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Os X 10.5.4 - 64 Bit?
- Thread starter tmelvin
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No, Snow Leopard will still be both. The thing is that all but two (Xcode, Chess) of the included apps on Leopard are 32 bit only.
Snow Leopard supports all Intel CPUs, and Apple used 32-bit processors for quite a while after the transition started.
Safari is definitely 32 bit since it supports Flash. Adobe will probably not have 64 bit support until 2015 or so.
Why would it matter? If the OS supports both 32bit and 64bit, then it's all good. Whichever application really needs 64bit it can already benefit from it, but those parts which don't benefit from it don't waste memory for nothing.
It's a very different story than the 16/32bit transition. Currently, 32 bits is more than enough for "almost everything"; those who benefit from 64 bits know that they do.
I would be more interested in whichever way applications are coded; I mean, are they still the classic carbon code or modern cocoa. This is a far more important transition than 32 to 64 bits which is mostly marketing nonsense.
It's a very different story than the 16/32bit transition. Currently, 32 bits is more than enough for "almost everything"; those who benefit from 64 bits know that they do.
I would be more interested in whichever way applications are coded; I mean, are they still the classic carbon code or modern cocoa. This is a far more important transition than 32 to 64 bits which is mostly marketing nonsense.
Odd thing -- I've checked Xcode, and it contains a 64bit copy inside, however when I launch it, Activity Monitor reports that a 32 bit application ("intel" as opposed to "intel (64 bit)") is running. Any idea why?
Well, since my MBP is fairly recent (bought March '08) and it runs other 64bit applications (some commercial, others self-compiled), there should be no problem in that aspect.
My understanding is that Xcode ran into some issues in 64 bit, so they switched it back to 32 bit only for the time being.
Apache 2 is also 64 bit on OS X, but that's the only program from the OS distribution that's showing as 64 bit on Activity Monitor at the moment
