appleinsider.com — Build notes leaked on the web of a prerelease version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard indicate that the software only supports enabling its new 64-bit kernel on certain machines, including the Xserve, Mac Pro, and MacBook Pro, but this does not mean Snow Leopard's kernel will be limited to 32-bit operation on consumer machines.
Oct 28, 2008 View in Crawl 4
newbill123Oct 29, 2008
Considering that Apple has pledged to stay away from significant new, end-user features with Snow Leopard, that means changes will be most visible as optimizations and stability improvements.The rainbow pinwheel appears when the system is starved of resources and can't respond to the end user. For most, adding RAM would reduce cache misses and the associated rainbow pointer appearances.But high-end Macs come with 4GB of RAM which is the max usable in a 32-bit address space. This may have few pinwheels today, but down the road what could be done to up this limit? Oh yeah, upgrade OS X to a 64-bit address space. Which is what they've been doing since before the Intel transition.
cmf2Oct 29, 2008
OS X currently has 64 bit support, as in you can run 64 bit applications just fine. The kernel is finally going 64 bit with the main advantage of that being that it will allow individual programs access to more ram.Yes windows had full 64 bit before mac but they also had huge driver issues. Apple went to 64 bit in stages and avoided those issues while still allowing the use of 64 bit programs, it also allowed them to release only one OS. What good is creating a 64 bit operating system if the vast majority of your users don't even use it?
cmf2Oct 29, 2008
If you had a 32 bit version of windows and wanted the 64 bit version, you had to pay for it as well. There is also a lot more to snow leopard than it appears at first glance. Your thoughts were mine exactly when I first heard about it. Things like using the graphics card for processing tasks when not needed for graphics should offer a significant performance boost.
dungbeetleOct 29, 2008
Not really. If you have 32 bit Vista you can send $10 for the 64 bit disc. While technically not free because of the disc and shipping costs it is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a whole new OS.
nsresponderOct 30, 2008
"You can bundle 32-bit and 64-bit in one application on windows. OS X couldn't do this because they generally don't use an installer to install their applications"That's not correct. You can put any number of binaries in the same application wrapper on OS X, and I typically build anything I'm writing quad-fat (PPC 32/64 and Intel 32/64).-jcr
inkswampOct 31, 2008
No, the 10.5.x updates are more comparable to service packs. Speaking of which, Apple has released 5 "service packs" in the year that Leopard has been out and the sixth is right around the corner. Vista: 1 service pack in one-and-a-half years. I'm thinking if a company is making the kind of effort that Apple makes, it doesn't hurt quite so much to pay for their major OS updates a little more frequently. At least you're actually getting something worthwhile, not just a new UI slapped on a lot of old crap.
Closed AccountMar 9, 2009
Run an SSE3 enabled codec, then.
penta5Aug 30, 2009
My Macbook 2.4ghz runs 64bit in 10.6. Just hold 6 and 4 on bootup.To check that you are running 64 bit open terminal and enter:ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abiIt will return either ?EFI32? or ?EFI64.?