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Adobe to Unveil Creative Suite 4 on September 23rd
- Thread starter samwich
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Simply proof that 64-bit wasn't needed by very many people, and even today we're just starting to see mainstream users running into the 3.25 GiB limit.
Dare I point out the tiny, tiny percentage of Apple systems sold that can actually support more than 4 GiB of RAM?
It's too bad that so many people believe Apple's false and misleading ads.... (e.g. "first 64-bit desktop" - false because 64-bit desktops were available for 10 years before that, and misleading because there was no 64-bit support in the software)
Remember that I commented on the statement "I can't believe they've gone this long without it" - where "it" is support for large memory systems. I'm pointing out that 64-bit has been there longer on the Windows side than on the Apple side. Those who've "needed it" haven't been going without.
Spurious arguments like sales figures and misleading comments about driver support aren't relevant.
About 22 Million in March 2007 so lets be real kind and say Apple increased their userbase by 50% since then as this is the MacRumors Forum. With Vista's sales numbers increasing (it increased by another 40M in only 3 months from Apr to Jul) and the trend showing takeup of x64 increasing (from 3% to 20% in the same time period) how long do you think it will take x64 Vista to overtake that number?
Not long-- maybe a year?
Now it's my turn to say "I can't believe that you're so unaware of what's available in the [OS X] environment".
Support for large memory systems has been available in OS X since 10.2.7 -- 2 years before 64bit XP.
Slow takeup on 64bit XP is also proof that MS wasn't able to deliver a fully functional product... Early 64bit support was aimed mostly at the server market-- which is why it was based on the Windows 2003 Server code. Maybe the servers were stable, I don't know. We needed workstation support and we went without. The application vendors pushed us to Linux/Solaris when we needed the memory.
As you point out the comment you are arguing against was my personal surprise that so many people have been subsisting on 3GB of RAM. Going through the forum archives, you'll see me as a voice arguing that 64bit doesn't help most people. I don't expect grandma to need 4GB to send email to the kids, but I'd have thought more professional users would have the same needs I do.
Such as Adobe's users, as an example that brings us back on topic...
If we are getting nicely pedantic and talking about systems that can address more than 4GB of RAM I have a 2000 AS sitting in my server room happily using 6GB of RAM...
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~layte/pics/hi2u6GB.png
...and 3 1/2 years after Windows, in case you're counting. (Feb 2000 for 8 GiB support, Sep 2000 for 32 GiB support)
And yes, people would run Windows Server on a workstation for the memory addressability.
Out of curiousity, I checked a quote that I received at about the time of the 10.2.7 release - a single 2 GiB ECC DIMM (PC133) was $2800.
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