macos catalina will drop support for 32 bit apps

I figured since people here use MacOS and also like obscure old software for audio fuckery, then it's really important to note that if you update to Catalina, all your old 32 bit apps will stop working. 

It seems that this applies to all apps that give you a "this app is not optimized for your Mac" warning.

I occasionally get this stuff when opening MOTU software and Ableton Live, so it's probably going to mess a lot of stuff up.

More on this here https://www.macrumors.com/guide/32-bit-mac-apps/

Apparently it's not just 32bit-only apps causing problems too, anything with 32-bit code (e.g. Installers) will fail in Catalina

Plus you've got all that Notarization nonsense (every exe needs to be submitted to Apple to be digitally signed or it won't run (well unless you do a tweak in the terminal) - And doing so costs $100/year for individials and $300/year for companies)

I am not salty at all that within the last few months I have paid enormous amounts of money to get my 3 year old macbook repaired.

In no way I was assuming that I would have a reliable platform for focusing on making music without having shit break all over the place or something, unless I pay to upgrade my DAW software, find a way to notarize/64bit-ize all the other stuff and fix world peace & climate change in the process.

If I was water and you put a squid in me, it would die because of all the unnatural unsaltyness.

I'm Not Mad either.

This was announced ages ago. 

That doesn't make it less stupid.

In fact even though I started seeing those "this app is not optimised" things it never occurred to me that "not optimised" means "will absolutely full-on stop working after a certain update". Because for me "not optimised" means "it will not work as effectively as it could".

I suppose we will see in time some compatibility layer app show up which can run 32 bit binaries, because virtualization is all the rage now. Just a bit sad that we will experience a breaking change like this that will lock out many old applications that used to work and still do.

  On 10/10/2019 at 1:49 PM, thawkins said:

That doesn't make it less stupid.

In fact even though I started seeing those "this app is not optimised" things it never occurred to me that "not optimised" means "will absolutely full-on stop working after a certain update". Because for me "not optimised" means "it will not work as effectively as it could".

I suppose we will see in time some compatibility layer app show up which can run 32 bit binaries, because virtualization is all the rage now. Just a bit sad that we will experience a breaking change like this that will lock out many old applications that used to work and still do.

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Dude, so you saw the dialog box that warned you about it, and you didn’t click the “Learn more” button. 

  On 10/10/2019 at 2:13 PM, oscillik said:

Dude, so you saw the dialog box that warned you about it, and you didn’t click the “Learn more” button. 

Let's be clear here: I know about this breaking change and I have not updated and do not plan to. Thus I have "learned more".

In everyday life I see a lot of those stupid dialog boxes and I am weary of this shit - only a small subset of people bothers to "learn more" and only the most devoted pedants go through Terms Of Service at every rando website they end up on. I don't think Apple has communicated this well at all and I also don't think most people realise what might happen when they update because most people do not know or care about 32/64 bit difference.

Also keep in mind this box shows up once a month for an incompatible app. This means all the obscure old stuff you rarely use goes under the radar. Probably also there are apps installed on your computer that do not show up in the Applications folder or whatever creates the list of "compatible" apps.

I posted this thread so that maybe if this information stops someone from breaking his entire setup by clicking Install Update in good faith, then it's done a net good in the world.

  On 10/10/2019 at 3:41 PM, thawkins said:

This thread so that maybe if this information stops someone from breaking his entire setup by clicking Install Update in good faith, then it's done a net good in the world.

Yeah definitely a good PSA to have out there. Luckily (well, if I were a Mac owner!) my email inbox has been keeping me up to date with it too. Warnings just from the past week:

Another reason I stick to Windows, for all of the things about it that suck at least it's still possible to use drivers, software and plugins going back 20-25 years or so without too much trouble (except 95-98 era, 3d accelerated games).

EDIT: and Seer Systems Reality, which was already broken as soon as Win98 SP1 came out (but is still available as bespoke vintage-platform turnkey systems because it has a certain quality that some people, including me, like).

nord modular g2 editor will break  

  On 10/10/2019 at 6:46 PM, TubularCorporation said:

(except 95-98 era, 3d accelerated games).

nGlide mate  - http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide

  On 10/10/2019 at 6:31 PM, mcbpete said:

Yeah definitely a good PSA to have out there. Luckily (well, if I were a Mac owner!) my email inbox has been keeping me up to date with it too. Warnings just from the past week:

 

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Damn if this does not scream out for a 3rd party turnkey virtualizer-wrapper. My mailbox is not that insane but I am still on Live 9, and checking my legacy apps list it's a bunch of stuff I never want breaking so guess I will hold out for now.

just upgraded to catalina. and currently looking at a couple of activities eating CPU. assumed it was some indexing taking place which would have been done overnight. but it's still going. googling showed more people with similar issues. and even some beta testers surprised this got an official release.

my advice, in short: skip this version! and wait for a fix before the upgrade!

