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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Re: Panther IS 32bit (and 64 bit)
by Anonymous on Fri 11th Jul 2003 16:23 UTC

"I see Mac users on the forum, settling down, and encouraging each other by saying that thye "don't need 64bit". And that is fair. The question is why buy an expensive 64bit Computer to run 32bit MacOSX and apps?"

Because this computer is significantly faster, and Apple's power user base will definately make use of the speed


"I personally think that it is not worth it"

By that notion, you would suggest that they revert back to hardware which was slower. If this is the case you must be among those that believes that P4 users should revert to a slower pricessor....


"Apple is using the consumer to transition much later to a more powerful OS."

Huh? Apple has encouraged all their user to update to new operating systems as released. I don't follow your logic here.


"Apple flashes the hardware specs [high profile, keynote and all] but falls back to eye candy on the 32bit MacOSX."

No, Apple is showing that they have powerful hardware, a powerful OS AND an aesthetically pleasing user interface which will will use a 64 bit OS in Mac OS X.


"I think Apple figure its users are not that sharp"

Nothing they've done would suggest that.


"they meainly want eye candy"

Not at all. We want powerful hardware, a powerful OS AND an aesthetically pleasing user interface which will will use a 64 bit OS in Mac OS X


"an Apple will always trade power and efficiency and performance for usability and eye candy.

Are you saying that because OS X incorporates a user interface that was initially slow that they swapped Aesthetics for performance? It's important to keep in mind that the origional OS X release was very new and that the UI would later be optomized... as it was. Now, with Quartz extreme (which ofsets UI rendering to the GPU) Apple can have the same aesthetically pleasing UI, have efficiency AND performance. No tradeoff required.


"Now, if you are a regular user, DON"T buy a G5"

A better way to phrase that, "if you are a user that doesn't need more speed, don;t buy any new computer... be it a pentium 4 or a G5.


, is hardware that you can't fully utilize with 32bit MacOSX, in other words, overpriced over kill.


"if you are a power use, then do what I am planing to do, to buy a G5 asnd put either Linux or AIX on it, I would love to buy a 64bit PPC box backed by IBM!"

If you plan on using an alternate OS, that's fine... but don;t give others reasons for not using OS X that aren't legit... that's irresponsible.