I really don't get why people are freaking out about this. Apple is continually evolving its OS architecture. That's a good thing.
This isn't about Apple only meeting today's needs. This is about Apple preparing to meet tomorrow's needs. I believe we'll start to see a new crop of apps that will find a way to take advantage of the new 64-bit power offered. The arguments being made against 64-bit have been made (in varying degrees) pretty much with every major Apple architectural change. A switch to 64-bit doesn't happen overnight and my guess is that within 2-3 years, every competitive phone will be running some 64-bit chip. And ultimately, I think Apple wants one underlying code-base for itself. OS X is already 64-bit, dropping 32-bit system apps after 10.6. We've seen OS X & iOS move ever so closer together and this is part of it. Will it lead to a hybrid ARM-based MacBook Air "Touch" that can also run iPad apps (ie. no emulation)? Who knows. But this opens up the possibility that didn't exist before. I have no knowledge of that, it's pure speculation to just point at the new "possible" in an all 64-bit Apple OS universe that probably could not happen otherwise. As for memory concerns (doubling pointer size), I think they could be overblown. You assume more cache misses based on a 64-bit pointer in a 32-bit chip architecture. That's probably not the case. We don't know enough about the A7, but I'd guess that a 64-bit chip architecture is designed to address that. As for binary size increase, I think the big binary increase when you had to include 2x artwork. Based on my experience with OS X, there will be an increase, but it typically won't be huge unless you're app is nothing *but* a list of pointers. Perhaps a bigger hit comes when you've got 32-bit apps that require loading the entire 32-bit system stack when everything else is 64-bit. You're basically loading a 2nd copy of the frameworks for 32-bit apps. That's especially true when you're the *last* 32-bit app on a 64-bit system. And welcome to the world of Apple transitions. Long time Apple developers are quite familiar with this: 24-bit->32-bit, 68K->PPC, Mac OS 8->OS X, PPC->Intel, Carbon->Cocoa, 32bit->64-bit (on Intel), QuickTime -> AVFoundation. I'm sure I missed a few there. A few years from now you'll wonder how we ever managed to write software in a tiny 32-bit world. -- Mark Munz unmarked software http://www.unmarked.com/ _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
