“Microsoft is requiring… device manufacturers to develop 64-bit drivers if they want their devices to work with the 64-bit edition of Windows Vista, in an effort to ensure that device drivers are written to proper standards. But hardware vendors and application developers haven’t wanted to take the time and effort to develop new software for an operating system that very few people use. As a result, 64-bit Windows software is hard to find, although Microsoft says the situation is improving,” Tom Krazit and Ina Fried report for CNET News. “Apple, however, thinks it has found a quicker and easier road to bring its mainstream users into the 64-bit era.”
MacDailyNews Take: Thinks? Knows, is more like it – anyone can easily understand that Apple has done 64-bit right, while Microsoft has kludged it all up again as usual.
Krazit and Fried continue, “When Mac OS X Leopard comes around later this year, hardware makers will be able to use the 32-bit drivers they’ve already developed and qualified along with 64-bit applications built for Leopard.”
“In its simplest sense, 64-bit hardware allows a system to take advantage of more than 4GB of memory, the theoretical addressing limit of 32-bit systems. There are other performance advantages, but that’s the main one,” Krazit and Fried report.
“Microsoft released a 64-bit edition of Windows XP in 2005, but few people use it,” Krazit and Fried report. “Even the next version of Windows, scheduled for the end of the decade, will arrive in both 64-bit and 32-bit editions, suggesting that Microsoft isn’t prepared to fully commit to a 64-bit world this decade.”
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft – we say again, Microsoft – has scheduled the next version of WIndows for the end of the decade, so when will it actually ship? We’ll have put people on Mars before they cajole enough of their employees to stop staring out the windows, slap some more lipstick on their current pig, come up with some insipid name, and design a new box with which to rip-off their sufferers yet again (if they have any left). Seriously, from the looks of it, Microsoft spent more effort on — and put more thought into — the Vista ad campaign than they did on Vista itself.
Krazit and Fried continue, “But in October, Apple plans to ship only one version of Leopard that can run both 64-bit and 32-bit applications. Apple thinks this will entice Mac OS developers to create 64-bit applications because every Mac shipping after October–and Core 2 Duo systems that upgrade to Leopard–will be able to run 64-bit applications.”
Krazit and Fried report that Apple “will first emphasize 64-bit applications for its base of users in the graphic design world, who buy systems such as the Mac Pro workstation to run applications with large data sets, Croll said. That system can already be configured with up to 16GB of memory, and will probably serve as Apple’s test bed for 64-bit applications.”
More in the full article here.
Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard, due in October, will deliver 64-bit power in one, universal operating system. Find out more here.
We have a customer. The bring a book every month, that needs to be printed and put together in about 4 hours time. It’s 400 run of 16 signatures. Well they will not be getting their book today. Their Windows box just crashed and they are scrambling to get the data out of it. I told them last month to move to a Mac, they didn’t and this is what they got. I will be guessing that now they will give the Mac a second more serious look.
@DLMeyer
This is what you think TODAY. You don’t think iLife would benefit from 64 bit processing? I know for a fact that my G5, which has 8GB of RAM will probably be a bit more snappy once Leopard is out, simply because it can finally see all the RAM installed on it. My Photoshop & Illustrator work will probably see another boost too. Adobe has already announced that it will have updated patches for the CS3 once Leopard ships. So this 99% of Mac users you state dose not take in to account iLife, or Adobes CS3 suite, particularly iDVD and iMovie, which I would think are being used a bit more then by 1% of Mac users.
Apple has virtually thrown away previous Macintosh technologies to move forward. They’ve even thrown away the PowerPC and moved to Intel processors. Whole series of programs have had to be completely reprogrammed in order to go from classic to OS X, from PowerPC to Universal. Is it any wonder that we are more ready for 64 bit while our competitors are still working on it? We have virtually started from scratch several times.
“640 GB ought to be enough for anybody.” — Bill Gates, 2021.
@S1ck
The rumor is that the next iLife is 64 bit.
As I understand it, all Apple applications will be true 64 bit apps with Leopard. However, all apps will be not ready for 10.5.0, but the transition could be done when 10.5.x is ready.
“Are all these Universal Binary apps going to be Intel-specific or will the 64-bit goodness trickle down to the former kings of the 64-bit roost?”
It’s a switch (like the Intel/PowerPC switch) inside Xcode. So you can build 32/64 PowerPC as well as 32/64 Intel. Which is one reason developers need eight-core machines–they have to compile each file four times!
At least, that’s what I’m telling my employer…
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Who wants to hear about Lee’s Wang?
Transintl.com has a package that’ll allow 32GB of RAM in a Mac Pro instead of the previous max of 16GB.
Just sayin’ . . .
Microsoft DOES spend more on marketing than on coding, but both of these departments get less than the legal department.
There’s never anything wrong with a little humor along with my daily dose of Mac truth. Thanks Metryq and Roberto for causing me to LOL.
