8 ms·

The writing that 32bit apps are going away was on the wall for a long time. If you still rely on that (maybe for some enterprise application) then you are prob

by dewey 7y ago

The writing that 32bit apps are going away was on the wall for a long time. If you still rely on that (maybe for some enterprise application) then you are probably not going to upgrade to the newest version right away anyway. It’s like removing the floppy drive, there will be a bunch of people complaining (probably the 1%) who still use it but in the end everyone is better of without it and it will be replaced by something better. Almost nobody of the general users would know a difference between 32 / 64 bit as they just use new apps or use web apps. It’s a very small group that’s affected by this change.

oefrha 7y ago
The writing has been on the wall for a long time but some big name software companies are slow to adapt, and even if they adapted you'll probably have to pay good money for a new license. Take Mathematica for example. The first 64-bit version is 12.0, released April 2019. So a year-old permanent v11 license is useless on Catalina now. It would have cost me a couple hundred bucks to upgrade my v9 permanent license if I didn't happen to have an institutional license.
- thenewnewguy 7y ago
  Sounds like you ought to get mad at Mathematica for selling 32bit MacOS software in 2019, which it's been well known for over a decade that support will eventually be dropped.
  - mod50ack 7y ago
    Hardly been "well known for over a decade". A decade ago, Rosetta was well-supported. The dropping of Rosetta support in Lion was quasi-abrupt, but understandable (it arose from a licensing concern after the tech was acquired). The 32/64 transition was announced a few years ago, but it was hardly something known a decade ago.
    - dylan604 7y ago
      The history of Apple suggests that when they come out with a new development environment, it is well advised to just go ahead an make that switch as soon as possible. Even if they make a bandaid type of stepping stone like Rosetta, don't lean on it permanently. Adobe had to skip an entire version of their software suite because they didn't believe Apple was serious.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      The last 32 bit Mac was released in 2007.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      If the last 32 bit Mac that Apple shipped was over a decade ago, why wouldn’t you port your code to 64 bit?
      - FullyFunctional 7y ago
        What wrong with running decade old software? What if the company is long gone? Apple is forcing me to never upgrade.
        scarface74 7y ago
        In the grand scheme of things, how many companies do you think wrote software for the Intel based Mac between the beginning of 2006 when the first Intel based Macs were introduced and 2009 when Apple dropped support for 32 bit Macs and then went out of business?
- scarface74 7y ago
  Sounds like an even better reason to force their hand. If it was left to companies, they would still be shipping software with 68K code.
  - RossBencina 7y ago
    > If it was left to companies, they would still be shipping software with 68K code. You seem to think that would be a bad thing. Why? The operating system is there to support applications.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Every piece of code in an operating system means a larger surface area for vulnerabilities, more support cost, more maintenance for both developers and the operating system maintainers, etc. If you want to see how badly this can go wrong - look at Windows. Over a decade ago there were over a half a dozen different ways to represent a string in Windows and depending on which API you called, you had to translate between them. Also, one of the earliest widespread vulnerabilities was caused by IIS not checking all of the different types of string encodings. You could literally pass DOS commands via the url bar just by encoding them and they would run on the server.
      - cwyers 7y ago
        The logical extension of this belief is to just turn the computer off. That way it's not running any code and is 100% secure.
        scarface74 7y ago
        In the real world there are trade offs. This is engineering 101.
inferiorhuman 7y ago
Find me a perpetual license for a version of Adobe Lightroom that has a 64-bit installer and I'll pay for it. But I'm not going to upgrade to a leased tool. Luckily the perpetual Lightroom licenses work on Windows too, so when Mavericks loses support I'll probably migrate at least the photography workflows to wine (on not-macOS though).
- dylan604 7y ago
  What perpetual license? If you buy a copy of something like CC suite, it was for that current version. If Adobe updates a major upgrade (not point releases), they charged you again for the upgrade. That was usually 12-18 months. That was also $999 for those upgrades. Sure, you could stay on that version, but as the OS upgrades, that code becomes unusable forcing the upgrade. The "lease" licenses is $50/month or $600/yr (usually comes with a discount for the 12month purchase). You get access to the upgrades as they come so you're always current. Where's the evil? Oh, and with that $50/month, I can run it on 2 separate computers simultaneously. The original license was for one computer.
  - detaro 7y ago
    The perpetual license to use the software in the version you bought. Few people truly needed every single version, but instead only upgraded when it became necessary or there was a killer feature they wanted.
    - dylan604 7y ago
      You're simply forgetting the fact that as the OS upgrades, the software that is not upgraded cannot be used without also upgrading. What's the last OS that CS6 could be installed? Also, anyone using Adobe software in a professional setting (meaning actually getting paid for using the software) can easily pay the monthly fees. Staying on an antiquated version of software means they can no longer open files that are created on recent versions of software (thinking Premiere). I have not met one professional that is still holding on to the perpetual license fallacy. The maths just don't add up.

