Carbonized software

[tech4all]

I was at a Micro Center and was talking to an employee about RAM. He got to saying something about Carbonized software. Something to the effect that OS X only allows this type of software to see 99MB of RAM even though you may have upwards of 1GB ram. I asked if this was PC and Mac and he said it was just a Mac thing. He also said that he didn't know for sure if it was true or not, he said he saw it on a forum (maybe here? )

So if this is true with some apps, why bother having all these GBs of RAM if some apps only see less than 100MB no matter what? Again, I'm not an expert on this and I'm sure if carbonized was even the term he used.

 

[robbieduncan]

Not true! Carbonized apps are native OSX apps written in C++ using the Carbon API. Carbon is as sub-set of the OS9 APIs which allows apps to run on OS9 and OSX. I believe that, for example, PhotoShop is Carbon and it can use up to 2Gb of RAM!

 

[MacsRgr8]

Maybe he was confused.

Many Carbon apps today are "carbonized Mac OS 9 apps" which in the Mac OS 9 days could only (pfff..... hear me: "only" ) use 999 MB (not 99) of RAM max. You could do that in the "Get Info..." window of a Mac OS 9 app.

AFAIK most big non-Apple (M$, Adobe etc.) apps which were available for Mac OS 9 before, are Carbon nowadays. And you bet they can use way more than 999 MB (let alone 99 MB) of physical RAM.