5 ms·

macOS was 64bit by default more than 16 years ago[1], and has only operated on 64 bit hardware for almost 15 of those years, only dropped 32bit 4 years ago, and

by olliej 3y ago

macOS was 64bit by default more than 16 years ago[1], and has only operated on 64 bit hardware for almost 15 of those years, only dropped 32bit 4 years ago, and Apple literally no longer sells any 32bit hardware. It was game developers who chose to keep producing 32bit software for more than a decade despite it clearly being a deprecated architecture, and clearly having no future, that created this problem. Developers have had more than enough time and notice to switch to 64bit, and chose not to. I see HN talk about MS being stupid for supporting decades of weirdness, and I see HN talking about how bad Apple is for not doing the same thing. You can't have it both ways: either you support everything indefinitely no matter the cost, or you move forward and require developers to actually pay attention to deprecation information. [1] Minor edit, macOS had 64bit kernel and bsd layer before leopard for ppc64 but iirc a lot of the UI layer frameworks (Cocoa, etc) had issues that meant it was not really a 64bit OS from an normal user PoV

eqvinox 3y ago
The real problem is that — to my knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong — you can't install a 32-bit environment as a container/subsystem/… on OSX. For both Windows and Linux, you can throw 32-bit components into an appropriate place and it'll work, while the rest of your system is 64-bit native. That said, I agree game developers were/are being slowpokes on this. For games shipped as 32-bit 10 years ago you can use emulation techniques now because you have 10 years of performance gains to sink into the emulation. But more recent stuff shipped as 32-bit is in a special bad place since it may rely on "current" performance…
- olliej 3y ago
  Correct, the macOS 32bit OS had an array of design decisions that impact large aspects of the system as a whole, and so it was deprecated - a large number of the APIs added after 2009 were 64bit only - and then removed so the OS could remove the various support infrastructure needed for that - recall that iOS shares a bunch of the core OS and dropped 32bit hardware entirely before "Apple Silicon" happened so you complicate everything for a deprecated platform. Then of course you run into the whole "there is no 32bit hardware at all" thing on the last few generations of mac hardware. Supporting old hardware is not free (engineering time is the issue, presumably not money :D), supporting what is in essence an entire dead platform is even worse. It also means that those games and software that are 32bit (or in the case of steam, Intel only) have significantly increased overhead on the system - you suddenly have to map in essentially an entire copy of userspace, and there are likely indirect overheads as well due to page table nonsense, etc. This is before we get to things like rosetta.
freedomben 3y ago
> I see HN talk about MS being stupid for supporting decades of weirdness, and I see HN talking about how bad Apple is for not doing the same thing. You can't have it both ways HN is not a monolith. There are people on here that hold each of those opinions, and there's no inconsistency because two people on HN are separate entities that can have different opinions. HN is in fact a great place for those people to have a discussion.
duskwuff 3y ago
Re. [1]: ppc64 on macOS was always an afterthought. It was only available on G5 systems, so developers couldn't ever rely on it being available, since the Powerbook and Mac Mini were G4 to the bitter end. And, as you mention, there was a long period where the GUI libraries weren't available for ppc64 (probably because they depended on 32-bit Carbon on the back end), so using it required developers to run 64-bit code in a separate process. From what I recall, the performance benefits weren't even that dramatic (and were only available on the G5 which was already pretty fast for the time), so very few developers bothered building for ppc64 unless they really needed the larger address space.
- olliej 3y ago
  That was my impression - it seemed very much a "I need more address space" than I need speed (after all, all PPC Macs were super computers IIRC :D)
  - xattt 3y ago
    64-bit was a feeling and a promise of a tech utopia.
dangus 3y ago
The only thing I think that sucks about this is that there is no software emulation or translation alternative that can allow you to run 32-bit macOS apps besides literally running the entire Mojave operating system in the background. Something like DOSBOX or Wine but for 32-bit Mac apps would be great. (This exists but not in a capacity that can run games) I also think that games are uniquely well-suited to running them far in the future. Most productivity apps are either replaced by something else or have a new version that I can migrate over to. When it comes to games, they are typically one-time art pieces. A game like Morrowind is just as “useful” as it was 20 years ago. Sure, I can play it with a community game engine, but not all games are popular enough to get that treatment.
- qup 3y ago
  I love this game. Although after enough playtime, I found boots of blinding speed to be a necessity. (Blocking the blinding effect, of course) I wonder why they took levitation out of the later games
Rebelgecko 3y ago
Believe it or not, some people like playing games that were made before the 64 bit transition happened. Not every good game is a constantly updated live service.
- olliej 3y ago
  The macOS 64-bit transition happened before steam for Mac was released. The was a single year between steam for Mac being released and 64bit hardware being a requirement for macOS. There was never a reason for anything published in the steam store to be 32bit only.
  - st3fan 3y ago
    This. It was also 100% clear that 32 bit was going to end at one point. Apple was extremely clear about that and provided all the tools and documentation to help developers make the transition.
    - eviks 3y ago
      How does "extreme clarity" remove any of the top barriers to transition? (also Apple docs aren't good, so I think "all the tools and documentation" statement is not true)
    - gpderetta 3y ago
      And game developers decided that the churn was not worth it.
    - bonton89 3y ago
      Game development, particularly of that era, made the lion's share of sales in the first year or two after release. The fact that 32-bit was going to end was never going to be a relevant consideration. This isn't IBM fulfilling a 10 year service contract. They made a game that worked on Apple PCs that existed at the time, users bought it and it did. If the users wanted it to work 10 years later then they could always fire up a vintage Mac.
  - ben-schaaf 3y ago
idonotknowwhy 3y ago
It's different people commenting on these issues within HN
fomine3 3y ago
32bit application is completely fine on Windows, and games are made for Windows. I don't say Apple is bad, but just it's not a platform for native games.
Hammershaft 3y ago
Creating conditions where game development requires constant maintenance literally just to be usable on a shifting OS platform ultimately tilts the economics of gamedev towards significantly worse games. Great example of this is the iOS game store, which is an endless wasteland of manipulative skinner boxes. Great example of this is a studio that once made excellent games on iOS, Vlambeer: https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-google-game-dev-problems-1203191551/# https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-g...!
gpderetta 3y ago
> I see HN talk about MS being stupid for supporting decades of weirdness, I see it almost universally praised on HN.

