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Apple starting to alert users that it will end 32-bit app support on the Mac
- acomjean 8y agoA lot of apps never made the switch on ios. I have some useful ones that were orphaned. I feel like only the mac original intel chips were core2 32bit one, and those long lost os support. Its weird that dos (box) and old windows programs are often still runable, but somehow mac applications just don't age nearly as well. I really think if some linux distros can get it together and get some good application support, now is the time for them on the desktop/laptop. going to Apple-Menu->about this mac->system report ->software applications will show a list of applications with the right most column indicating 64 bit support. 95ish % of mine are currently 64 bit
- npunt 8y agoMicrosoft and Apple have different approaches to backwards compatibility based on the markets they're in. Microsoft makes most of their money on enterprise, whereas Apple makes most on consumers. Enterprise values running old apps, consumers value running today's apps. Each makes sense for their market... and desktop Linux doesn't make sense for either.
- luckydata 8y agolol, nice little zinger there at the end for "the year of Linux on desktop".
- npunt 8y agoHaha I mean we've been talking about it for two decades and in that time the market has reached maturity and is now in decline. It's always been a pipe dream.
- menssen 8y agoIs the Apple/consumer thing still true? Not questioning your general business-model assumptions, but anecdotally all the “consumers” I know with Macs are holding onto them for six years, while every dev shop I’ve worked in in this decade goes through new MBPs like commodity office supplies. I’m just curious if there are recent stats on who Apple is selling computers to (I haven’t seen any for a while.)
- nikanj 8y agoApple doesn’t really have a product combo to replace AD+SCCM. Macs are popular in companies that are still small enough to have people manage their own machines.
- indemnity 8y agoIs that really true? We have 20000 Mac users in a company of 90000, I don’t think this is a corner case for large technology companies. My machine is managed in the sense some things are preinstalled and IT has a way to push software updates. What more management is required? Anything more and IT would probably fuck it up like they did when our division was still on Windows.
- nikanj 8y agoUnified image on all machines, auditability of installed software, etc. End users absolutely do not have admin rights. Not saying your company has to be like this. Just saying 1) this is where MS has very little competition, and 2) where they make absolute bank.
- wtallis 8y ago> in companies that are still small enough to have people manage their own machines. Company size doesn't have much to do with this. Macs are popular at IBM.
- digi_owl 8y agoLast time i read anything about that, those computers were still largely self-managed (though with a in-office wiki for collected solutions).
- xenadu02 8y agoBackwards-compatibility is an interesting story on the mac. The Objective-C ABI on 32-bit macOS is what is called the "fragile" runtime because it has the fragile base class problem. Originally Objective-C had the same design flaw as C++: the ivars of every class had to be in the header for all to see so the compiler could rely on the binary layout. A subclass' ivars would be offset by the compiler by examining the layout of every superclass, then baked into the binary. In the modern (all iOS and 64-bit macOS) runtime the ivar offsets are patched up at runtime so the layout of classes (including base classes) can change without breaking compatibility. Working around the limitations of the 32-bit Objective-C runtime imposes significant costs, it is far from a simple recompile with a different pointer size. It also adds a lot to the size of the installed OS.
- npunt 8y agoIt's kind of sad we're in this state in 2018 because Apple launched 7 low end machines [1] back in 2006 that didn't have 64-bit support. Even though those are long gone, their software support legacy remains. Apple could have transitioned directly to x64 and saved themselves the headache (afaict, maybe these problems would have persisted?). [1] http://lowendmac.com/2006/core-duo-macs/ http://lowendmac.com/2006/core-duo-macs/
- mrpippy 8y agoApple couldn't have gone straight to 64-bit apps on Intel--the OS and frameworks just weren't ready yet. The Intel machines shipped starting with 10.4.3, which only supported 64-bit command-line apps/daemons. Only with 10.5 (released in late 2007, 18 months after the first Intel machines) were full graphical 64-bit apps supported (on both ppc64 and x86_64).
- wtallis 8y agoFirmware was an issue, too. The first generation of Macs with 64-bit processors still used 32-bit EFI and booted a 32-bit kernel that could run 64-bit applications.
- paulie_a 8y agoFor development purposes I'll take a Ubuntu loaded Dell laptop over anything windows, and wouldn't even consider a MacBook.
- pjmlp 8y agoIt all depends what one understands by development. My Ubuntu netbook is nice for travelling purposes, but for the kind of work I get paid for, it is Windows and occasionally macOS.
