VolkerW's WebLog

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Funny , if you sit with a OS X developer who was around while MacOS-->OS X transition in place, he will tell something very interesting that if my G5, which is a pure 64bit CPU isn't running in 64bit mode (not big deal like x86), half of the reason is Adobe themselves.

Apple could never get rid of the Carbon because of Adobe didn't get rid of it. MS did hell of a better job converting their gigantic applications from Carbon to Cocoa.

The key is "Carbon" and its roots being in 32bit ages, Adobe not porting their Apps to Cocoa (think like, .NET) for 6 years and now staying silent about why they don't ship 64bit on OS X.

I heard another vendor which is also big tried so hard to convince Apple not to remove Classic (MacOS on virtual machine) support. Why? They didn't even bother with "Carbonising" their application.

I tell you the reason very easily. The rule is: If your app is carbon, won't be 64bit. If Application is Cocoa but its plugins are Carbon (think Photoshop plugins), 64bit won't work either. Also remember PowerPC is a very modern CPU which was designed in 1990s with 64bit in mind. It doesn't have "Run slower if you don't get into 64bit mode" issue. There wasn't a "have extra registers and commands when you run pure 64bit" issue on Mac until Apple switched to x86.

The "64bit runs faster" situation on x86/64 is pushing the software developers if you think about it. First 64bit game won't ship because it needs to address more than 4G RAM, it will ship because it will run faster.