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

It should be opt out instead of forced out so if you don't opt out to switch to 64-bit binaries only then everything should continue to work the way they have been. No other mainstream OS has this restriction such as Windows, Linux, Android, etc. so it sounds like greed and/or laziness.
 
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zorinlynx said:
Anyone else find it annoying how quickly Apple obsoletes older software on their platforms?

Even annoying-as-hell Windows can often run 20 year old binaries. TWO DECADES ago.

Right now the oldest binaries MacOS can run are from the PowerPC -> Intel switch era, circa 2006. Whatever macOS comes after High Sierra will probably obsolete 32 bit x86 binaries, which will pull the date even more forward.

They don't seem to care about preserving the functionality of legacy software. Some apps will never be updated because the developers no longer care about it, went out of business, etc... This software is lost to time. This is even MORE the case on iOS where you can't even GET the software anymore. At least on macOS you can keep archives of old apps around.
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Actually I am glad Apple does this. Windows is a mess because it has so much cruft trying to be backwards compatible with applications compiled during the Reagan Era. I prefer to run legacy in a sandboxed VM and keep things moving forward and not shackled to backwards compatibility.
 
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Jetson said:
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:

  1. Whenever I launch an iOS 32-bit app I get presented with the message "Such and such app needs to be updated. This app will not work with future versions of iOS. The developer needs to update it to improve its compatibility". I wonder if Apple is contacting the developers?
  2. Many of my favorite legacy apps may disappear forever, especially cherished games such as: Tetris, Missile Command, Wolfenstein, wonderful pinball games Cyrstal Caliburn II and Tristan by Littlewing, Chess Quest, and many others, etc.
  3. The "reasons" many of the so-called experts here give for not supporting 32-bit apps seem to be made up reasons: takes up too much space, it will slow down the device, we need a modern architecture, it's too much work for Apple to make sure every app works with new iOS updates, get with the program, etc. It is all nonsense - excuses and guesses with no facts whatsoever to back up any of them.
  4. I'm on a fixed income. So the choice presented to me is to retire my current iOS devices frozen in time with iOS 10 or upgrade the iOS and lose some of the reasons I enjoy using my iPad.
I am hoping that all of the developers will make the updates before iOS 11 is released - that would be ideal! But some of these developers aren't around anymore. In that case it will be a sad loss.

And why? Apple could easily work around this. After all, Apple is a $trillion company and can afford it. We customers are what made Apple so wealthy, and many of us old timers stuck with Apple when it was just about to go belly up. How about showing a little more loyalty towards us?
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Sorry. I ceased caring, lost respect, and stopped reading at "Apple fanboys." That's right up there with emojis, watchbands, dongles, and Tim Cook must be fired.
 
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konqerror said:
Memory, storage, bandwidth, quality control resources. Windows is the perfect example, the 32 bit Win 10 cumulative updates are half the size as the 64 bit versions, a difference of about 300 MB each month.
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Windoze broke 16-bit app compatibility fairly recently. Breaking 32-bit compatibility is not even on the horizon for them.

Memory? 32-bit apps use less. Storage? 32-bit apps use less. Bandwidth? Same. Your ONLY valid case is QC, and that's almost trivial compared to the resources needed to intentionally break compatibility. We're not talking about the problems that existed back when the transition to 32-bit clean apps happened, there were very valid reasons why it was hard to maintain compatibility with apps that used 24-bit addressing back in those days. Now? We sandbox everything anyway, because security is taken a bit more seriously, it has to be.

If you're Apple, you could even spin up a 32-bit virtual environment that would look to an app like it was running on 10.4, with so little extra resource utilization that you'd never notice on a modern machine. Take a look at some of what's going on with Docker, apps can be containerized so that they get the environment they expect, and you can run a fully modern OS.
 
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Apple has become a quite expensive ride.

The iPhone 5, released on September 21, 2012, illustrates this well. According to Wikipedia it was developed under the guidance of Tim Cook, and the last iPhone overseen by Steve Jobs. With the release of iOS 11 in January 2018 it will also be obsolete, as no longer supported.

