What's with the iTunes software bloat?

I keep a copy of every version of a program I install. As I went to install the latest version of iTunes, 7.5, I noticed a disturbing trend:

iTunes 7.0.1 - 35.798 KB
iTunes 7.1.0 - 36.958 KB
iTunes 7.2.0 - 37,122 KB
iTunes 7.3.1 - 48,774 KB
iTunes 7.4.1 - 50,214 KB
iTunes 7.5.0 - 53,054 KB

Within iTunes 7 alone, The installer has grown 40% within iTunes 7 alone without any major new features. Does anyone here know what's causing this bloat? Also, why is the new version of QuickTime 52.6 MB for Leopard and only 20.3 MB — less than half — for Windows? Aren't ports usually larger, not smaller?

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

Adam- that's just the installer size? What's the relative size of the installed program? Is iTunes actually getting bigger, or just the item used to update it.

That said, I don't see the worry. 50MB for an iTunes upgrade, from a 25 MB upgrade is a pittance: It's an extra 60 seconds of download time; it's 0.015% of my hard-drive. And I don't keep these installers so it doesn't even take up that 0.015%.

Now, iTunes is growing from 1 GB to 2GB, then I get concerned. Do you see growth in the actual installed app?

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

Could it have something to do with the devices it has to support? Check out Wiki's iTunes history page.

The newer builds had to support the iPhone (ring tones) , iTouch, Apple TV (hence increased movies/TV shows) and of course the new iPod Classic and Nano also have much different software than their predecessors.

Apple a couple of years ago stopped releasing iPod updaters and I believe are bundling them in with each build of iTunes. The increased number of devices iTunes has to support could IMO easily account for the software size.

The downside is: you may not own most of the devices and so it is bloat to you. The upside is: once you purchase any new Apple i-device, if you keep iTunes up to date you should have the latest software/firmware available as soon as you plug in

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

It's not the disk space I'm worried about. It's that if a program is doubling in size, it's probably also using more resources. A leaner program tends to run faster, and iTunes has never been that fast to begin with. That's an interesting question. I haven't paid attention so far, but I'll definitely do a before and after comparison for the next update. That's what I was afraid of. I don't use i-devices. I use iTunes as a music server only. I use my phone as an mp3 player, and iTunes has let me drag playlists onto that from day one. It's too bad they don't have a "device-free mode" where you can boot up the program without all of the unneccessary add-ons.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

I find iTunes bloated. Since it's first release on Windows it's been very sluggish. I only needed software to transfer my mp3's over to my iPod so it wasn't worth using, so I used Ephpod for the last 5 years.

Now that I have the iPod Classic, I'm forced to use iTunes again... and even though my PC has been upgraded recently and is MUCH faster than my older one, I still find iTunes to be sluggish. I don't think the Apple developers know how to optimize in Windows.

If anyone knows if an alternative to iTunes for the iPod Classic is available, please let me know. I'm dying to rid myself of this bloated software.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

Adam and Marc:

Perhaps this bloated feel you have is because you're using the Windows version? I have a Macbook Pro and several Windows PCs and laptops (home and work) of various levels of hardware, one at least as powerful as the Mac.

That said, I can pretty much say the Mac version runs considerable snappier than any Windows version. I've in fact stopped using iTunes as of the last half year or so on Windows, choosing only to use the one on my Mac. 53MB isn't really that big of a program when you think about it. I think because it's a native Mac program and is a Windows port has a lot to do with the bloated feel you guys are experiencing.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

Or an option to install what you want. Like if you install Office and you don't want to install Access or Excel you have that choice. If you could chose the devices you want to install at the time and then later as you get into those devices you could enable and install that part of the program that would a lot better in my opionion and maybe make the program run better on Windows. I think it is overkill to install programming that you may never use.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

Maybe it has to do with the Universal binary under Mac OS X (it has to support two completely different processor families, vs. only one processor family under Windows).

I only use iTunes on the Mac, so I have always been mystified by complaints about it -- I really think it is an amazing program -- if there is a better one stop jukebox program out there, I sure didn't get the memo.

That said, iTunes does have problems -- one is that there is no graceful way to have a separate lossy compressed library for the iPod/iPhone and a lossless one for home use. You can do it with smart play lists, but it is a pain in the neck, and isn't obvious to a person other than the one who set it up.

Secondly, I don't know if anyone here has an iPod Classic, but when it's connected it is beach ball city -- my gen 2 & gen 4 iPods (both Firewire) never caused anything like this. Granted I'm still running 1.0 firmware, (I don't dare upgrade to 1.2 because of the coverflow/battery drain bug), but it annoys the heck out of me. Is this because of slowness of USB 2.0 vs. Firewire -- anyone experience it with 5.5 gen iPods?

Ted

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

That's may be a key thing: the updater has doubled; but has iTunes actually doubled? It might be replacing 50MB of already-installed files with a different 50 MB of files, while the total size remains the same. Or maybe it really has doubled. We need more data

Besides, this is spitting in the ocean. Why worry about an extra 0.025 GB of "bloat" when your Mac has ~4 GB of foreign languages you'll never use?

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

When I Get Info on the Mac side, the iTunes packages is 113MB. However that includes languages, software for iPods, etc. When I drill down to the actual iTunes Unix Executable File, it's 28MB.

