"One of the salient points repeated at the WWDC keynote was Leopard's support for '64 bits top to bottom'. However, a close peek at the slide shown this year showed a subtle difference to last year's - the word 'Carbon' was missing. Of course a storm of confusion soon ensued, with the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth from some quarters and polite shrugging from others. Apple stock fell and rose again, some developers professed bliss while others threatened to leave the platform, non-developers wrote learned analyses about obscure technical points, not to speak of reports of raining frogs or even an unconfirmed Elvis sighting in a Moscone restroom. Allow me to try to explain all (well, Elvis excepted)."
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Member since:2005-07-06
"In short, 64-bits is not some magical thing that makes everything faster. It can actually make some applications slower."
Yes, I understand that. But 64 bit was promised across the board...this isn't just a run of the mill feature cut, it fundamentally impacts a lot of software which needs to run on Mac.
I'm not a Mac developer (longtime Windows developer though); if Microsoft came out and said "Future versions of Win32 (the Windows equivalent to Carbon) will only be partially 64 bit" I'd be up in arms, and nothing short of "we just don't have time to implement it now, but will implement it in a future release" would appease Windows developers. I've already chimed in my .02 on other OSNews threads similar to this one so I won't rehash here. The reason it isn't such a big deal is that there just aren't that many companies who write for Mac to raise much of a fuss.
Member since:2005-11-16
"Yes, I understand that. But 64 bit was promised across the board...this isn't just a run of the mill feature cut, it fundamentally impacts a lot of software which needs to run on Mac. "
Wrong, wrong and wrong. Only a few softwares will need to run in 64 bits, both Carbon and Cocoa. How many times we will have to repeat again and again? A very few applications need to be 64 bits, if your applications needs this :
-It involves random access manipulation of “huge” data objects (at least 2 GB)
-It needs concurrent access to a quantity of data that will not fit in a 32-bit address space (multi-gigabyte data modeling, for example)
, then it is a good candidate for being 64 bits. And then the type of applications which fulfill those conditions are, according to Apple:
"data mining, web caches and search engines, CAD/CAE/CAM software, large-scale 3D rendering (like a movie studio might use, not a computer game...), scientific computing, large database systems (for custom caching), and specialized image and data processing systems."
This implies that all Carbon applications DO NO NEED to be 64 bits, or you are assuming that all Carbon apps are those of the types cited above. I really don't think so!!!!!
"I'm not a Mac developer (longtime Windows developer though); if Microsoft came out and said "Future versions of Win32 (the Windows equivalent to Carbon) will only be partially 64 bit" I'd be up in arms, and nothing short of "we just don't have time to implement it now, but will implement it in a future release" would appease Windows developers. I've already chimed in my .02 on other OSNews threads similar to this one so I won't rehash here. The reason it isn't such a big deal is that there just aren't that many companies who write for Mac to raise much of a fuss."
Read again this link, and read it carefully:
http://www.carbondev.com/site/?page=64-bit+Carbon
Is is clearly said that a full implementation of Carbon 64 bits has been done and it is running. Again, the reason of the drop of the 64 bits Carbon UI is not technical or that Apple did not have to implement it. Apple has DECIDED to drop it even though 64 bits CArbon UI is working, and i guaranty you that you could call the Carbon HIToolbox in 64 bits with the Leopard build prior to the WWDC build. IT WAS WORKING, APPLE DECIDED TO REMOVE THE HITOOLBOX FROM THE CARBON 64 BITS BECAUSE THEY WANT CARBON DEVELOPERS TO REALLY START TO MOVE TO COCOA.
And finally, concerning the fact that "here just aren't that many companies who write for Mac to raise much of a fuss" well given that you are not a mac developer, i guess you don't know what you are talking about........
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-11-10
"But 64 bit was promised across the board..."
No it was not. Apple are dropping many other legacy APIs for 64-bit too. There is no 64-Bit QuickDraw, use Quartz Extreme instead. Eventually all consumer computers will have 64-bit chips. Apple are using this eventual reality to drop a number of legacy parts of the OS to simplify things and get everybody working on the same page.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2005-07-15
This is gonna be a PR nightmare for Apple, and all of the big software houses who write apps for Apple will be pissed...and for good reason.
Read the linked article, specifically the quote from the (not at all angry) Adobe guy.
In short, 64-bits is not some magical thing that makes everything faster. It can actually make some applications slower.