While many customers seem to take it for granted that they will be upgrading iPhones on a regular basis, perhaps some misgivings now that the price tag has reached and exceeded $1,000. Elsewhere in Apple's realm where even a mid-range laptop can cost well over $2,000, there are those who expect them to last awhile.

They should. The hardware is generally well-crafted, even if discrepancies such as ill-conceived gpu's which suffer untimely failures exist. One pays a premium for such equipment not only with the expectation of premium ease of use, etc., but as well overall quality which should last.

Yet is becoming increasingly apparent that Apple's latest OS of an operating strategy is planned obsolescence. Not just with software which may be abandoned—despite the sizeable monetary investment, as well time, many may have in it—but as well in all this beautiful hardware which could often continue to function well for decades, but by design is now often made obsolete by Apple in about five years, and something they will not even touch or repair in about seven.

That is the reality faced (if otherwise ignored) when one purchases their first or ongoing new toy (or actual business computer) from Apple. If anything made worse due their growing propensity to release software and hardware which isn't even as capable or well thought out as that which preceded it.

Thus one can be stuck in the position of holding onto older hardware and/or software simply because it does the job better than anything now on offer, hoping but knowing that it is only a question of time before something (even if minor and otherwise easily fixed) just gives out.

Then, if electing to remain within the Apple ecosystem in purchasing new equipment (of hopefully some merit), knowing all that money has only bought a limited amount of time. The clock is already counting down . . . and if this trend continue Apple's share price only increase.

One needn't be only a luddite to see something wrong with this. Obviously Apple's products have come a long way since the inception of the company; there is an inherent cost to innovation and progress. But when otherwise happy customers suddenly find themselves with relatively new products but out in the cold due decisions Apple could and arguably should not have made—then something stinks in Denmark (er, Cupertino.)
 
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C DM said:
They could also still include CD and floppy drives too.
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weup togo said:
Your post would be credible if you deleted this bullet point. You're 100% wrong across the board.
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Just SAYING that I'm wrong doesn't make it so.
[doublepost=1496803982][/doublepost]
citysnaps said:
Sorry. I ceased caring, lost respect, and stopped reading at "Apple fanboys." That's right up there with emojis, watchbands, dongles, and Tim Cook must be fired.
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Yet you cared enough to post a smart aleck response. LOL
 
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Victor Mortimer said:
Why?

Why would they go out of their way to break backwards compatibility AGAIN?

I'm still running a 10.6 VM so I can use some PowerPC apps that will never be upgraded.

I'm still running SheepShaver so I can use Classic apps that will never be upgraded.

Apple could have taken steps to avoid both of those problems.

And now they're going to deliberately break 32-bit apps? This is really inexcusable.

You want to know why I need more than 16GB RAM in a laptop? This sort of thing is a BIG part of why.
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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...
 
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Jetson said:
Just SAYING that I'm wrong doesn't make it so.
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Respectfully, you're technologically ignorant on this point.

weup togo said:
Apple's engineering reason for dropping 32-bit app support is that it will free them from having to continue to ship fat binaries for every framework 32-bit apps link against and many subsystems 32-bit apps communicate with.

There are improvements and optimizations that can only occur in those frameworks and subsystems once they are x86_64-only. There are also the freebie benefits like lowering resident memory and freeing up disk space.

There are still a huge number of users on Microsoft Office 2008, because everybody bought it to be Intel compatible and didn't see a good reason to "upgrade" to newer versions, which sacrificed functionality in some areas.

Another ugly part of the problem is that for years after 64-bit came around, even developers who shipped fat binaries for their main apps frequently continued shipping 32-bit auxiliary bits like Spotlight importers, small faceless helper tools, and so forth. The failure modes for these lingering auxiliary pieces won't be nearly as clean as an "This app isn't compatible" dialog.

It's going to be a painful transition for long-time Mac users. But Apple knows there really aren't many of those left relative to today's user base. They also know exactly how many 32-bit binaries are in use on users' systems today. The breakage will be a calculated trade-off at user expense for a handful of engineers' gain. Lots of teams have been demanding this for many years.

