Apple starting to alert users that it will end 32-bit app support on the Mac

Could somebody point me to a technical explanation of why it&#x27;s sometimes non trivial to just compile your app against x86-64 and call it a day?<p>For example, something I encounter every day is Visual Studio and it&#x27;s helper processes being 32 bit. Because Visual Studio regularly, even on the latest 15.7 preview shits the bed with OutOfMemoryExceptions on our large solution, I&#x27;m inclined to rage &quot;why don&#x27;t they just make it 64 bit? If it could just load more into memory it could get past this indexing hurdle and give me back the UI&quot;. But I also understand that if it was that simple they would have done it by now.<p>Something else, that I understand more, is the LabVIEW RT and FPGA modules only working on 32 bit LabVIEW. I would assume it&#x27;s related to the compiling and deploying to the 32 bit ARM&#x2F;x86 RT target.

This is particularly heinous for those of us that do music production. A lot of plugins are orphaned at some point (meaning the developers no longer update them), and if you created a piece of music with those plugins (instruments, effects), if you can&#x27;t load those plugins, you can&#x27;t open old files.<p>I often open up sketches from several years prior and consider working more on them. I keep a full 32-bit stack of music stuff left installed exactly for that reason. Usually, if I open them up, then I&#x27;ll go ahead and move them over to 64-bit semi-equivalents, but that&#x27;s difficult if you can&#x27;t even hear what you were doing with the old one.

A lot of apps never made the switch on ios. I have some useful ones that were orphaned. I feel like only the mac original intel chips were core2 32bit one, and those long lost os support.<p>Its weird that dos (box) and old windows programs are often still runable, but somehow mac applications just don&#x27;t age nearly as well.<p>I really think if some linux distros can get it together and get some good application support, now is the time for them on the desktop&#x2F;laptop.<p>going to Apple-Menu-&gt;about this mac-&gt;system report -&gt;software applications<p>will show a list of applications with the right most column indicating 64 bit support. 95ish % of mine are currently 64 bit

I suppose dropping x86 support makes for one less architecture for Rosetta II to support.

Can&#x27;t imagine why this push is necessary. One of the primary advantages of x86_64 as opposed to other 64-bit architectures is that normal 32-bit applications run natively with no performance hits. As others notice, this is likely going to serve no other purpose than to make abandoned 32-bit applications completely unusable.<p>Of course, it could also be related to Apple&#x27;s intention to switch to ARM chips in the near future, and getting everything on consistent 64-bit to aid the porting effort. I can&#x27;t imagine the developers are going to enjoy low-level mapping of 64-bit x86 instructions to 64-bit ARM though...

I recently lost a bunch of iOS apps, some 8 years old, due to the ABI cutoff.<p>I don&#x27;t have the ecosystem tie-in that I used to have. What good is owning a bunch of apps if you can&#x27;t use them?

Does it mean macOS users won&#x27;t be able to play 32-bit games in Wine anymore?

There goes Ambrosia&#x27;s back catalogue.

Well at least this time they alert. Support for Universal binaries was dropped silently.

This will be what finally moves me away from Adobe software.<p>I use one Adobe app: Illustrator CS5. My needs are fairly specialist and I haven&#x27;t needed any new features introduced since CS4 (2008; multiple artboards, finally).<p>Adobe&#x27;s only upgrade option is £240pa for a single-app subscription. Fortunately, alternative drawing programs have come on a long way since CS5, so I&#x27;ll almost certainly jump ship to one of those.

It seems like only yesterday Macs were 24-bit and we were all busy getting “32-bit clean”

For the past few years, Apple have been doing everything they possibly can to get creative professionals to leave their platform.

So Apple is dropping 32 bit computing? Hmm ....<p>Gee, I&#x27;m building, configuring a server based on an Asus motherboard and the AMD FX-8350 processor, 8 cores, 64 bit addressing.<p>Surprise! I discovered that Windows XP 32 bit Professional SP2 (service pack 2) will install and run! It sees all 8 cores, and the version of Microsoft&#x27;s TASKMGR plots the activity separately on each of all 8 cores. It also sees the full 16 GB of main memory and is willing to use 2 GB of it with 5 GB of paging space.<p>And I discovered that the Western Digital (WD) Data Lifeguard Tools CD, IIRC version 11.1, boots and runs! This is amazing since what boots is old DOS! The DOS part will boot from a CD&#x2F;DVD USB (universal serial bus) drive, but then the WD software doesn&#x27;t run. But if boot from a SATA (serial advanced technology attachment) CD&#x2F;DVD drive, then the WD software does run.<p>If have the Windows version running and put the WD CD in the SATA drive, then the WD software appears to run as a Windows application!<p>My most important application is 32 bit editor KEdit, and I&#x27;ve discovered that it runs fine on Windows 10 64 bit Home Edition on an HP laptop with a 64 bit Intel processor with two cores and 4 threads.<p>So, lesson: With Windows, AMD, Intel, and ASUS, a lot of 32 bit computing still works! Sorry Apple!<p>My first intention installing Windows XP was just to run some experiments on using the WD Tools to backup and restore a bootable partition, but I&#x27;ve since discovered that apparently my trusty old copy of Nero for CD&#x2F;DVD reading&#x2F;writing that I long used on XP appears to install on Windows 10 on the HP laptop but as far as I can tell won&#x27;t read or write CDs or DVDs. So, for routine reading&#x2F;writing CDs and DVDs, apparently I should keep a bootable partition with XP.<p>Sorry, Apple, 32 bit computing won&#x27;t go away soon: The reason is standard and old in computing -- there is a lot of old software people very much still want to run.

I&#x27;m not installing a version of macOS that can&#x27;t run QuickTime 7.

I haven&#x27;t checked what version Visual Studio (not Code) is on the Mac, but good heavens it might be the only 64-bit Visual Studio nowadays :)

What is the point of an OS if not to run the software the user has purchased? I don&#x27;t care, and more importantly don&#x27;t want to care at all about the OS beyond it being a launcher for software that allows me to make money. Such a bizzare approach from Apple to reducing the user to an open wallet willing to repurchase software that already works. Also with Apple forcing the user on the rolling release treadmill, its rather annoying that one can&#x27;t simply stay on a stable version.

I&#x27;ve got an old core duo (32 bit) iMac which is still working fine despite the old age (I think it&#x27;s a late 2009). My small brother use it to navigate the web.<p>The sad thing is that it became useless with OSX. Safari couldn&#x27;t be updated nor any browser, thus leading to the inability to browse the web because of https certificates compatibility.<p>I had to install (with a lot of tricks) linux and it works flawlessy.<p>It&#x27;s sad to see that a working computer has become obsolete in only 10 years, and while I will probably continue use Apple products I feel like there something _wrong_ with this. That&#x27;s one of the reason I am worried about buying an apple watch. Obsolescence.<p>All in all I get it and I know that it&#x27;ll probably pay off for them, just like it did with the dvd player removed, but it&#x27;ll take time (for me) to get used to the fact that, at least on the apple ecosystems, things last more than usual, but they also become useless more than usual.