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Comment by goalieca | Hacker News Reader

About time. There was only 1 generation of Intel macs that didn’t have 64-bit and it is not supported by latest OS anyways.

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Would that have been MacBook/iMac/Mac Mini type models?

I have a first-gen Mac Pro (August 2006) and it's 64-bit.

The lower models in the 2006 line used 32-bit processors, including MacBooks, iMacs and Mac Minis, while more expensive models favoured the 64-bit Core 2 Duo processors.

That's not accurate; first generation MacBook Pros used 32-bit Core Duo processors as well, as did almost all the early-2006 models; the exception being the lowest-end Mac Mini, which had a single-core 32-bit Core Solo. 32-vs-64-bit was never used for price differentiation within a lineup; Intel's 64-bit chips just weren't ready in time.

Late-2006 models, including the first-generation Mac Pro, moved from the 32-bit Yonah Core Duo/Core Solo architecture to the 64-bit Conroe Core 2 Duo.

Yes, based on Core 1 (Yonah) processors.

It’s 64bit but unless you installed a modified boot loader it will only boot into 32bit OSX

Why does it matter?

It's not as if there is any real performance penalty of running 32-bit and 64-bit apps concurrently.

Sure there is. You need an entire second copy of every user space library to be resident in DRAM (and on disk)

Why would you need every userspace library in memory? - you'd only have the libraries in use by applications in memory.

Sure but any Mac app that uses AppKit (that is, ~any GUI app) pulls in about 300 MB of executable dependencies at a minimum. More for apps that uses rarer frameworks.

I suspect a majority of 32-bit apps are CarbonLib, which has a smaller footprint, how much smaller, I dont know.

There are real support costs for making it work. I don’t want to pay so you can run apps that belong in a museum.

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