I'm not complaining, because I've got a big enough hard drive that I'm not too worried about space, but when I downloaded the Manual for Total Annihilation, I had a chuckle at the original specs: DirectX 5, Pentium 100, etc.

What struck me, though, is that the original size requirement for the game were 35MB. This struck me because the Mac version (can't speak to the Windows version) is 1.54GB! That's about 45 TIMES the original size! And while I am loving the game, it doesn't seem hugely changed since the original-graphics similar, etc. (though they work at modern large-monitor resolutions)

I know that the app runs through WINE, as it had to download a few support libraries on the first go, but I'm just curious: if the application is 1.54GB, what's accounting for the 1.505GB since the original?

It's most likely due to the original CD audio, which TA used and was popular for games in those days. Each audio track is encoded as a CD track, which makes it hard to play when there is no CD in the drive. The mac version probably dealt with this problem by creating an image of each CD, which gets saved to your hard drive to allow the game to play the music just like the CD was in the drive.

Ah yes, that makes perfect sense, thanks!

Don't forget also the great software conspiracy.....

whereby software has to continually demand greater and greater resources for no other reason than to make people buy new computers!.... that and to make room for all the DRM, spyware, advertising and all the other ways big business can think of to spy, influence and control personal computing.