Apple to Phase Out 32-Bit Mac Apps Starting in January 2018

[Shirasaki]

No wonder there will be huge backlash.
Heck, I don’t have any plan to upgrade to newer version of Sierra because of disastrous new version of iTunes thank breaks feature out of nowhere. Let alone all 32bit apps and those little changes I have made to system here and there. iOS 11 is ok though.

 

[BornAgainMac]

I want my Fart app to be 64-bit!

 

[lostczech]

I've dug around System Information to see what stuff I have that's 32 bit...

Most of Adobe's behind-the-scenes apps are 32 bit (AAM Registration, Air, Flash installer, Creative cloud stuff).
My printer's (Brother) configuration utility "Control center"
As others have noted, Apple's own DVD player
MICROSOFT OFFICE (I am NOT buying a new version of Office for the rare occasion I open a word/excel file)
TextWrangler (This really stinks, as the developer has halted work on it)

So not as bad as I feared, but Office/TextWrangler could be rather expensive to upgrade/replace

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Testing. Each time a new version of macOS is developed, they have to test both sets of libraries. Gets old after awhile...

There's a test suite to ensure everything works. As the x32 parts aren't being updated anymore, it's really just a matter of making sure that they didn't break anything during dev.
[doublepost=1496850511][/doublepost]

I've dug around System Information to see what stuff I have that's 32 bit...

Most of Adobe's behind-the-scenes apps are 32 bit (AAM Registration, Air, Flash installer, Creative cloud stuff).
My printer's (Brother) configuration utility "Control center"
As others have noted, Apple's own DVD player
MICROSOFT OFFICE (I am NOT buying a new version of Office for the rare occasion I open a word/excel file)
TextWrangler (This really stinks, as the developer has halted work on it)

So not as bad as I feared, but Office/TextWrangler could be rather expensive to upgrade/replace

VisualStudio Code is a great free alternative to TextWrangler.

 

[KPOM]

Can a VM like VMWare run 32-bit guest programs on a 64-bit host? They aren't emulating CPU architecture. I don't know much about VMs but have been told they're pretty close to native nowadays.

You can use SheepShaver, a full-on emulator, for running old Mac OS versions (like Mac OS 9)

Yes. The virtual machine mimics a set of compatible hardware for the guest OS. You take a performance hit because you are running an OS within an app running on another OS, but depending on the task and the speed of your Mac it may not be that noticeable.

 

[milo]

#fragmentation

 

[Booch21]

I see this situation as similar to when I moved from Windows to Mac initially. I had a number of programs that I used under Windows that I thought I couldn't function without. I ended up putting Parallels on the machine, for transfer purposes and for keeping those must have programs. It didn't take long to find alternatives and newer programs to suit my needs, and believe me, I had working creations that will only run/compile/edit under the original program and cannot be imported into newer programs. I get that some people want to continue to use the older stuff for whatever reasons, but I am not losing sleep over not being able to run a program from 15 years ago. I've adapted as the software companies have forced me to and I can still function and be creative.

 

[lostczech]

There's a test suite to ensure everything works. As the x32 parts aren't being updated anymore, it's really just a matter of making sure that they didn't break anything during dev.
[doublepost=1496850511][/doublepost]
VisualStudio Code is a great free alternative to TextWrangler.

Playing with it now. Thanks for the tip! I think I like the file comparison better already! (Which is what I use TextWrangler for most)

 

[york2600]

As a developer I can't imagine how much baggage Apple is carrying around still supporting 32 apps. That's a TON of 32bit libs that have to be maintained, QA'd and shipped with every OS release. They're going to drop a bunch of dead wait nuking 32bit support finally. Everyone here keeps complaining about stability and Apple's pace of updates. It's this sort of compatibility that leads to their pace. It's time. Kill 32bit.

 

[Jetson]

Hate or love it,capitalism demands us to keep buying new, the only way to force people is with moves like this

I read an investment article this morning where the author was complaining that consumers lack of spending threatens capitalism today:

http://www.investopedia.com/news/co...topedia.com&utm_term=9788480&utm_medium=email

Designed obsolescence, forcing customers to purchase a new device, is not an acceptable strategy in my opinion.

One aggregious example is the practice of Epson bricking their printers after a certain number of sheets have been processed. I find it to be absolutely abhorrent for a perfectly good machine to stop working because the manufacturer decided for me that it's time to spend $hundreds to buy a new one. Ohmigosh, how greedy and rude can you get?!

I don't claim that this is what Apple is doing, but it does have that same effect. You suggest that I spend close to $1,000 to replace my iPad and leave my perfectly good iPad frozen in time so it can still run the 32-bit apps.

Apple may have a valid reason for doing this, but I haven't seen them explain it. If anyone has an article from Apple explaining this I'd appreciate a link.

