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Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

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Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#31

I believe that employees in Anthropocs use CC to develop CC now. AI really give much user ability to develop a completed product, but the quality is decreasing. Professional developers will be in demand when the products/features become popular. First batch of users of new products need to take more responsibility to test the product like a rats in lab

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#32

It's incredible how many applications abuse disk access. In a similar fashion, Apple Podcasts app decided to download 120GB of podcasts for random reason and never deleted them. It even showed up as "System Data" and made me look for external drive solutions.

The system data issue on macOS is awful. I use my MacBook for a mix of dev work and music production and between docker, music libraries, update caches and the like it’s not weird for me to have to go for a fresh install once every year or two. Once that gets filled up, it’s pretty much impossible to understand where the giant block of memory is.

Yep, it is an awful situation. I'm increasingly becoming frustrated with how Apple keeps disrespecting users.

I downloaded several MacOS installers, not for the MacBook I use, but intending to use them to create a partitioned USB installer (they were for macOS versions that I could clearly not even use for my current MacBook). Then, after creating the USB, since I was short of space, I deleted the installers, including from the trash.

Weirdly, I did not reclaim any space; I wondered why. After scratching my head for a while, I asked an LLM, which directed me to check the system snapshots. I had previously disabled time machine backup and snapshots, and yet I saw these huge system snapshots containing the files I had deleted, and kicker was, there was no way to delete them!

Again I scratched my head for a while for a solution other than wiping the MacBook and re-installing MacOS, and then I had the idea to just restart. Lo and behold, the snapshots were gone after restarting. I was relieved, but also pretty pissed off at Apple.

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#33

Yup it uses Apple Virtualization framework for virtualization. It makes it so I can't use the Claude Cowork within my VMs and that's when I found out it was running a VM, because it caused a nested VM error. All it does is limit functionality, add extra space and cause lag. A better sandbox environment would be Apple seatbelt, which is what OpenAI uses, but even that isn't perfect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?i…

seatbelt is largely undocumented.

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#34

It's incredible how many applications abuse disk access. In a similar fashion, Apple Podcasts app decided to download 120GB of podcasts for random reason and never deleted them. It even showed up as "System Data" and made me look for external drive solutions.

My WinSxS folder is 17Gb

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#35
post #28

I literally spent the last 30 mins with DaisyDisk cleaning up stuff in my laptop, I feel HN is reading my mind :) I also noticed this 10GB VM from CoWork. And was also surprised at just how much space various things seem to use for no particular reason. There doesn't seem to be any sort of cleanup process in most apps that actually slims down their storage, judging by all the cruft. Even Xcode. The command line tools…

Is there no crond and find on MacOSX ?

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#36

macbook pro m4 bought last year. worked on so many codes and projects. never hot after closing lid. installed electron claude. closed lid and went to sleep and woke up to macbook that has been hot all night. uninstall claude. problem went away. i kept telling myself this BUT NEVER ELECTRON AGAIN.

> woke up to macbook that has been hot all night

this is usual reason for divorce /s

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#37

It's incredible how many applications abuse disk access. In a similar fashion, Apple Podcasts app decided to download 120GB of podcasts for random reason and never deleted them. It even showed up as "System Data" and made me look for external drive solutions.

Someone actually still uses the built-in podcasts app?

It probably has more active users than all third party podcast apps on all mobile platforms combined. The power of defaults.

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#38
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system data issue on macOS is awful. I use my MacBook for a mix of dev work and music production and between docker, music libraries, update caches and the like it’s not weird for me to have to go for a fresh install once every year or two. Once that gets filled up, it’s pretty much impossible to understand where the giant block of memory is.

I had the same problem and had some luck cleaning things up by enabling "calculate all sizes" in Finder, which will show you the total directory size, and makes it a bit easier to look for where the big stuff is hiding. You'll also want to make sure to look through hidden directories like ~/Library; I found a bunch of Docker-related stuff in there which turned out to be where a lot of my disk space went. You can enab…

I’d recommend GrandPerspective:[1] it’s really good at displaying this sort of thing, has been around for over two decades, and the developer has managed to keep it to [1] https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/

Re: Anthropic Cowork feature creates 10GB VM bundle on macOS without warning

#40

It's incredible how many applications abuse disk access. In a similar fashion, Apple Podcasts app decided to download 120GB of podcasts for random reason and never deleted them. It even showed up as "System Data" and made me look for external drive solutions.

Someone actually still uses the built-in podcasts app?

It's generally a good app. People in the tech community like Overcast, but I've always found its UI completely illogical. Apple Podcasts is organized like I'd expect a podcast app to be.
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