analogika wrote:Literally the only difference you would see with a 64-bit version is the lack of the warning that the software will become unsupported.
64-bit apps do not “run better on everyone’s Macs today”. That’s just wrong. (In fact, smaller apps like the Nord apps will likely use more RAM and run slightly less efficiently in 64 bits — it’s simply not relevant for the super-light workload that these apps represent, though.)
There are technical reasons for having moved the operating system to 64 bits, especially for high-workload systems and extremely complex applications. But literally the only reason why 32-bit apps will stop working is because Apple have decided that they will no longer invest any work to keep both architectures on equal footing.
Where did you pull that information from, analogika?I think I'll stick to what Apple says about the relative merits of Apple's implementation of 64-bit vs. 32-bit architecture, thanks.
Here's some developer documentation from Apple, first created in 2004 and last revised in 2012 according to the revision history.:
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/64bitPorting/intro/intro.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001064-CH205-TPXREF101It talks about the transition to 64-bit. Note that this documentation was written at a time when 32-bit and 64-bit apps were assumed to be able to coexist, but it's illustrative of just how long this transition has been in progress. Admittedly, some of that documentation is over my head because I'm not a developer, but Apple is quite good at explaining technical concepts to the layperson. At least I think so.
There's a section in there asking "Should you recompile...?" but that's a moot point now because modern app developers MUST recompile. You're correct in that, as recently as 2012, Apple indicated that there were some performance tradeoffs, but Apple doesn't indicate anywhere in that documentation that those tradeoffs are common with smaller apps. Marvel at this sentence from the section on performance-critical applications: "As a general rule, 64-bit Intel executables run somewhat more quickly unless the increased code and data size interact badly (performance-wise) with the CPU cache." Nord allegiance aside, I wouldn't say that a tiny app for transferring data between the Nord and the Mac is a "performance-critical app," critical though the app may be to our Nord performances.
At the bottom of that first section, there's this, too:
A 64-bit app can consume significantly more memory than a 32-bit app. For this reason, it is tempting to continue to ship 32-bit apps. However, this is usually not the right thing to do.
In OS X v10.6 and later, most built-in apps are 64-bit. The first time you run a 32-bit application, all of the 32-bit framework slices must be loaded into memory. This means that loading older, 32-bit-only applications causes significant memory pressure, particularly on computers with limited RAM. This often outweighs the additional memory impact caused by larger data structures.
I get it. I'm on a 2013 MacBook Pro with only 8 GB of RAM, and DAW apps I use put a strain on my laptop.
App developers used to ship Universal Binaries, containing either a combination of PowerPC and Intel architecture, or a combination of 32-bit Intel and 64-bit Intel architecture, depending on where we are in Apple history. Nowadays, leaving aside performance tradeoffs with larger apps that are processor and RAM hogs, an app that only has 64-bit innards in it is generally going to perform better on Apple's 64-bit OS. According to Apple.
But, by all means, continue.