "noticably bigger" instead of "much bigger," because "noticably" is much more ambiguous. I was thinking about posts I'ver read about some apps (can't remember which) that were early UB releases that turned out to be significantly larger.

Thinine · Jun 21, 2006, 05:23 PM

Handbrake also includes a bunch of AV libraries, so it's not really a typical application.

Tomchu · Jun 21, 2006, 06:15 PM

Alright, name some "typical" apps.

CharlesS · Jun 21, 2006, 06:31 PM

Well, Pacifist is pretty typical. Straightforward app, no included libraries or frameworks, no fancy stuff. Universal it's 2.4 MB. PowerPC-only, about 2 MB. The difference is about 462.3 KB, which is hardly worth mentioning.

Tomchu · Jun 21, 2006, 06:53 PM

"Typical" would be anything that is popular among Mac users.

In any case, I find that the usual OS X application minus its support files (ie. iPhoto themes) can be reduced by 30-40%.

CharlesS · Jun 21, 2006, 07:19 PM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

"Typical" would be anything that is popular among Mac users.

No, I would describe "typical" as an ordinary, or usual app. Handbrake and Transmit are atypical as they contain a lot of libraries and frameworks that most apps do not. And even then, you had to fudge the numbers a bit to get the result you wanted - Transmit is in fact 14.4 MB universal and 11.6 MB stripped, not 8.4 and 4.7. Slightly lower difference, much lower percentage - about 19% of the app bundle, which I would still think is a bit larger than you'll find for a lot of apps.

wataru · Jun 21, 2006, 09:39 PM

Oh snap.

To the OP: As you can see, unless you're running severely low on disk space, it just doesn't matter.

Chuckit · Jun 21, 2006, 09:54 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

No, I would describe "typical" as an ordinary, or usual app. Handbrake and Transmit are atypical as they contain a lot of libraries and frameworks that most apps do not. And even then, you had to fudge the numbers a bit to get the result you wanted - Transmit is in fact 14.4 MB universal and 11.6 MB stripped, not 8.4 and 4.7. Slightly lower difference, much lower percentage - about 19% of the app bundle, which I would still think is a bit larger than you'll find for a lot of apps.

Did you strip the bundled libraries as well?

CharlesS · Jun 21, 2006, 10:56 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Did you strip the bundled libraries as well?

Yep, which is why the savings are larger than you'd see with an app which did not contain such libraries.

Originally Posted by wataru

As you can see, unless you're running severely low on disk space, it just doesn't matter.

Yep, and if your disk space is low enough that stripping binaries will make a difference, you really need a bigger hard drive.

I will add to this that on the newer Intel Macs, you can actually harm your setup by stripping the binaries, because if you strip the system libraries and frameworks, which at least one utility (Monolingual) is prone to do, you will render the Rosetta emulation environment inoperable (yes, I realize this doesn't apply to the OP, but it needed to be said for the general audience of this thread, since this is a public forum).

Tomchu · Jun 22, 2006, 01:40 AM

I remove non-English languages from my apps too, so that would account for the discrepancy between my numbers and yours. And yes, I'm stripping PPC code from *all* binaries in the app, not just the main executable.

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Jun 22, 2006, 08:13 AM

Originally Posted by tooki

Except that it's not "much bigger" at all. For most apps, it's just a few KB of difference, since actual machine code is only a tiny percentage of a modern app. The application resources such as images, sounds, window layouts, etc. outsize the actual code by a very wide margin.

tooki

I read that one of the iLife apps went from 30 megs to over 100 by making it universal.

tooki · Jun 22, 2006, 09:50 AM

I find that extremely, extremely hard to believe, because as we established already, machine code makes up a small part of a modern application. Aperture, for example, is a 67MB application package, of which (on the UB) only 9MB is the executable file (of which not all may even be machine code!). Even if we generously say that 1/2 of the executable is PPC code, that means a whopping 7% of the app is wasted on universal code. It's trivial.

I highly doubt that any iLife app has a breakdown very different from that of Aperture. The themes and whatnot make a difference, and more likely the UB installation installed multiple language packages that the user had previously removed.

tooki

CharlesS · Jun 22, 2006, 02:58 PM

Originally Posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker

I read that one of the iLife apps went from 30 megs to over 100 by making it universal.

Where on earth did you read that, macosrumors.com?

For that to be possible, the Intel portion of the binary code would have to be 70 MB in size, over twice the size of the entire pre-existing app bundle. Even Microsoft doesn't produce code that bloated.

Typically, the Intel portion of the binary code is roughly about the same size as the PowerPC portion of the binary code, so all you'll do by stripping a universal app is halve the size of the binary file. Since the binary usually makes up a relatively small portion of the app's size (especially in the case of iLife apps which usually have a lot of multimedia resources in there), you're definitely not going to see any size difference of that magnitude.

Landos Mustache · Jun 22, 2006, 03:05 PM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

Where on earth did you read that, macosrumors.com?

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...60609195046756

I guess the language kits had more to do with it.

CharlesS · Jun 22, 2006, 03:16 PM

Well, it definitely isn't because of the universal binary. My copy of GarageBand from iLife '05 (not even the latest version!) is PowerPC-only, and it still takes up 62.5 MB.

Landos Mustache · Jun 22, 2006, 04:38 PM

Someone want to strip the Intel code and NOT language kits from garageband to find out?

CharlesS · Jun 22, 2006, 05:02 PM

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

Someone want to strip the Intel code and NOT language kits from garageband to find out?

How about you? I already know I'm right about this.

Landos Mustache · Jun 23, 2006, 09:22 AM

Originally Posted by CharlesS

How about you? I already know I'm right about this.

Nope, cuz it isn't that important to prove myself. I don't care, but someone else ask so I thought i would show how to test it.

Chuckit · Jun 23, 2006, 11:48 AM

I'll strip a copy of GarageBand later today. (I did it earlier, but later realized I'd left i386 instead of PPC. It went from 90 MB to 76 MB, if I recall.)

Landos Mustache · Jun 23, 2006, 02:52 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

I'll strip a copy of GarageBand later today. (I did it earlier, but later realized I'd left i386 instead of PPC. It went from 90 MB to 76 MB, if I recall.)

That is still quite a large chunk.