 

[dogslobber]

As a developer I can't imagine how much baggage Apple is carrying around still supporting 32 apps. That's a TON of 32bit libs that have to be maintained, QA'd and shipped with every OS release. They're going to drop a bunch of dead wait nuking 32bit support finally. Everyone here keeps complaining about stability and Apple's pace of updates. It's this sort of compatibility that leads to their pace. It's time. Kill 32bit.

32-bit libs compile from the same code base as the 64-bit builds. There is nothing to maintain. Unit tests (you wrote these right, Apple?!?) will take care of validating the builds for regressions. Apple is the biggest company in the world so QA is a weak excuse.

Apple is lazy to drop 32-bit support. No amount of excuses or attempts to reason it stands up to scrutiny.
[doublepost=1496853498][/doublepost]

So not as bad as I feared, but Office/TextWrangler could be rather expensive to upgrade/replace

More importantly, Cisco VPN is 32-bit.

 

[sudo1996]

To give you some examples: Steam and GOG Galaxy are 32-bit only. Many current games are still 32-bit only. I just do not accept this anymore. I suspect on Windows it is much worse.

Well, it's not Apple's choice here. Windows dominates the gaming market.
[doublepost=1496853697][/doublepost]

It's not an "either, or" situation. You can still have huge amounts of RAM; it's just that 32-bit applications won't be able to access all that RAM but your 64-bit applications can still access it just dandy.

If you're referring to the 4GiB thing, that's just the number of addresses. 32-bit programs can access more than 4GiB and usually more than most people have, depending on what features are available in the OS, but it's not pretty. And a 32-bit OS itself supports more than 4GiB of RAM using PAE.

 

[ActionableMango]

It is amazing that so many Apple fanboys come out in droves to shout down anyone who expresses dissatisfaction with something Apple is doing.

At risk of being called "an idiot" or "a troll" for expressing my view, here are a few problems that I have with this conversion to 64-bit only iOS:

This article and everyone in this thread is talking about the MacOS 64-bit transition, not the iOS 64-bit transition. Perhaps you meant to post here instead:
32-Bit Apps No Longer Supported in iOS 11

 

[sudo1996]

Yes it's annoying, but it is one of the reasons I love macOS. If you want endless backwards compatibility, get Windows. If you want a lean OS with no legacy baggage, get macOS.

I agree with the principle, but macOS isn't lean in terms of performance. It's slow and has been that way since Lion. Windows is definitely snappier in my experience, but it's also a total mess.

 

[UL2RA]

It's slow and has been that way since Lion.

I don't share that experience at all.

 

[JR9989]

Why are you upgrading if you have such a strong need for vintage software? Shouldn't you also be using a vintage OS?

This is like bitching that your VHS player doesn't work on your new HDMI only TV. Don't upgrade if you don't want legacy support to break...

Actually, the VHS argument on a HDMI only TV doesn’t work because you can still just buy an AV to HDMI converter and it just works fine like it would have done in the past. The same goes for CDs and Floppy disk, you can buy USB versions of these drives and even in Sierra they still function like normal. I’m not saying that ever TV owner still needs built in support for a VHS player, or every computer owner needs built in CD drives or floppy drives but options still exist for the small number of users that do. If been using macs since 1999, and the classic phase out didn’t bug me that much, and even the drop of Rosetta support only bothered me a little bit. However, all Mac OS apps have not gone 64bit yet. Even in Snow Leopard (which was the lastest OS until 2011) there were supported Macs that didn’t have 64bit processors so it’s not like some of this software is 10 years old like a lot people on this forum are saying. I use some apps that were last updated in 2013 and are just 32bit only because the developer wanted to support those macs that didn’t support 64bit on Snow Leopard. Using 4 year old software really isn’t that unreasonable. Yes, I do not think that OSes should support legacy software for more than 20 years however even with the few hiccups that Windows 10 due to some legacy stuff it still runs great. I’ve had much more issues with Sierra than I have had with Windows 10 in the past year, even with Windows still running “that OS slowing horrible legacy stuff”. I really do not like the direction Apple has gone in the last 3 years and that is very sad because they used to be my favourite computer company. This is nothing more than planned obsecense, both iOS and macOS can still run perfectly fine with 32bit app support, and even without those libraries you probably really save much if any space.

 

[Tubamajuba]

3) If a company is at the high level of Google, Microsoft, Sun, Apple and the like then they must continue to offer legacy support for a minimum of 50 years in addition to #1 and #2 above.

This would literally be the end of technological innovation. We'd never see a new OS or even new functionality in existing operating systems, because every single thing added or changed would need to be supported for an eternity. If this applies to hardware, we'd never see new hardware either for the exact same reason.

