so much for macs not coming with any bloatware

just did a fresh reinstall. Went from almost 20 GB used to just 6.6 .

also what is the equivalent of the windows ctrl alt del? Is the activity monitor the same thing as windows task manager and is there a shortcut to bring it up?

 

That is a big difference. The thing is, initially you get applications such as iLife, Comic Life, and a few others that can be considered useful. When I got my MBP the other day I noticed all these applications, BUT these are good applications. Bloat-ware is applications that the user will NEVER use.

 

Well, bloatware is a matter of opinion. Usually I define it as unnecessary things that people would never have wanted installed in the first place - whether because they would never have been used, or because there are better alternatives for equal or lesser cost (or free) elsewhere.

So no matter how great iLife is - if someone never intended to use it, those 20GB definitely could've been saved and considered "bloat". The 5Gb of printer drivers would fall under this category too. The same could apply to all the trial and demo versions of MS Office, FileMaker Pro, Comic Life, etc. etc. etc.

 

Most of the space taken up originally is the thousands of loops found in GarageBand. That takes a huge chunk of space. But I wouldn't consider it bloatware.

EDIT: To answer your second question, you can find Force Quit (the Mac of Ctrl+Alt+Del) in the Apple icon on the Menu Bar. There's a keyboard shortcut for it but I can't remember. It may be Command+Shift+Esc.

 

I don't consider the software that comes with a Mac bloatware. I may not use it all, but most of it is worthwhile software.

It's not like it's loaded with a bunch of trial software and ISP garbage like new Windows machines.

 

Actually, it does come with some trial software, such as Office 2004 and a few others. Thankfully, I think Apple still tends to keep most of the trial stuff on its installation CDs as an "optional" install (although it installed X Windows and even reinstalled Office 2004 Trial for me anyway even though I told it not to ).

Also, most of the printer drivers aren't used by people, so they're unnecessary.

I guess you can make the case that most of the stuff included on the MBP are full-version software that are quite good and having them for "free" is a bonus - such as OmniOutliner standard, iLife, etc. I still hold that they should at least give us an option of giving us a blank system and leaving it ALL on the installation CDs though - anything you'd never use is still "bloat".

The keyboard shortcut for Force-Quit is Cmd-Option-Esc. The Apple logo on the menu bar is another place to bring up the dialog as Sam mentioned, and you can Force Quit individual programs by right-clicking the program on the dock.

The rest of the info on the Task Manager in Windows can be found in the Activity Monitor.app in App>Utilities

 

Holy crap, iLife is 20GB?!

 

That might've been a slight exaggeration. Although, if you reinstall OSX and choose not to install any of the extra printer drivers, free trials and demos, extra random applications and iLife (especially the loops and themes), the total saved probably comes close to 20GB

 

The only pieces of trial software I remember are Office and iWork. To me, these don't fall into the category of bloatware, because there's a level of usefulness there. But, I can see why someone would disagree with me.

 

Also the Windows Task Manager Mac equivalent for seeing what is running is the Activity Monitor.