- paulie_a 8y agoIf I am developing for a Ubuntu server, I'd rather just use Ubuntu directly. Plus the user experience is just as good if not better than osx or windows, but that is a highly personal opinion. I've been using gnome and kde for two decades now. Windows just just has nothing to offer me, and Macs have always been fairly "meh" in my opinion since I had to deal with classic "hard crashes" and those ugly jelly beans
- userbinator 8y agoEnterprise values running old apps, consumers value running today's apps. Do they really, or is it just that consumers are more likely to be persuaded by Apple's marketing? Personally, I have some apps which I use regularly, and are at least 20 years old. I use mostly Windows for that reason too.
- babypuncher 8y agoConsumers like it when their 10 year old video games still work, but those users probably weren't buying Macs to begin with.
- mitchty 8y agoThe only ones I have that aren't 64 bit are games interestingly enough. And Calculator and DVD Player, which is odd, I'd expect that to have been ported by apple by now. That said the DVD Player app is not a big deal as I don't have any dvd drives any longer I realize, oh wait i bought a usb one, would have to find it.
- nsxwolf 8y agoI wonder if they whitelisted Apple 32 bit apps so that they won't trigger the new warning message. It would look a bit janky if they didn't.
- brandon272 8y agoMy report shows Calculator as 64bit. (Version 10.13)
- mitchty 8y agoSo the calculator I had as 32 bit turned out to be from some iOS app I compiled god knows when or how long ago, oops. :) Calculator: Obtained from: Unknown Last Modified: 12/27/16, 9:00 PM Kind: Intel 64-Bit (Intel): No Location: /Users/mitch/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/6.0/Applications/610B1057-FF52-4D59-AE7D-DDD406E83F18/Calculator.app
- npunt 8y agoSomewhere in the recesses of internal Apple email exchanges, there's probably a debate about whether they should just drop support for DVDs when they do the 32-bit transition. They're ruthless about old formats. Calculator is 64-bit
- jhack 8y agoAh, good old Android File Transfer isn't 64-bit. This should be fun.
- rz2k 8y agoSomeone else will know the details a lot better, but Apple has changed the licensing details on many of its older OS X versions to legally permit virtualization if the host is a Mac. Which OS version images I can download for free in the store right now appear to be linked to which ones I had ever used under my current Apple Store account. Given that a lot of current Macs come with only 8GB of ram it is not ideal to run a lot of applications in a virtual machines, but applications that need much RAM have almost certainly moved to 64bit anyway. Again, someone else will understand it better, but I think products like Veertu were built on Apple's built in hypervisor framework, and it would not be difficult for people to build additional free virtualization options in MacOS. My point is that the reasons for choosing Linux over MacOS are already sufficient without targeting users of older Mac software, and that people who are using older Mac software probably also use new Mac software, and won't have too difficult a time using the older stuff too. A while ago I would have said that something like Wine would be great for using the best software I can ever remember which only ran on early Macs. Except that these days you can do that in Javascript in any browser, and while the software was good, I've already spent a few weekend afternoons playing with them, and I don't need to anymore. I miss my 32bit iOS games more than I'd miss any 32bit MacOS applications, which I could run anyway through virtualization. I also wish they'd stop disappearing features from Apple software in general, but I think sunsetting 32bit apps or Carbon are generally better for the Macintosh ecosystem.
- yoz-y 8y agoLooking a the list I see: Steam stuff, Blizzard stuff, WebEx and something for the logitech mouse. Sadly unsurprising, the biggest players are the slowest to move.
- kalleboo 8y agoThe only 32-bit apps on my machine are a bunch of Adobe helper apps...
- tomduncalf 8y agoRe: iOS, yeah, I was looking at my purchased app history to get inspiration for a new project and a decent chunk of apps I bought around the time of the first iPad (as well as newer ones) are no longer available, which is a shame. I can’t really blame the authors for not going back and updating a £1.99 app 6 years after the fact, but it’s a shame and I hope there won’t be another “extinction event” like this. Am I right in understanding that Bitcode should make architecture changes much less of an issue for iOS in future?
- StudentStuff 8y agoApple is pinning a lot on bitcode, but they really aren't willing to do what Linus does and take a firm stance to not break userspace. Microsoft does that to a fair degree, hence old WinXP apps still running on Windows 10. When you get back to the DOS era tho, better to just use DosBox! Due to the closed ecosystem for iOS, this type of abandoned app preservation will be extremely hard to do :c
- ibiza 8y agoI suppose dropping x86 support makes for one less architecture for Rosetta II to support.
