Star Thoughts on Mac OS X 10.3: Counting the Bits of a Panther
Linked by Jeremy T. Fox on Fri 11th Jul 2003 16:55 UTC
Mac OS X A recent article by Tony Smith from The Register titled "Mac OS X 10.3 Panther will not be a 64-bit OS" caused a good deal of confusion with many people, including me. It is also caused a heated argument here on OSNews. The basic point of the article is that Mac OS 10.2.7 and 10.3 are not "true" 64-bit OSes, but the article does not clearly explain what a "true" 64-bit OS is. This had led to a lot of claims that the article is false or misinformed, rather than just unclear, which is certainly is.
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Follow-up Mathematica on the G5^
by Frank on Fri 11th Jul 2003 10:44 UTC

The PowerMac G5 they used for their presentation had 8GB RAM. Let's assume the OS still uses about 2GB of memory for shared libraries etc. What would remain if Panther DID allow applications to use 64bit pointers? About 6GB. And the Mathematica guy says 6GB.
I don't believe that Apple implemented 64bit versions of all their libraries, but nevertheless there seems to be a way for applications to use 64bit pointers.