Luckily I clicked prevent auto updates just before Catalina. At a certain point, most tech companies decided they would shove whatever they wanted down our throats, really just for the illusion of progress.

i don’t understand why I get the message though, I’ve been doing 64bit for everything. And that damn message just picks a random app at startup. 

Catalina is also in some kind of "grace period" where it hasn't gone full Catalina yet and will go full Catalina when the mac pro comes out. this is what i'm hearing from various Devs. they say the update then will be the bigger test. _most_ things are working fine if you are just doing the update.. i guess if it was a new computer w/catalina and you had to install all your applications then that'd be another story because of the installers and shit. 

there's new app signing for devs and some new security shit. iguess 64 bit apps are not as pirated so when the 64bit only thing really clicks through it'll be better for devs as less piracy.. so that's the theory at least. 

i don't ever update my OS until i have to. always download from the app store but don't install so that i can always stay one version behind whatever is current just to insure compatibility and not have to deal w/whatever new bullshit apple insists on. 

so, i'll be on mojave for the next couple years or perhaps forever if apple drops support for my desktop. 

my laptop is stuck on high sierra because it will only support mojave w/some really pain in the ass hacks that aren't worth the time doing.  . fwp am i right? 

I thought that anyone making music on a mac since os9 knows the drill is to not upgrade for half a year.

That being said I don't really understand the technical decision to ban 32 bit.

Less code to maintain.

10.14.6 til eternity then.

Being a hackintosh user (both desktop and laptop), maybe I should consider Windows again. Last time I tried I hated it though, PC audio and MIDI related stuff is pretty much non-sense to me (and unreliable) compared to CoreAudio/MIDI.

Maybe someday Linux will be a viable option ?

  On 10/12/2019 at 2:20 PM, acid1 said:

I thought that anyone making music on a mac since os9 knows the drill is to not upgrade for half a year.

This.

I only just upgraded to Mojave on my studio computer and only because I had to due to some Unity stuff.

But it probably won't be that long until someone creates a wrapper that allows you to run 32 bit applications in Catalina. Just like 32 Bit Lives did for plugins.

lol apple. pathetic.

  On 10/12/2019 at 4:12 PM, rhmilo said:

Less code to maintain.

Can you elaborate? Isn't it the same processor instruction sets? 

  On 10/12/2019 at 6:01 PM, acid1 said:

Can you elaborate? Isn't it the same processor instruction sets? 

It’s not that simple. The OS actually abstracts some of that away and it needs to do that in a different way for 32 bit apps than it needs to do it for 64 bit apps.

One example is memory allocation: each application with its own (virtual) memory space to ensure apps can’t interfere with each other. 32 bit apps can only address 32 bits of memory addresses while 64 bit apps can address 64 bits worth.

Good shit apple, making development more and more of a pain.

  On 10/12/2019 at 6:09 PM, rhmilo said:

It’s not that simple. The OS actually abstracts some of that away and it needs to do that in a different way for 32 bit apps than it needs to do it for 64 bit apps.

One example is memory allocation: each application with its own (virtual) memory space to ensure apps can’t interfere with each other. 32 bit apps can only address 32 bits of memory addresses while 64 bit apps can address 64 bits worth.

 

 

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In practical terms this means a 32 bit app can use up to 2-4GB (depending on app) of memory. Since memory is not shared, this is per 32 bit app - not that all 32 bit apps have to share the same 4GB. The memory thing should not be a problem though because most apps that do require these huge amounts of memory switched to 64 bit ages ago.

For me 32 bit support in practice means that if your application depends on an obscure software library that exists only as a 32 bit version, then it's pretty much impossible to move to pure 64 bits unless you find a 64 bit version of that library. So the workaround now is that operating systems find a way to run both 32 and 64 bit applications and I guess that dealing with this complexity is what Apple wants to get rid of.

That, or some other new bullshit related to 'courage'.

It'll be "interesting" when computers move entirely over to ARM…