- seabrookmx 8y agoRosetta II being the x64 -> ARM translation layer for when they start putting the AX chips in Macbooks? HP already has it's Snapdragon convertable out that has Windows 10 x86 emulation. But surprisingly this is only _32-bit_ not 64. Looks like performance is understandably poor as well. I'd expect Apple to take their usual strategy and wait a bit until chips are a little faster/they have a more mature emulator before they make the switch. Interesting times though!
- withinrafael 8y agoRe: HP Envy It's an ARM64 chip running ARM64 OS and ARM32/x86/ARM64 Win32 and UWP apps. Just doesn't handle amd64 > arm32/64 conversion.
- jammi 8y agoI actually expect Apple to implement some "emulator-acceleration instructions" into their own chips and get excellent (almost as good, as good or better) performance once they switch, as always, because otherwise people just won't switch en masse.
- shmerl 8y agoDoes it mean macOS users won't be able to play 32-bit games in Wine anymore?
- godzillabrennus 8y agoI’d imagine that’s the case.
- pvg 8y agoIt doesn't, 32 bit apps still run, Wine and Wine-hosted apps included.
- throwaway2048 8y agopresumably they are going to scrub 32 bit support entirely, including from the kernel.
- pvg 8y agoEventually. Certainly not in this or next major release and the rate of adoption/updates will very likely influence the schedule. There are a lots of widely used apps out there that are 32 bit. Steam, for one, which probably matters more in that market segment than Wine.
- shmerl 8y agoI suppose for those who play games on macOS, it's not Steam itself that's a problem, but quite a big amount of actual 32-bit only games. Both macOS and Windows ones (that could run in Wine until now). I hope when Linux distros will start dropping 32-bit support, they'll still keep multiarch around for such purposes.
- pvg 8y agoRight, but that's the gist of what I mean - I don't think 'macOS update that suddenly and irrevocably kills most of your Steam library' is on the horizon.
- jnwatson 8y agoI recently lost a bunch of iOS apps, some 8 years old, due to the ABI cutoff. I don't have the ecosystem tie-in that I used to have. What good is owning a bunch of apps if you can't use them?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- inapis 8y ago8 years is quite a bit of time in the technology space. There's no point holding back the rest of the ecosystem if some developers have abandoned their apps.
- bonoetmalo 8y agoCould somebody point me to a technical explanation of why it's sometimes non trivial to just compile your app against x86-64 and call it a day? For example, something I encounter every day is Visual Studio and it's helper processes being 32 bit. Because Visual Studio regularly, even on the latest 15.7 preview shits the bed with OutOfMemoryExceptions on our large solution, I'm inclined to rage "why don't they just make it 64 bit? If it could just load more into memory it could get past this indexing hurdle and give me back the UI". But I also understand that if it was that simple they would have done it by now. Something else, that I understand more, is the LabVIEW RT and FPGA modules only working on 32 bit LabVIEW. I would assume it's related to the compiling and deploying to the 32 bit ARM/x86 RT target.
- angrygoat 8y agoUsually it's old code that assumes sizeof(int) == sizeof(void *) - you could stuff a pointer into an int on 32 bit platforms, you can't when an integer is 32 bits long, and a pointer is 64 bits. In C (or Fortran, ...) it's pretty easy to make this mistake, especially in pre-K&R C - so there's some work to be done porting over.
- prewett 8y agoIf I recall correctly, Win32 let you stuff a 32-bit value into a window. If you wanted to write an object-oriented application, you'd stuff your this-pointer in that 32-bit value. Since every little thing (button, label, checkbox) is a window, you'd have a lot of that. Visual Studio might be old enough that they wrote the pieces that are still 32-bit in straight-up Win32, or maybe MFC. If so, I'd bet no one wants to touch it to port it over to modernity...
- mizaru 8y agoYou're probably referring to SetWindowLong. A 64-bit compatible version (SetWindowLongPtr) of that function is available since Windows 2000. I'm pretty sure there's a guide on how to properly port applications to 64-bit on MSDN somewhere.
