8 ms·

Can someone summarise why we should care about 32 bit sw other than old things that might not be ported?

rubbingalcohol 7y ago
> other than old things that might not be ported That's about the only reason to care as far as I can tell. I was pretty surprised to see that relatively recent ports like Bioshock Infinite won't be getting a 64-bit update. We had 64-bit games back in 2005 starting with the original Far Cry, so I'm not sure how this could even be a problem nearly 15 years later.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Even building for 32 bit again can be a lot of trouble, let alone updating every little dependency
- wincy 7y ago
  Irrational Games, who made Bioshock Infinite’s company went out of business. Who is going to update it?
  - earenndil 7y ago
    Yes but the macos port is by aspyr; do they not have the code anymore?
rock_artist 7y ago
If you have no use for 32-bit than you shouldn't care... For modern software or many fields, 32bit isn't critical. However, Some fields still have some 32-bit based products (or frameworks) which would break on Catalina. Why would someone use 32bit? There are closed-sourced products that never released as 64bit. for software developers that's quite rate but still for some fields there are no real alternatives for those products. so they should keep older versions or run VM.
- simongr3dal 7y ago
  If the hardware, the operating systems, and the software ecosystem around these products kept on supporting 32-bit the products never had any critical incetive to transition. Perhpas now they will have that, or other pieces of software will come and fill the void. I'm still pretty bummed about what this will mean for WINE though, it will mean a lot more work for those devs – or a serious reduction in the amount of software that will work with it.
  - rock_artist 7y ago
    > I'm still pretty bummed about what this will mean for WINE though why? all Intel chips currently supports 32bit ISA. You can still have VMs to run 32bit. also IIRC, Wine is X-Window? so you can even attach through SSH-X to it with simple Docker container.
    - qwerty456127 7y ago
      > Wine is X-Window? so you can even attach through SSH-X to it Absolutely true. I once had to set a client-server Windows-based CRM in a small company. The server had a native Linux version, the client app was windows-only. Client machines ran Windows. Users also wanted to work from home. For some reason (some kind of connection glitches or whatever, I can't remember already) I've chosen to install Xfree on the Ubuntu server (one of command-line-managed VirtualBox VMs on another Ubuntu server actually), set-up the app for direct client-server connection, let users connect to the Linux box over OpenVPN and run the Win32 app with Wine over SSH on their Windows machines :-) I've fell in love with the X as I have managed to set this up (quite easily, BTW). I certainly don't want Linux to loose such a beautiful ability as it switches to Wayland (I don't worry much about Wine though, all the distributions but Ubuntu keep shipping multiarch libs and it works just fine but I won't update my Mac as it has just 128 GiBs SSD and I have no disk space to spare for a Windows VM).
  - bangonkeyboard 7y ago
    This idea that vendors should seek to actively break working software simply because it's "old" is repellent to me. I use several 32-bit apps and components regularly because they continue to function better than the alternatives. Many are unlikely to ever be rewritten or replaced because the developers, ecosystems, and business models that made them possible are today either gone or moribund.
mikhailt 7y ago
The other reason I can think of is archival/history, we shouldn't disregard everything we've made in the past just because it doesn't run on latest hardware; they're still a good part of our history that we should learn from. I just wish Apple would include a free downloadable 32-bit image of macOS Mojave or a specific version that we can always run on top of Apple's Hypervisor framework that'll be maintained forever for use of these 32-bit software in the event we don't find a proper 64-bit version and we don't "violate their EULA" if we buy a new Mac that didn't come with Mojave.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  Except Apple already took the same approach with PowerPC applications.
  - mikhailt 7y ago
    IIRC, you could still run these apps on Snow Leopard in VirtualBox by using Rosetta. It's PITA but I would still say they should offer Snow Leopard image for the purpose of having Rosetta support. I'm not saying Apple will do anything like this but it would be nice of them to do it.
    - bdcravens 7y ago
      Maybe a point in time image wouldn't be a bad thing, but what do you mean by "that'll be maintained forever"? That it'll be downloadable, or that Apple should be responsible for security updates, etc, on those legacy OSes?
