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Comment by diroussel | Hacker News Reader

> Dropping support for 32-bit apps was a terrible idea.

What? Never?

First of all I think old CPU instruction sets should be deprecated in finite time. Secondly I think a decade is a reasonable time frame to do it in. It too fast, not too slow.

I go my first 64-bit mac in 2006. Fourteen years later why should the Mac have to support the older slower way that doesn’t release the potential of the hardware?

I welcome a 64-bit only OS and haven’t suffered any loss from it.

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I still use a lot of software, like Aperture, for which there is no good replacement and no possibility of me recompiling it for 64-bit. I will probably never upgrade my personal machine to Catalina as a consequence. When it becomes infeasible to continue using Mojave I will probably abandon MacOS entirely.

Wouldn't it work via a VM?

Aside from that, Aperture was abandoned 5 years ago. I would blame Apple for not releasing a 64-bit version of it before dropping it, but not for dropping 32-bit altogether.

I liked Aperture, but moved on to Lightroom and then to Capture One.

Aperture is actually a 64-bit app but it depends on some system frameworks that weren't migrated to 64-bit and dropped in Catalina.

It's possible to get it running in 10.15 by removing the references to those frameworks, it breaks some of the features like slideshows but the app will still run: https://medium.com/@cormiertyshawn895/deep-dive-how-does-ret... (the author has also made an app that automates this process, I haven't tried it so I can't vouch for how well it works)

If you abandon MacOS for photo management, what system will you go to that does not already support MacOS?

If you go to Windows and use Lightroom, why not stay on your mac?

If you go to Linux and use FSpot or Darktable, you can get them both on a Mac too.

Even in an operating system that supports 32bit binaries, there shouldn't be any runtime overhead if you stick to 64bit apps only, except maybe a few megabytes of wasted disk space. (which could even have been made into an on-demand component install, if that's too much to spare)

For those of us with legacy 32bit apps and games, having them run ("slower" is in the eye of the beholder, as they perform as well as they always have) is better than not running at all.

When I run a legacy 32bit app, it's not like I'm bothered by the fact that it also loads a bunch of 32bit OS libraries. It's not like I feel like my value for money for owning the machine is restored if clicking the .app icon just shows a "Not supported" dialog box.

> I go my first 64-bit mac in 2006. Fourteen years later why should the Mac have to support the older slower way that doesn’t release the potential of the hardware?

Aren't 32bit binaries (when not needing 64bits) slightly faster than 64bit versions due to the smaller pointer size?

Depends on the use case. It's a balance between less memory and cache use (32b) and having more registers + new specialised instructions (64b). Each app will use those differently. Ideally, we'd revive x32 which is a combination of short pointers on the new architecture, but that never really got popular.

I agree even though I haven't switched yet because some of my apps would not work properly (or at all). Decade should be enough.

But hey, I also think switch to Python 3 gave enough time to everyone to switch too and there's no shortage of people who disagree :)

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