Perhaps someone can weigh in on the Windows version?

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

iTunes 4 used to be pretty damn snappy. I remember going back when iTunes 5 came out because it was such a resource hog. That one was shortlived, and the ITMS forced me to upgrade to iTunes 6. I'd cleaned out my fans and vents, and that boosted my speed up to tolerable. But it's yet to get back to iTunes 4 speed. Exactly. That would be a perfect execution of what I'm talking about. In my case, with no devices enabled, I wouldn't need iPodService.exe or iTunesHelper.exe running in the background. That's actually a really good explanation. It would seem to perfectly explain why it's twice the size: essentially two completely different programs with identical function wrapped inside one installer. The only thing that doesn't fly with that — albeit I'd need a guinea pig computer to install an old version of the program on to prove — is that the technology of the installer hasn't notably changed. I'm not sure why it would double in size relative to itself if it wasn't actually installing more information. Because I don't run a Mac but a PC where I was able to uninstall all of those worthless other languages? Once again, it's not the file size that's bothering me; I wouldn't keep the old versions of the program if it was. It's that the extra baggage probably has to be lugged around by the program as it runs. It seemed indicative to me of sloppier and sloppier programming.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

On my G4, Itunes is 113MB. The core executable (a universal binary) is 28.1 MB. The resources folder is 83 MB.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

Options have their downsides. You have to test the permutations. You have to ask questions that some people just don't know how to answer. If you buy an iPod and have to reinstall iTunes to support it, that's not really the smoothest customer experience.

The download is bigger (which can be bothersome) and the install footprint is bigger (practically irrelevant nowadays), but if we're talking about device support and resources for languages, their mere presence shouldn't make the program more sluggish -- things don't work that way.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

I think your assumption of "bloat" is unfounded. That "luggage" is not necessarily all "lugged around [...] as it runs." Programs can and do dynamically load what they need. Just because it's stored on the drive doesn't means it's in use.

In the case of iTunes, my 113 MB installation has almost 60 MB of language localizations, certainly not used on my English system. iTunes proper is 28 MB.

Second, a small installed size can also be deceiving: a seemingly svelte Windows program may call upon untold MB of system/shared DLLs when it runs.

Finally, once a program is up a running, what it does dynamically may far outweigh its own mass. Is a 30 MB iTunes bloated, when it's playing a 2 GB video? It's own "luggage" is a mere coin purse compared to the storage shed of data it handles.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

Folks,

In the age of hard drives on recent computers reaching the 200 GB range on average and with recent computers sporting DVD burner drives, the installation size of iTunes is no longer a critical issue. Besides, iTunes needs to be larger in order to support far more Apple hardware, especially the iPhone; my guess is that iTunes would actually be a bit smaller if they skipped out on iPhone support.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

Ray, I have no problems with iTunes, especially on the Mac side on my MBP 2.33 C2D, 2GB RAM and 120GB HD (soon to be 3GB RAM & 200GB with 7200RPM).

However I don't think it's just a storage issue people are complaining about, that wouldn't make sense as you say, with it being hard to even buy a machine these days with under 250GB HDs. It's also a resource issue. As I said, I haven't used it on Windows in quite some time, but last time I did, it was far from snappy, and Windows is the "smaller" install of the two. I remember early iTunes 7 on Windows being somewhat sluggish when I used it, and a memory and resource hog.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

It's the new Real Player.

Long live the Zen!

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

Now that's a low blow! Nothing is as bloated and invasive as Real Player. Geez that thing was a nightmare!

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

iTunes gives it a run for its money in the bloat department, but it's not a fair comparison. QT (the media player USED by iTunes) is no where near as bloated as Real Player and only QT to Real Player is a valid apples to apples comparison. iTunes does a shitload more than Real Player for that bloat.

I will agree that NOTHING is as invasive as Real Player. The program that just won't die.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

I'd guess that the Macintosh QuickTime distribution uses Universal binaries or two sets of binaries, in order to support both x86 and PowerPC.

Nobody bothers shipping binaries for the versions of Windows NT that run on MIPS, PowerPC, or Alpha.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

There is a free program/utility called "deLocalizer" that will go through the OSX install and remove any language files from programs you do not want. You just uncheck the languages you do not want...leave checked the ones you do and click ok. It takes a long while where you think it is frozen, but it is not. It will finish and you reboot and all should be good. I freed up about 3-4GB of space on my laptop by doing that. The utility has not been updated since the 10.2 days but it runs just fine on Panther and Tiger. Don't know about Leopard. Probably not.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13503

There are some reports of things acting screwy after doing this...but mostly everyone says everything is A-OK. It has been great for me. I know Adobe Acrobat professional does not like this being used on it. So it is recommended to copy the adobe acrobat.app to another drive and then after running deLocalizer...copy the untouched .app back to it original loction to restore it to its previous state. It should be fine after that. Some have mentioned problems with office updates after using deLocalizer, but I have not experienced that at all.

Re: What's with the iTunes software bloat?

I used monolingual shortly after buying my MBP and removed about 3 GB of stuff. But you gotta be careful; it's easy to delete necessary languages and files. I've not run it since upgrading to Leopard; I don't know if anything changed that requires these de-localizer apps to be updated before use in 10.5.