    - msbarnett 7y ago
      Rosetta relied on a binary recompilation technology they licensed from Transitive. IBM bought it up and changed the licensing such that it was no longer economical for Apple to ship it, which is why it dropped really suddenly. Free copies of Snow Leopard would likely cost them a lot in fees to IBM
- gumby 7y ago
  I am not going to argue with the legitimate claims of inconvenience (or worse) thanks to deprecating old APIs. But we have a natural experiment of the opposite: Microsoft has bent over backwards to maintain back compatibility. And those old APIs have been the major sources of vulnerabilities, fragility, and maintenance cost. They do occasionally bite the bullet (e.g. old versions of Word are no longer readable) but they go out of their way not to. I really don't like Windows for my own technical reasons but I have tremendous respect for the amount of effort MS has put in over the years on this front and I sympathize with the consequences. Apple has a much smaller "surface" (both vulnerability attack surface as well as surface ear of their own code base) which makes many technical decisions much easier. So either way means a choice; you can't say one is absolutely superior to the other.
concatime 7y ago
Games. Seriously. You have a lot of old (even new) games that depend on 32-bit binaries/libraries. And that’s why the recent “clash” between Canonical’s Ubuntu and Valve’s Steam[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/Plagman2/status/1142262103106973698 https://twitter.com/Plagman2/status/1142262103106973698
- hrktb 7y ago
  can’t old games just be emulated or containerized ?
  - pvg 7y ago
    A lot of these games aren't that old.
    - masklinn 7y ago
      Yup, for instance The Cave can't be run on iOS anymore, because it was developed as a 32b application. It's just one of a thousand.
      - olliej 7y ago
        It’s not just “iOS”: the modern (the last few years I think) A-series chips do not have any support for 32bit arm, they are 64bit only.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        saagarjha 7y ago
        Surely only the A11 and above?
        olliej 7y ago
        Honestly I can’t recall which gen dropped it, but presumably the moment they reached their EoL for the last non-64 bit device they had no reason to maintain the development cost of having a 32bit OS, maintaining support for communication between 32 and 64bit apps, nor the cost to users (doubling the size of the resident system memory, confusion of some apps running on some device but not others, etc). And then knowing that if you drop 32bit then you can gain space on your silicon. What irks me is that devs saw the first 64bit devices come out, and didn’t go “I should recompile my code”. Honestly the fact there are so many new apps made for pc that aren’t 64bit is mind blowing to me.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
That's pretty much it. Its really annoying to have to dual boot Windows so that I can play a game like Civ IV. It's sad that a number of somewhat recent games, as well as games that I want to fire up for nostalgia purposes (e.g. Starcraft) don't work anymore.
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  Having spare time to play Civilization is a luxury (I could only afford this when I was a child, now I only have a humble amount of time left after working, studying, sleeping and working out and I prefer to spend this time with my loved one, outdoors usually). You better just enjoy it and don't waste it on thoughts about annoyances. As for StarCraft you can run it in VirtualBox, or perhaps even DOSBox with Windows95 might be enough. Nevertheless I agree people should care about keeping old games playable - these are an important part of human cultural legacy, a fairly serious form of art, as are paintings, literature, etc.
- moduspol 7y ago
  They're already working on getting Starcraft to 64 bit [1], but Starcraft is also interesting in that this is the second time this has happened. As a PowerPC application, it also required Rosetta back in the day, and now will need further recompilation for 64-bit only Macs. [1] https://us.battle.net/forums/en/starcraft/topic/20762237268#post-5 https://us.battle.net/forums/en/starcraft/topic/20762237268#...
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    True, Blizzard in particular does a fantastic job supporting their older games. It's still a bummer for other games, such as the beloved (by me) Escape Velocity series, whose publisher is now defunct. Its also annoying for people with some commercial software. My dad uses an older nonsubscription version of photoshop and some desktop publishing software that I believe will be incompatible with Catalina
corey_moncure 7y ago
Visual Studio
Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
Pre-subscription Adobe apps.