- 8y ago
- graycat 8y agoSo Apple is dropping 32 bit computing? Hmm .... Gee, I'm building, configuring a server based on an Asus motherboard and the AMD FX-8350 processor, 8 cores, 64 bit addressing. Surprise! I discovered that Windows XP 32 bit Professional SP2 (service pack 2) will install and run! It sees all 8 cores, and the version of Microsoft's TASKMGR plots the activity separately on each of all 8 cores. It also sees the full 16 GB of main memory and is willing to use 2 GB of it with 5 GB of paging space. And I discovered that the Western Digital (WD) Data Lifeguard Tools CD, IIRC version 11.1, boots and runs! This is amazing since what boots is old DOS! The DOS part will boot from a CD/DVD USB (universal serial bus) drive, but then the WD software doesn't run. But if boot from a SATA (serial advanced technology attachment) CD/DVD drive, then the WD software does run. If have the Windows version running and put the WD CD in the SATA drive, then the WD software appears to run as a Windows application! My most important application is 32 bit editor KEdit, and I've discovered that it runs fine on Windows 10 64 bit Home Edition on an HP laptop with a 64 bit Intel processor with two cores and 4 threads. So, lesson: With Windows, AMD, Intel, and ASUS, a lot of 32 bit computing still works! Sorry Apple! My first intention installing Windows XP was just to run some experiments on using the WD Tools to backup and restore a bootable partition, but I've since discovered that apparently my trusty old copy of Nero for CD/DVD reading/writing that I long used on XP appears to install on Windows 10 on the HP laptop but as far as I can tell won't read or write CDs or DVDs. So, for routine reading/writing CDs and DVDs, apparently I should keep a bootable partition with XP. Sorry, Apple, 32 bit computing won't go away soon: The reason is standard and old in computing -- there is a lot of old software people very much still want to run.
- wtallis 8y agoDo you have any examples of 32-bit only software you'd like to run that are actually relevant to Apple users? Listing Windows/DOS utilities providing functionality that is largely built-in to macOS or is specifically intended to work around limitations of Windows isn't a very compelling argument.
- graycat 8y agoI have no idea what you are asking about. I've never touched any computer with Linux, Unix, or whatever operating system Apple uses or any Apple device of any kind. My point was simple, really simple, dirt simple: The OP said that Apple was dropping support for 32 bit applications or some such. So, my point was that the AMD, Asus, Microsoft products I listed seem to be continuing 32 bit support, that is, will continue to run some now quite old software. Why make this point? Simple. Standard in computing: Being able to run old software remains important. That's why. I am drawing only from the OP. Again, yet again, over again, once again, one more time, I don't know anything about the 32 bit issue and Apple beyond the remark in the OP. So, in particular, I don't know any details about what emulation, machine instruction rewriting, old thunking, containers, virtual machines, etc. Apple might have for running 32 bit software. Again, I'm just saying that it appears that Apple is in some sense dropping support or some such for some old software and that being able to run old software is sometimes important and, curiously, seems to be possible to some extent on the products I mentioned.
- malkia 8y agoI haven't checked what version Visual Studio (not Code) is on the Mac, but good heavens it might be the only 64-bit Visual Studio nowadays :)
- bangonkeyboard 8y agoI'm not installing a version of macOS that can't run QuickTime 7.
- yoz-y 8y agoWhy? If I may ask. Is there still a lot of video out there that only QT7 supports?
- LeoPanthera 8y agoI work with video, particularly in "legacy" formats, regularly. There's nothing I used to do with QuickTime 7 that I can't now do with ffmpeg.
- wheels 8y agoThis is particularly heinous for those of us that do music production. A lot of plugins are orphaned at some point (meaning the developers no longer update them), and if you created a piece of music with those plugins (instruments, effects), if you can't load those plugins, you can't open old files. I often open up sketches from several years prior and consider working more on them. I keep a full 32-bit stack of music stuff left installed exactly for that reason. Usually, if I open them up, then I'll go ahead and move them over to 64-bit semi-equivalents, but that's difficult if you can't even hear what you were doing with the old one.
- rz2k 8y agoWhile you will possibly have to upgrade your OS for some software sooner rather than later, MacOS High Sierra should continue to get security updates for a while, and you will be able to run it in a virtual machine like Virtualbox or Veertu, or something else built on Apple's native hypervisor for a very long time.
- wheels 8y agoYes, I've considered such. Unfortunately real-time audio processing is one of those areas where virtual machines are still very finicky.
- beedogs 8y agoYep. I'm not excited about the prospect of moving back to the PC for making music, but it looks like that's what Apple want me to do.