by dewey 7y ago

oefrha 7y ago

The writing has been on the wall for a long time but some big name software companies are slow to adapt, and even if they adapted you'll probably have to pay good money for a new license. Take Mathematica for example. The first 64-bit version is 12.0, released April 2019. So a year-old permanent v11 license is useless on Catalina now. It would have cost me a couple hundred bucks to upgrade my v9 permanent license if I didn't happen to have an institutional license.

thenewnewguy 7y ago
Sounds like you ought to get mad at Mathematica for selling 32bit MacOS software in 2019, which it's been well known for over a decade that support will eventually be dropped.
- mod50ack 7y ago
  Hardly been "well known for over a decade". A decade ago, Rosetta was well-supported. The dropping of Rosetta support in Lion was quasi-abrupt, but understandable (it arose from a licensing concern after the tech was acquired). The 32/64 transition was announced a few years ago, but it was hardly something known a decade ago.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    The history of Apple suggests that when they come out with a new development environment, it is well advised to just go ahead an make that switch as soon as possible. Even if they make a bandaid type of stepping stone like Rosetta, don't lean on it permanently. Adobe had to skip an entire version of their software suite because they didn't believe Apple was serious.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    The last 32 bit Mac was released in 2007.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    If the last 32 bit Mac that Apple shipped was over a decade ago, why wouldn’t you port your code to 64 bit?
    - FullyFunctional 7y ago
      What wrong with running decade old software? What if the company is long gone? Apple is forcing me to never upgrade.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        In the grand scheme of things, how many companies do you think wrote software for the Intel based Mac between the beginning of 2006 when the first Intel based Macs were introduced and 2009 when Apple dropped support for 32 bit Macs and then went out of business?
scarface74 7y ago
Sounds like an even better reason to force their hand. If it was left to companies, they would still be shipping software with 68K code.
- RossBencina 7y ago
  > If it was left to companies, they would still be shipping software with 68K code. You seem to think that would be a bad thing. Why? The operating system is there to support applications.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Every piece of code in an operating system means a larger surface area for vulnerabilities, more support cost, more maintenance for both developers and the operating system maintainers, etc. If you want to see how badly this can go wrong - look at Windows. Over a decade ago there were over a half a dozen different ways to represent a string in Windows and depending on which API you called, you had to translate between them. Also, one of the earliest widespread vulnerabilities was caused by IIS not checking all of the different types of string encodings. You could literally pass DOS commands via the url bar just by encoding them and they would run on the server.
    - cwyers 7y ago
      The logical extension of this belief is to just turn the computer off. That way it's not running any code and is 100% secure.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        In the real world there are trade offs. This is engineering 101.

inferiorhuman 7y ago

Find me a perpetual license for a version of Adobe Lightroom that has a 64-bit installer and I'll pay for it. But I'm not going to upgrade to a leased tool. Luckily the perpetual Lightroom licenses work on Windows too, so when Mavericks loses support I'll probably migrate at least the photography workflows to wine (on not-macOS though).

dylan604 7y ago
What perpetual license? If you buy a copy of something like CC suite, it was for that current version. If Adobe updates a major upgrade (not point releases), they charged you again for the upgrade. That was usually 12-18 months. That was also $999 for those upgrades. Sure, you could stay on that version, but as the OS upgrades, that code becomes unusable forcing the upgrade. The "lease" licenses is $50/month or $600/yr (usually comes with a discount for the 12month purchase). You get access to the upgrades as they come so you're always current. Where's the evil? Oh, and with that $50/month, I can run it on 2 separate computers simultaneously. The original license was for one computer.
- detaro 7y ago
  The perpetual license to use the software in the version you bought. Few people truly needed every single version, but instead only upgraded when it became necessary or there was a killer feature they wanted.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    You're simply forgetting the fact that as the OS upgrades, the software that is not upgraded cannot be used without also upgrading. What's the last OS that CS6 could be installed? Also, anyone using Adobe software in a professional setting (meaning actually getting paid for using the software) can easily pay the monthly fees. Staying on an antiquated version of software means they can no longer open files that are created on recent versions of software (thinking Premiere). I have not met one professional that is still holding on to the perpetual license fallacy. The maths just don't add up.