Well, I partially take that back. We'd get some minor updates every 50 years or so.

 

[EdT]

Just a quick search on my phone, but the earliest announcement about 32 bit apps becoming non-supported that I found was from June of 2015. It hasn't been a deep dark secret. There may have been earlier warnings from Apple that they intended to go to only 64 bit systems.

I am not a PC programmer, but I do program PLC's and other industrial automation controllers, and keeping new code and hardware backward compatible is a huge PITA.

 

[groovyd]

From who? The developer abandoned the app, so your $1.00 investment just ran out of juice.
[doublepost=1496812867][/doublepost]

Thanks for the laughs, I guess you have no clue about Windows transition from 16-bit to 32-bit to 64-bit, and how much of a pain that was and still is.
In reallity, the only reason why a user may need to worry about a transition of this kind, is when the developers abandon their product, so it doesn't get updated to stay current with the evolution of the OS.

you're right, i have no clue anything about windows and why it sucked and still does. that's why i use a mac instead
[doublepost=1496857857][/doublepost]

Hahahaha!

If you want to see how NOT to do a 32 to 64 bit transition, look no farther than Windows!

my 'they' was referring to apple not the people switching to windows.

 

[InuNacho]

IT and developers live in a magic land where regular people with software they've used for years don't exist.

 

[cppguy]

You want to know why I need more than 16GB RAM in a laptop? This sort of thing is a BIG part of why.

It's the opposite. Once 32-bit executables can be removed, apps will become SMALLER, not bigger. Currently we have to support both 32-bit and 64-bit at the same time, which automatically doubles the size of every app, and the operating system's size is tripled. I'm not familiar with the macOS internals, but on Windows not only the whole system is duplicated, but there are all sorts of bridges between 64-bit and 32-bit.

It may be a controversial decision to break 32-bit, but it's not going to make your system larger, it'll be more streamlined. 64-bit apps are significantly faster and more optimal. There are many times more registers, and a significantly better instruction set. 32-bit apps basically use technology developed in 1994, and hasn't changed since. It's severely limited.

 

[EdT]

It's about time, I've had 64bit processors in my main computer since about 2003. All macs I've owned have been 64bit. There cant be that much software that is 32bit only and even if it there is a VM should be sufficient for the small number of users who need something legacy, they shouldn't hold the rest back.

I don't know of IOS apps that are extremely expensive, most are a couple of bucks and an extreme few are $15-20, but j have friends who have Adobe Photoshop from before it was a subscription service, and I know that they spent thousands of dollars on that program for their Mac computers, and they can /won't update because they don't want the subscription service and they can't buy a 64 bit version of what they have. I suspect that they won't be upgrading their computer until they find another program. Price will drive if that means buying a Win10 machine.

 

[Darryl.Jenks]

Such a useful comment.

Aw man - don't tell me I failed to inspire you! Please, by all means: be useful.

 

[MrChurchyard]

Only if "make a large number of key productivity programs no longer available" is "a great move for platform health".

A Carbon app can share code with non-Mac apps much more easily. Converting a working complex Carbon App to a Cocoa App is almost "Let's write the whole thing from scratch" - leading to the question "Is it worth it" and a number of publishers choosing "no".

You all talk like Mac is the dominant platform, that any developer wanting to stay in business must dance to Apple's tune. It isn't and they don't. And if the programs aren't there, the users won't be either.

This is a move very similar to Apple’s refusal to finish development of 64-bit Carbon (which was a bit of a **** move considering it had been announced the year prior). End result was that all flagship apps like Adobe’s apps or Office begrudgingly updated to use Cocoa, and I consider that a very beneficial move in retrospect for the health of the Mac platform. Adding new APIs only to 64bit Cocoa is a carrot that already moved a lot, support cut-off for 32-bit apps will be a stick. A bunch of those who haven’t converted to 64bit Cocoa yet will do so, some won’t.

Granted, I am biased as all the apps I use for productivity are 64bit already and only a handful aren’t (Dropbox’s daemon, RescueTime, Scrivener, some Line6 USB audio interface stuff).

There are some decisions by Apple that are questionable regarding long-term platform health (the state of the Mac App Store and sandbox restrictions)—this is not one of them, imho.

 

[GadgetDon]

That's the wrong question. Why should the spend the time and effort to look after 32bit libraries for a few old applications? Why should they not take the chance to free some space and get rid of the past?

To make their customers happy so they stay with Apple and don't switch to Windows? (And it's not "a few old applications" - many applications TODAY are being built with the Carbon libraries which can only be 32-bit and converting to Cocoa would be a massive change - so also "To keep your developers making software for the Mac which means your customers can get the software they need and don't switch over to Windows")