Oh, and it's another checklist item on the road to the ARM transition.
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groovyd said:
not lazy and reckless, just they don't care what people who still care about 32-bit apps thinks and that is pretty clear. as a software developer who has been in their position of having to support tons of archaic code only a few people ever use (people who usually don't buy anything anyway) i think it is a smart move by apple to be honest. technology is all about change and this is apples way of saying it is time for those who disagree to move on.
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I think Apple will be surprise by how many people depend on 32-bit programs on the Mac.
 
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C DM said:
They could also still include CD and floppy drives too.
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Damn near every new Mac I install has an optical drive. Yeah, it's external, but there it is, sitting on the desk plugged into the iMac, mini, or Pro, or in the bag with the MBP. And the user complains that it's not in the machine. The floppy was done about 10 years ago, not in 1998 when Apple left it out of the iMac. I sold hundreds of external floppy drives when Apple left them out too soon. The optical drive has another 5-10 years left, it's not obsolete yet, no matter how much Apple management wants it to be.
 
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napabar said:
Wow, you literally have no idea how technology works, especially if you think Macs should still run pre OS X apps.

Phasing out old architecture makes the OS run smoother. Look what a convoluted mess Windows is by comparison.
[doublepost=1496798391][/doublepost]A pure 64-bit OS executing no 32-bit code. Now that's an OS I want.

Welcome to the 21st century.
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People around here need to realize that they should be using Windows if they care about backwards compatibility. Apple will never stop deprecating things they think are detrimental to their platforms.
 
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Let's compare Microsoft's approach to ARM platform which is to prioritize running 32-bit binaries on 64-bit Windows since most software have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions but more importantly legacy software, especially irreplaceable ones, are 32-bit only.

 
idunn said:
Apple has become a quite expensive ride.

The iPhone 5, released on September 21, 2012, illustrates this well. According to Wikipedia it was developed under the guidance of Tim Cook, and the last iPhone overseen by Steve Jobs. With the release of iOS 11 in January 2018 it will also be obsolete, as no longer supported.
Click to expand...

They stole my iPhone 5 too. This iPhone is the benchmark to me and the other simply don't match up to how good the iPhone 5 is. It doesn't even have the battery problems of the iPhone 6 derivatives nor is it dingled by the dongleness of the iPhone 7.

People say "Well, upgrade to a new iPhone." but they're all pretty crap, IMO.
 
mi7chy said:
Let's compare Microsoft's approach which is to prioritize running 32-bit binaries on 64-bit Windows since most software have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions but more importantly legacy software are usually 32-bit.

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Seriously people, listen to what this guy is saying. If you care about backwards compatibility, Windows is the place to be.
 
janil said:
I see how it reduces the amount of QA work they have to do.
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You'd think that this wouldn't be a problem for the richest company in the world!
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Tubamajuba said:
People around here need to realize that they should be using Windows if they care about backwards compatibility. Apple will never stop deprecating things they think are detrimental to their platforms.
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I don't really understand this argument. Why is Windows brought into an Apple OS discussion?
 
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People, you have a choice. You've had this choice since DAY 1...

Windows:

Pros - Backward compatibility, works with almost everything ever made. A system that lasts for pretty much forever.

Cons - Bugs and security holes, slow progress forward due to being strapped to the past, clunky UI to accommodate everyone and their grandma.

Mac:

Pros - A seamless experience from the hardware to the software. Easy controls, smooth UI, limited amount of baggage code (security holes, etc).

Cons - Very little backward compatibility, works with pretty much Apple-only stuff, third party software needs to stay current. Can be expensive and some features get left behind.

It's been this way since the original Macintosh in 1984.

Often times we don't realize until a few years later why Apple did what they did. There could be a technological reason for some future feature or idea that we aren't aware of just yet.
 
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weup togo said:
Oh, and it's another checklist item on the road to the ARM transition.
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If that happens, it may be the last straw for me.

And yeah, I'm small potatoes, I'm probably only good for pushing a million or so in new Mac and iPhone sales every year. But I'm not the only tech who does this, and I'm not the only one who has to make things work after Apple breaks something else.

i86 made my life much easier. I could convince somebody to switch to Mac, with the assurance that their old Windoze apps would run on the new hardware via the magic of virtualization. An ARM switch would kill that easy virtualization option, and as we rapidly approach the end of Moore's Law, emulation isn't going to cut it.
 
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