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> In the past they managed to keep compatibility while switching operating systems ("Classic") and CPU architectures (68k -> PPC, PPC -> Intel). The Classic En

> In the past they managed to keep compatibility while switching operating systems ("Classic") and CPU architectures (68k -> PPC, PPC -> Intel). The Classic Environment (OS 9 -> OS X) was dropped after 6 years. Rosetta (PPC -> i386) was dropped after 5 years. i386 -> x86_64 is now being dropped after 12 years.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Your point notwithstanding, the big difference to me is this: Classic and Rosetta were hacks with sucky UX. In particular, performance was terrible, in Rosetta because it was a full on CPU emulator, and Classic because it was booting Mac OS 9 in a Virtual Machine. Apps that used Classic also looked visually out of place. Running 32 bit apps in Mac OS X Mojave is 100% seamless to the user—if it wasn't for Apple's warning dialogues that 32bit was going to be deprecated, most users—even advanced users—would never even know the app was 32 bit. And that's because 32 bit support is a key feature of the amd64 architecture—it's the main reason most computers today use amd64 instead of the alternate standard proposed by Intel.