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Since everyone seems to have an opinion about the iPhone 5s having a 64-bit processor, here's mine. In the immediate future, this will make zero difference for
by el_duderino 13y ago
Since everyone seems to have an opinion about the iPhone 5s having a 64-bit processor, here's mine.
In the immediate future, this will make zero difference for consumers. Applications that ship today will continue to be compiled as 32-bit, so that they can run on all the other iOS devices as well. Since the iPhone 5s is likely to be faster than all those other iOS devices as well, there's little point right now optimizing an application for the iPhone 5s, everything that runs well enough on an iPhone 4s or iPhone 5 or iPhone 5c will run well enough on an iPhone 5s as well. Optimize for the low end, and the high end will take care if itself.
In the medium term, there will come a moment in time when all supported iOS devices have 64-bit support, with Apple dropping support for 32-bit devices. At that point, the iPhone 5s will be the oldest supported iOS devices, and the iPhone 5c won't be supported any more. Indirectly, that means that the iPhone 5s will have a longer useful life than the iPhone 5c, and since the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit is qualitative and not quantitative, it's possible that the useful life of an iPhone 5s will be more than one year longer than that of the iPhone 5c. Users who care about how long they can keep their phones before being forced to replace them because of obsolescence could consider the more expensive iPhone 5s over an iPhone 5c on this point alone, regardless of the other differences.
Finally, 64-bit support in the iPhone 5s is a great stepping stone for developers. Even though deploying 64-bit-only applications might not be practical for another few years, it's never too early to make sure that code compiles for 64-bit targets and passes all the unit tests, to run microbenchmarks, and maybe even for some dogfooding. In the long term, I can't rule out that Apple would remove 32-bit support entirely and would therefore mandate 64-bit applications, and it's probably easier to get ready on an ongoing basis than to go through a 64-bit fire drill many years down the road.
- mikeash 13y agoThere is no need to wait for all iOS devices to be 64-bit. Push the button in Xcode and build a 32/64 fat app, and you get to run as 64-bit on the 5S, and 32-bit elsewhere.
- potatolicious 13y agoAgree with one correction: apps that are shipping in the near future will contain both 32- and 64-bit binaries (just like they contained both PowerPC/Intel binaries during the Mac transition). We'll realize these gains pretty quickly, though one major problem will be ensuring 64-bit compatibility across all your dependencies before committing to shipping 64-bit apps overall. I fully expect that the common dependencies (see: AFNetworking, Google Analytics, etc) will be 64-bit ready in, at most, a few months, at which point shipping a 64-bit app will be as simple as flipping a compile switch.
- anfedorov 13y agoSounds familiar: https://plus.google.com/u/1/112218872649456413744/posts/Gbdj4XnE2QK https://plus.google.com/u/1/112218872649456413744/posts/Gbdj...
- rz2k 13y agoIf people are increasingly likely to trade in their phones, rather than just putting their old ones in a box, then the difference in value becomes an even more relevant concern. It's difficult to imagine the 5c having within $100 of the trade in value of the 5s in a couple years, and therefore little chance of making sense, even if you think a 4% discount on the two-year TCO matters. (approximately $2500 vs $2600)