Mac-Nugget, as far as your customer goes, don’t even waste your time with “Told you so.” Just give ’em that look and in your best Charlton Heston/Moses voice, ask them “Have your days in the darkness made you see the light, Ramses?”
As Mac fans/users, we know the future is ours. There’s plenty of time for the unwashed masses to catch up.
So are they upgrading or doing away with the Mac mini then? I only ask because if all Macs sold after October will support 64bit, that means one of those things is going to happen, because the current mini is not 64 bit.
I have a Mac mini and 64 bit OS X is irrelevant since the machine can’t expand beyond 2 GB (Using two 1 GB dimms). Does anyone know if Mac mini can support 2 GB memory modules making the total available memory to be 4 GB?
Es ist zum kotzen!
Quad Fat Binaries (32/64/Intel/PowerPC), here we come! Thank god for
lipoI’m tired already of these comparisons.
Plain and simple: OS X is the SUPERIOR OS of the future. End of story.
For those thinking that 64-bit will make their computers faster … take a look at Activity Monitor and see which of their application is currently addressing more than 4GB of memory. Those which are will see a benefit. Report your results back here …
@Reality Check
You are aware that Photoshop dose allow you to specify a predetermined % of memory installed in your system? Right now 4 GB is the limit, in October it will be a deferent story.
@JustForTheHeckOfIt
It still is irrelevant, 4GB is still with in the limits of 32 bits. You would need more then 4GB for it to make any kind of difference.
That reminds me SO MUCH of this YouTube video, made by a disgruntled (to put it lightly) Mi¢ro$oft customer who purchased Vista:
LoL, Sucka!
(WATCH IT!)
This is an amusing spin from MDN in its cherry picking articles. In the world of 64-bit computing, Apple is the one that’s sorely lacking….since OSX isn’t a proper 64-bit operating system (a 32-bit GUI).
This argument goes back over a year ago when it was painfully obviously Apple’s “64-bit OS” claim was a fallacy, especially when organizations needed 64-bit processing power they turned to XP 64 or Linux with 64-bit binaries (a true 64-bit environment).
….Tiger also seems rushed in the sense that it’s not a drastic shift to 64-bit computing; Tiger adds the ability for individual processes to have access to more than 4GB of memory. As can be expected, any process using the 64-bit memory space can only talk to 64-bit libraries, which at present, doesn’t include any UI libraries. The end result is that you can have a 64-bit process, but it has to talk to a 32-bit UI process. There are even more limitations beyond this, but the basic impression that I get from Tiger is that Apple is taking a much more transitional approach to the move to a full 64-bit OS than Microsoft. In fact, if it weren’t for AMD, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Microsoft’s move to 64-bit would be much more similar to Apple’s. The reality of the situation is that for the majority of users, 64-bit memory addressability isn’t going to be a necessity for another few years still. Instead of focusing a lot of attention on 64-bit today, Apple appears to be making a transition towards the goal of making the Mac OS a full 64-bit OS, but with Tiger, we are far from there yet. ….
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2404&p=3
And while the above still holds true today, it’s really amusing to find MDN and its blind followers posting as if Apple suddenly leads in 64-bit computing when it doesn’t even have a 64-bit OS.
No matter how much you hate Microsoft, they actually went in the proper direction of providing a true 64-bit OS. If Apple had did it, you’d all been tooting it’s horn (just as you did when Apple claimed with 64-bit OSX…and 64-bit computing…. before being quickly debunked).
Emulating 32-bit in a 64-bit environment isn’t something new. Windows 64 and Vista both do it. However anything in the kernel level needs to be 64-bit in order to get true 64 computing (which is why drivers are required to be 64-bit), not an emulation mask. How Apple is “ahead” of Microsoft, when Apple currently doesn’t even have a proper 64-bit OS and won’t for several more months, is absurd to everyone except those mac followers who don’t even know what 64-bit is.
I was running a true and full 64-bit OS on real 64-bit hardware 13 years ago — DEC OSF/1 (later called Digital Unix and then Tru64 Unix) on Alpha. (Moved off it to Linux (32-bit) in late 2004 and then Linux (64-bit) late 2006.) Nothing 32-bit about it. It was so sweet and so damn fast.
Unless we use a 64bit OS that allows us to address larder amounts of RAM, nobody’s gonna develop apps that do that and run faster, you tool. It’s irrelevant what the current situation is.
I have been listening to people like you for 20 years, since I bought my first computer tell me “You’ll never need a faster computer” and “You’ll never need more disk space”.
Those were the days when nobody could do video editing and hard drives were a few KB’s.
People like you, with no clue whatsoever, just hold everbody else back.
Currently, the average consumer has no need for 64 bit systems.
When they arrive and software developers bring the 64 bit apps and PC’s hold 16 Gbs of RAM-we will all look back at 32 bit and wonder how we made do.
haha i don’t really like Vista, but “lipstick on a pig”? haha