- ksk 8y agoWhat is the point of an OS if not to run the software the user has purchased? I don't care, and more importantly don't want to care at all about the OS beyond it being a launcher for software that allows me to make money. Such a bizzare approach from Apple to reducing the user to an open wallet willing to repurchase software that already works. Also with Apple forcing the user on the rolling release treadmill, its rather annoying that one can't simply stay on a stable version.
- hvidgaard 8y agoIf backwards compatibility is important, Windows is the only sane choice for a desktop os.
- lmm 8y agoFreeBSD has always had good binary backward compatibility.
- hvidgaard 8y agoI specifically said desktop OS for that very reason. I am aware that you can use Ubuntu and get a similar experience, but it's not in the same league as Windows.
- lmm 8y agoUbuntu is specifically a desktop OS (to the point where I'd say putting Ubuntu on a server is a bad idea), so I don't understand what distinction you're drawing.
- hvidgaard 8y agoMy original comment say > If backwards compatibility is important, Windows is the only sane choice for a desktop os. So I'm not saying anything about a server, for which there is multiple choices of long backward compatibility.
- beedogs 8y agoFor the past few years, Apple have been doing everything they possibly can to get creative professionals to leave their platform.
- Razengan 8y agoI'm a creative professional and I, along with other people I know, still prefer to remain on Apple platforms. I guess now you have to argue about and form a consensus on the definition of "professional" huh?
- gaius 8y agoIt seems like only yesterday Macs were 24-bit and we were all busy getting “32-bit clean”
- EamonnMR 8y agoThere goes Ambrosia's back catalogue.
- ersh 8y agoWell at least this time they alert. Support for Universal binaries was dropped silently.
- saagarjha 8y ago> Support for Universal binaries was dropped silently. Since when? I have universal binaries that run fine on my computer.
- gargravarr 8y agoCan't imagine why this push is necessary. One of the primary advantages of x86_64 as opposed to other 64-bit architectures is that normal 32-bit applications run natively with no performance hits. As others notice, this is likely going to serve no other purpose than to make abandoned 32-bit applications completely unusable. Of course, it could also be related to Apple's intention to switch to ARM chips in the near future, and getting everything on consistent 64-bit to aid the porting effort. I can't imagine the developers are going to enjoy low-level mapping of 64-bit x86 instructions to 64-bit ARM though...
- saagarjha 8y ago> I can't imagine the developers are going to enjoy low-level mapping of 64-bit x86 instructions to 64-bit ARM though... Why would the average developer even have to care?
- gargravarr 8y agoI meant Apple's developers.
- Doctor_Fegg 8y agoThis will be what finally moves me away from Adobe software. I use one Adobe app: Illustrator CS5. My needs are fairly specialist and I haven't needed any new features introduced since CS4 (2008; multiple artboards, finally). Adobe's only upgrade option is £240pa for a single-app subscription. Fortunately, alternative drawing programs have come on a long way since CS5, so I'll almost certainly jump ship to one of those.
- andrea_sdl 8y agoI've got an old core duo (32 bit) iMac which is still working fine despite the old age (I think it's a late 2009). My small brother use it to navigate the web. The sad thing is that it became useless with OSX. Safari couldn't be updated nor any browser, thus leading to the inability to browse the web because of https certificates compatibility. I had to install (with a lot of tricks) linux and it works flawlessy. It's sad to see that a working computer has become obsolete in only 10 years, and while I will probably continue use Apple products I feel like there something _wrong_ with this. That's one of the reason I am worried about buying an apple watch. Obsolescence. All in all I get it and I know that it'll probably pay off for them, just like it did with the dvd player removed, but it'll take time (for me) to get used to the fact that, at least on the apple ecosystems, things last more than usual, but they also become useless more than usual.
- polpo 8y agoOn the other hand, it is a bit crazy and impressive that OS X/macOS has had to support 32-bit x86 binaries for >12 years because they sold 32-bit Core Duo machines from January 2006 (introduction of Core Duo iMac) until August 2007 (replacement of Core Duo Mac Mini with Core 2 Duo version). 12 years of binary support because they sold 32-bit x86 CPUs for 20 months.
- andrea_sdl 8y agoYes. Indeed, and as I wrote I can’t blame their choice
- PascLeRasc 8y agoSafari can indeed be updated. I use a 2008 iMac sometimes on El Cap and it still gets regular security updates and updates for Safari/Pages/etc.
- andrea_sdl 8y agoMy iMac can’t be upgraded to el cap because it’s not 64bit :) if I recall it was snow leopard the os. Maybe I wrote the wrong model date