> other than old things that might not be ported That's about the only reason to care as far as I can tell. I was pretty surprised to see that relatively recent ports like Bioshock Infinite won't be getting a 64-bit update. We had 64-bit games back in 2005 starting with the original Far Cry, so I'm not sure how this could even be a problem nearly 15 years later.

jacobush 7y ago
Even building for 32 bit again can be a lot of trouble, let alone updating every little dependency
wincy 7y ago
Irrational Games, who made Bioshock Infinite’s company went out of business. Who is going to update it?
- earenndil 7y ago
  Yes but the macos port is by aspyr; do they not have the code anymore?

rock_artist 7y ago

If you have no use for 32-bit than you shouldn't care... For modern software or many fields, 32bit isn't critical. However, Some fields still have some 32-bit based products (or frameworks) which would break on Catalina. Why would someone use 32bit? There are closed-sourced products that never released as 64bit. for software developers that's quite rate but still for some fields there are no real alternatives for those products. so they should keep older versions or run VM.

simongr3dal 7y ago
If the hardware, the operating systems, and the software ecosystem around these products kept on supporting 32-bit the products never had any critical incetive to transition. Perhpas now they will have that, or other pieces of software will come and fill the void. I'm still pretty bummed about what this will mean for WINE though, it will mean a lot more work for those devs – or a serious reduction in the amount of software that will work with it.
- rock_artist 7y ago
  > I'm still pretty bummed about what this will mean for WINE though why? all Intel chips currently supports 32bit ISA. You can still have VMs to run 32bit. also IIRC, Wine is X-Window? so you can even attach through SSH-X to it with simple Docker container.
  - qwerty456127 7y ago
    > Wine is X-Window? so you can even attach through SSH-X to it Absolutely true. I once had to set a client-server Windows-based CRM in a small company. The server had a native Linux version, the client app was windows-only. Client machines ran Windows. Users also wanted to work from home. For some reason (some kind of connection glitches or whatever, I can't remember already) I've chosen to install Xfree on the Ubuntu server (one of command-line-managed VirtualBox VMs on another Ubuntu server actually), set-up the app for direct client-server connection, let users connect to the Linux box over OpenVPN and run the Win32 app with Wine over SSH on their Windows machines :-) I've fell in love with the X as I have managed to set this up (quite easily, BTW). I certainly don't want Linux to loose such a beautiful ability as it switches to Wayland (I don't worry much about Wine though, all the distributions but Ubuntu keep shipping multiarch libs and it works just fine but I won't update my Mac as it has just 128 GiBs SSD and I have no disk space to spare for a Windows VM).
- bangonkeyboard 7y ago
  This idea that vendors should seek to actively break working software simply because it's "old" is repellent to me. I use several 32-bit apps and components regularly because they continue to function better than the alternatives. Many are unlikely to ever be rewritten or replaced because the developers, ecosystems, and business models that made them possible are today either gone or moribund.

mikhailt 7y ago

The other reason I can think of is archival/history, we shouldn't disregard everything we've made in the past just because it doesn't run on latest hardware; they're still a good part of our history that we should learn from. I just wish Apple would include a free downloadable 32-bit image of macOS Mojave or a specific version that we can always run on top of Apple's Hypervisor framework that'll be maintained forever for use of these 32-bit software in the event we don't find a proper 64-bit version and we don't "violate their EULA" if we buy a new Mac that didn't come with Mojave.