by olliej 3y ago

eqvinox 3y ago

The real problem is that — to my knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong — you can't install a 32-bit environment as a container/subsystem/… on OSX. For both Windows and Linux, you can throw 32-bit components into an appropriate place and it'll work, while the rest of your system is 64-bit native. That said, I agree game developers were/are being slowpokes on this. For games shipped as 32-bit 10 years ago you can use emulation techniques now because you have 10 years of performance gains to sink into the emulation. But more recent stuff shipped as 32-bit is in a special bad place since it may rely on "current" performance…

olliej 3y ago
Correct, the macOS 32bit OS had an array of design decisions that impact large aspects of the system as a whole, and so it was deprecated - a large number of the APIs added after 2009 were 64bit only - and then removed so the OS could remove the various support infrastructure needed for that - recall that iOS shares a bunch of the core OS and dropped 32bit hardware entirely before "Apple Silicon" happened so you complicate everything for a deprecated platform. Then of course you run into the whole "there is no 32bit hardware at all" thing on the last few generations of mac hardware. Supporting old hardware is not free (engineering time is the issue, presumably not money :D), supporting what is in essence an entire dead platform is even worse. It also means that those games and software that are 32bit (or in the case of steam, Intel only) have significantly increased overhead on the system - you suddenly have to map in essentially an entire copy of userspace, and there are likely indirect overheads as well due to page table nonsense, etc. This is before we get to things like rosetta.

