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Apple prepares macOS users for discontinuation of 32-bit app support
- goalieca 9y agoAbout time. There was only 1 generation of Intel macs that didn’t have 64-bit and it is not supported by latest OS anyways.
- rconti 9y agoWould that have been MacBook/iMac/Mac Mini type models? I have a first-gen Mac Pro (August 2006) and it's 64-bit.
- lostgame 9y agoThe lower models in the 2006 line used 32-bit processors, including MacBooks, iMacs and Mac Minis, while more expensive models favoured the 64-bit Core 2 Duo processors.
- haikuginger 9y agoThat's not accurate; first generation MacBook Pros used 32-bit Core Duo processors as well, as did almost all the early-2006 models; the exception being the lowest-end Mac Mini, which had a single-core 32-bit Core Solo. 32-vs-64-bit was never used for price differentiation within a lineup; Intel's 64-bit chips just weren't ready in time. Late-2006 models, including the first-generation Mac Pro, moved from the 32-bit Yonah Core Duo/Core Solo architecture to the 64-bit Conroe Core 2 Duo.
- yuhong 9y agoYes, based on Core 1 (Yonah) processors.
- rangibaby 9y agoIt’s 64bit but unless you installed a modified boot loader it will only boot into 32bit OSX
- Aloha 9y agoWhy does it matter? It's not as if there is any real performance penalty of running 32-bit and 64-bit apps concurrently.
- gok 9y agoSure there is. You need an entire second copy of every user space library to be resident in DRAM (and on disk)
- Aloha 9y agoWhy would you need every userspace library in memory? - you'd only have the libraries in use by applications in memory.
- gok 9y agoSure but any Mac app that uses AppKit (that is, ~any GUI app) pulls in about 300 MB of executable dependencies at a minimum. More for apps that uses rarer frameworks.
- Aloha 9y agoI suspect a majority of 32-bit apps are CarbonLib, which has a smaller footprint, how much smaller, I dont know.
- tinus_hn 9y agoThere are real support costs for making it work. I don’t want to pay so you can run apps that belong in a museum.
- graeme 9y agoIs this the end of iwork 09? I still have some manuscripts in Pages 09, as Pages 13 never added many of the features. I guess I'll have to look for a new workflow.
- throwawayfinal 9y agoLearn word. It's still best in class. Or LibreOffice. Depending on the type of manuscript, Dryad or celtx. Of course, I don't know your workflow.
- lostgame 9y agoBetter yet, don't upgrade. MacOS upgrades seem to just be getting worse and worse.
- epistasis 9y agoYikes, Word on macOS is certainly nowhere near best in class. It's a completely buggy heap of trash, as soon as numbered styles, images, or tables of contents become important. On the plus side, Word doesn't crash as much as Excel on macOS does for me. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are far better on macOS than their respective MS apps in my experience. If I had to use Word for anything except the most simple documents, I'd probably run it in a VM.
- swdunlop 9y agoHopefully, that will change in 16.9.0 with Office for Mac sharing a codebase with Office for Windows: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/office-for-mac-finally-has-real-time-collaboration-in-16-9-0-update/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/office-for-mac-final...
- d1zzy 9y agoGood luck with completely removing support to run 32 bit applications and all those 32 bit videogames (which is the vast majority of them). Or any other 32 bit application that won't ever receive updates.
- lemoncucumber 9y agoWhat makes you think Apple cares? Most serious gamers would already be dual-booting Windows if they want to game on a Mac, and most casual gamers presumably wouldn't consider it a dealbreaker to have older games stop working.
- shmerl 9y ago> Most serious gamers would already be dual-booting Windows if they want to game on a Mac I'd say serious gamers already switched from macOS to Linux if they don't want to use Windows to begin with. Simply because you can run DX11 games in Wine on Linux, but not on macOS. Borking 32-bit games would only accelerate this shift.
- tpush 9y agoGamers who use macOS probably use a console for gaming anyways.
- mullingitover 9y agoNo idea why you're getting downvoted. Sincerely, A person who uses MacOS and games on a console.
- shmerl 9y agoTry running something like VtM Bloodlines on a console. It runs perfectly in Wine on Linux on the other hand. And I suppose it would on macOS, at least until 32-bit support will still be there.
- d1zzy 9y agoWell for one, I won't be able to just take my work laptop on vacation and have the option to kill time with some FTL or This War of Mine. Not saying that OSX is the best gaming platform out there but it's very convenient to be able to take one light laptop on vacation. In (the rare) case I need work access I can do that. In case I don't, I can chill playing some games. Now it seems that won't be an option anymore :(
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y agoThis will be the final death of the Carbon API, since it was never supported for 64-bit.
- Aloha 9y agothat was my first thought when I read this - I just didn't think anyone much cared about Carbon anymore - but it will be the last gasp of the traditional Macintosh ecosystem.
- shmerl 9y agoSo no more 32-bit games in Wine for macOS users? Another reason to switch to Linux for them.
- kstrauser 9y agoAsking seriously: are there any 32-bit games so new that they wouldn't run just as well under VirtualBox?
- favorited 9y agoWhich is not necessarily a big deal for someone sufficiently technical, but I know my siblings aren't going to be running a different OS in a VM to play games. Out of curiosity, I just checked on my Mac and I see a few 32-bit apps. Steam (surprisingly?) is 32-bit only, as are a couple of games. The games I actually play on my Mac have 64-bit slices.