bdcravens 7y ago
Except Apple already took the same approach with PowerPC applications.
- mikhailt 7y ago
  IIRC, you could still run these apps on Snow Leopard in VirtualBox by using Rosetta. It's PITA but I would still say they should offer Snow Leopard image for the purpose of having Rosetta support. I'm not saying Apple will do anything like this but it would be nice of them to do it.
  - bdcravens 7y ago
    Maybe a point in time image wouldn't be a bad thing, but what do you mean by "that'll be maintained forever"? That it'll be downloadable, or that Apple should be responsible for security updates, etc, on those legacy OSes?
  - msbarnett 7y ago
    Rosetta relied on a binary recompilation technology they licensed from Transitive. IBM bought it up and changed the licensing such that it was no longer economical for Apple to ship it, which is why it dropped really suddenly. Free copies of Snow Leopard would likely cost them a lot in fees to IBM
gumby 7y ago
I am not going to argue with the legitimate claims of inconvenience (or worse) thanks to deprecating old APIs. But we have a natural experiment of the opposite: Microsoft has bent over backwards to maintain back compatibility. And those old APIs have been the major sources of vulnerabilities, fragility, and maintenance cost. They do occasionally bite the bullet (e.g. old versions of Word are no longer readable) but they go out of their way not to. I really don't like Windows for my own technical reasons but I have tremendous respect for the amount of effort MS has put in over the years on this front and I sympathize with the consequences. Apple has a much smaller "surface" (both vulnerability attack surface as well as surface ear of their own code base) which makes many technical decisions much easier. So either way means a choice; you can't say one is absolutely superior to the other.

concatime 7y ago

Games. Seriously. You have a lot of old (even new) games that depend on 32-bit binaries/libraries. And that’s why the recent “clash” between Canonical’s Ubuntu and Valve’s Steam[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/Plagman2/status/1142262103106973698 https://twitter.com/Plagman2/status/1142262103106973698

hrktb 7y ago
can’t old games just be emulated or containerized ?
- pvg 7y ago
  A lot of these games aren't that old.
  - masklinn 7y ago
    Yup, for instance The Cave can't be run on iOS anymore, because it was developed as a 32b application. It's just one of a thousand.
    - olliej 7y ago
      It’s not just “iOS”: the modern (the last few years I think) A-series chips do not have any support for 32bit arm, they are 64bit only.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        Surely only the A11 and above?
        olliej 7y ago
        Honestly I can’t recall which gen dropped it, but presumably the moment they reached their EoL for the last non-64 bit device they had no reason to maintain the development cost of having a 32bit OS, maintaining support for communication between 32 and 64bit apps, nor the cost to users (doubling the size of the resident system memory, confusion of some apps running on some device but not others, etc). And then knowing that if you drop 32bit then you can gain space on your silicon. What irks me is that devs saw the first 64bit devices come out, and didn’t go “I should recompile my code”. Honestly the fact there are so many new apps made for pc that aren’t 64bit is mind blowing to me.

Rebelgecko 7y ago

That's pretty much it. Its really annoying to have to dual boot Windows so that I can play a game like Civ IV. It's sad that a number of somewhat recent games, as well as games that I want to fire up for nostalgia purposes (e.g. Starcraft) don't work anymore.

qwerty456127 7y ago
Having spare time to play Civilization is a luxury (I could only afford this when I was a child, now I only have a humble amount of time left after working, studying, sleeping and working out and I prefer to spend this time with my loved one, outdoors usually). You better just enjoy it and don't waste it on thoughts about annoyances. As for StarCraft you can run it in VirtualBox, or perhaps even DOSBox with Windows95 might be enough. Nevertheless I agree people should care about keeping old games playable - these are an important part of human cultural legacy, a fairly serious form of art, as are paintings, literature, etc.
moduspol 7y ago
They're already working on getting Starcraft to 64 bit [1], but Starcraft is also interesting in that this is the second time this has happened. As a PowerPC application, it also required Rosetta back in the day, and now will need further recompilation for 64-bit only Macs. [1] https://us.battle.net/forums/en/starcraft/topic/20762237268#post-5 https://us.battle.net/forums/en/starcraft/topic/20762237268#...
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  True, Blizzard in particular does a fantastic job supporting their older games. It's still a bummer for other games, such as the beloved (by me) Escape Velocity series, whose publisher is now defunct. Its also annoying for people with some commercial software. My dad uses an older nonsubscription version of photoshop and some desktop publishing software that I believe will be incompatible with Catalina

corey_moncure 7y ago

Visual Studio

Doctor_Fegg 7y ago

Pre-subscription Adobe apps.