freedomben 3y ago

> I see HN talk about MS being stupid for supporting decades of weirdness, and I see HN talking about how bad Apple is for not doing the same thing. You can't have it both ways HN is not a monolith. There are people on here that hold each of those opinions, and there's no inconsistency because two people on HN are separate entities that can have different opinions. HN is in fact a great place for those people to have a discussion.

duskwuff 3y ago

Re. [1]: ppc64 on macOS was always an afterthought. It was only available on G5 systems, so developers couldn't ever rely on it being available, since the Powerbook and Mac Mini were G4 to the bitter end. And, as you mention, there was a long period where the GUI libraries weren't available for ppc64 (probably because they depended on 32-bit Carbon on the back end), so using it required developers to run 64-bit code in a separate process. From what I recall, the performance benefits weren't even that dramatic (and were only available on the G5 which was already pretty fast for the time), so very few developers bothered building for ppc64 unless they really needed the larger address space.

olliej 3y ago
That was my impression - it seemed very much a "I need more address space" than I need speed (after all, all PPC Macs were super computers IIRC :D)
- xattt 3y ago
  64-bit was a feeling and a promise of a tech utopia.

dangus 3y ago

The only thing I think that sucks about this is that there is no software emulation or translation alternative that can allow you to run 32-bit macOS apps besides literally running the entire Mojave operating system in the background. Something like DOSBOX or Wine but for 32-bit Mac apps would be great. (This exists but not in a capacity that can run games) I also think that games are uniquely well-suited to running them far in the future. Most productivity apps are either replaced by something else or have a new version that I can migrate over to. When it comes to games, they are typically one-time art pieces. A game like Morrowind is just as “useful” as it was 20 years ago. Sure, I can play it with a community game engine, but not all games are popular enough to get that treatment.

qup 3y ago
I love this game. Although after enough playtime, I found boots of blinding speed to be a necessity. (Blocking the blinding effect, of course) I wonder why they took levitation out of the later games

Rebelgecko 3y ago

Believe it or not, some people like playing games that were made before the 64 bit transition happened. Not every good game is a constantly updated live service.

olliej 3y ago
The macOS 64-bit transition happened before steam for Mac was released. The was a single year between steam for Mac being released and 64bit hardware being a requirement for macOS. There was never a reason for anything published in the steam store to be 32bit only.
- st3fan 3y ago
  This. It was also 100% clear that 32 bit was going to end at one point. Apple was extremely clear about that and provided all the tools and documentation to help developers make the transition.
  - eviks 3y ago
    How does "extreme clarity" remove any of the top barriers to transition? (also Apple docs aren't good, so I think "all the tools and documentation" statement is not true)
  - gpderetta 3y ago
    And game developers decided that the churn was not worth it.
  - bonton89 3y ago
    Game development, particularly of that era, made the lion's share of sales in the first year or two after release. The fact that 32-bit was going to end was never going to be a relevant consideration. This isn't IBM fulfilling a 10 year service contract. They made a game that worked on Apple PCs that existed at the time, users bought it and it did. If the users wanted it to work 10 years later then they could always fire up a vintage Mac.
- ben-schaaf 3y ago

idonotknowwhy 3y ago

It's different people commenting on these issues within HN

fomine3 3y ago

32bit application is completely fine on Windows, and games are made for Windows. I don't say Apple is bad, but just it's not a platform for native games.

Hammershaft 3y ago

Creating conditions where game development requires constant maintenance literally just to be usable on a shifting OS platform ultimately tilts the economics of gamedev towards significantly worse games. Great example of this is the iOS game store, which is an endless wasteland of manipulative skinner boxes. Great example of this is a studio that once made excellent games on iOS, Vlambeer: https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-google-game-dev-problems-1203191551/# https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-g...!

gpderetta 3y ago

> I see HN talk about MS being stupid for supporting decades of weirdness, I see it almost universally praised on HN.