- shmerl 9y agoI have a lot of games that are 32-bit and which I'm interested in replaying once in a while. Wine can run them, as long as the OS has i386 support. Which isn't a problem on Linux at least, since so far multiarch isn't being dropped.
- exikyut 9y agoI guess this is the perfect place to ask: what virtualization platforms run 32-bit OS X (since I guess that's what it was called when it was 32-bit) Really Really Well, and how/where can I learn about how to set everything up perfectly?
- hedgehog 9y agoI think there are a few options that can boot OS X including VirtualBox (x86), SheepShaver (PPC), and QEMU (both?). The big missing piece for a good user experience is video acceleration. From experience using OS X in VMs for build it's pretty miserable with the software renderer.
- exikyut 9y agoYeah. https://github.com/John-K/qxlGraphics https://github.com/John-K/qxlGraphics was last updated 3 years ago :(
- johncolanduoni 9y agoI’m curious if they’ll drop support for 32-bit processes in the kernel or just stop shipping fat libraries.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoI’m curious what it means for Fat Binaries in general. Methinks this will be the first time in a long while where Apple became a true CPU monoculture on the desktop, previously they straddled 68k, PowerPC, IA-32, and AMD64. It gives Apple an excuse to stop using Fat executables entirely - unless they decide to look at using ARM on laptops...
- jgowdy 9y agoThey aren’t dropping fat binaries. ARM desktops and laptops are on deck. They might make sense next year or in three years or never, but Apple is going to leave that door open. They’ve learned the lesson not to be locked to a single CPU architecture.
- johncolanduoni 9y agoIIRC Apple’s bitcode is implemented via extra slices inside a standard fat Mach-O binary so I doubt it’ll disappear. The ability to handle fat headers is definitely not a significant maintenance burden for anyone, Apple or otherwise.
- sashk 9y agoOut of all apps I have I know of four which are 32-bit: - 3 of them are from my (older?) Brother Printer. - 32-bit kdb+ I use sometime for calculations I can live without them. :)
- thinkythought 9y agoThis is a huge crap sandwich if you need to use 32 bit version of pro apps(especially pro audio apps, in my case) to use sometimes expensive plugins that aren't compatible with the 64 bit version of the software, or aren't without expensive upgrades or shim libraries. Obviously you can work around this for new projects, but it leaves you in the position of needed to keep an old machine or VM around just for opening old project files that would be useless without those plugins. I've talked to multiple people in this situation. The 64 bit only switch was easy on iOS compared to this. Yes, there's new versions of the applications themselves available, but a whole host of plugins for audio(and i've heard video and photo apps) are going to get left in the dust here leaving people in the lurch.
- b1daly 9y agoYou can save a copy of your old boot drive at least, and boot from that to access your projects. FWIW keeping an old machine around is not that outlandish of an idea. A computer is a universal machine, and it comes with trade offs. If you want something that doesn’t change, don’t change it.
- Aloha 9y agoI guess nothing lasts forever, sadly perhaps.
- mrmondo 9y agoGlad to see the last of the old 32bit legacy go, of course the good thing is if someone did want to run some ancient software that’s 32bit or even 16bit you can still spin up a VM of a legacy OS that can run those binaries.
- BugsJustFindMe 9y agoI love many things about Mac OS, but one thing that I really truly absolutely love with a passion above all else about Microsoft Windows is that a Win32 executable compiled 17 years ago in XP will still run today on a brand new Windows 10 machine with zero fuss. There's something to be said for not destroying the past in the name of progress. Not everything gets rewritten for the shiny new system framework. Sometimes people make something great and then die.
- sebazzz 9y agoWindows XP? Even Deus Ex, which is compatible with Windows 95, runs on Windows 10. Note that such compatibility is also dependend on the game developer. If the used undocumented methods or undefined behavior it may not run on more modern OS. Especially games like The Sims have this issue - and ironically, some relative newer AAA games.
- scarface74 9y agoGetting backwards compatibility forever doesn't come for free, check out some of the MSDN blogs where they discuss all the hacks they've done over the years to maintain backwards compatibility. There were a lot of security exploits that were discovered in old long forgotten 32 bit Code.
- tinus_hn 9y agoThat’s what emulators are for. Run the old OS in a box so you don’t have to pay for supporting ancient crap in the new OS.
- orionblastar 9y agohttps://github.com/BlastarIndia/OSX-KVM/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/BlastarIndia/OSX-KVM/blob/master/README.m... It is possible to run older MacOS installs in QEMU under MacOS or Linux on a real Mac. So if you need 32 bit MacOS apps just run an older MacOS in an emulator. On Windows they shut out 16 bit apps in 64 bit Windows but DOSBOX and Windows 3.1 under DOSBOX solve that via emulation.
- FraKtus 9y agoToo bad that Apple never made AV Fondation having the same features than QuickTime... How can we add dynamically video codecs to macOS ? How can we extend the support of acquisition devices ? What API can we use to do video editing... How can we support ProRes on Windows in 64 bits ?
- JohnTHaller 9y agoSadly, it appears this will kill most of the Wine projects on macOS. It's a bummer as I've used it for a couple Windows projects to run on mac.