Got a tip for us? Share it...

Leopard Drops 64-bit Carbon Support

Developers at WWDC are realizing that Steve Jobs made a purposeful omission when he didn't include Carbon in Leopard's list of 64-bit compatible libraries at this year's WWDC keynote.

At last year's keynote, Apple had claimed that both Carbon and Cocoa would be 64-bit, adding to the 64-bit fundamentals that Tiger had laid. A photo from last year's presentation, courtesy of Engadget:



However, according to the latest on Apple's website, Leopard's 64-bit frameworks will include the POSIX and math libraries found in Tiger, Cocoa, Quartz, OpenGL, and X11 GUI framework. In addition, Apple confirms that Carbon will not be 64-bit on the Carbon Developer mailing list.

In all reality, this omission may not prove to be a huge stumbling block for many users, as Cocoa has been Apple's preferred framework since the inception of Mac OS X and Carbon was employed primarily as a method for porting legacy apps to OS X.

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

61 months ago
I don't like Carbon apps anyway -- it's high time we moved away from all that.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
61 months ago
How many big apps does this actually effect?

P-Worm
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
61 months ago

How many big apps does this actually effect?

P-Worm


iTunes for one, will Apple move it to cocoa or stick with a 32-bit version?
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
61 months ago

How many big apps does this actually effect?

P-Worm


Pretty sure MS Office is still Carbon, but they don't need 64 bit anyways :rolleyes:

I don't know what Adobe Suite is, but they had a lot of code that came from OS9 days, so at some point I suspect they were Carbon, but they may have gone Cocoa... in fact, I think they have, because I think Cocoa is a requirement for Universal apps, although don't quote me on that.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
61 months ago
It affects MS Office, but it's hard to imagine Office making benefit of 64-bit files. I think Adobe CS is the major, major app, and it is actually capable of benefiting from 64-bit aspects of the OS. It looks like Adobe is at work on making use of this, but I think CS3 is a Carbon app.

iTunes for one, will Apple move it to cocoa or stick with a 32-bit version?


What does iTunes really need with 64-bit processing? Even 1080p movies and Apple Lossless files are rarely, if ever, large enough.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
61 months ago

iTunes for one, will Apple move it to cocoa or stick with a 32-bit version?


iTunes really has no need to go 64-bit. Really, only pro-level apps have needs to go 64-bit.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
61 months ago
good. we need to get away from carbon apps because they don't work as well for Universal Access stuff like VoiceOver.

any more motivation we can give developers to modernize their apps without taking away their ability to function currently is good IMO.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
61 months ago
What does it mean in layman's terms? Will I be able to run a Carbon application under Leopard, or is it time to start looking for an alternative?
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
61 months ago

What does it mean in layman's terms? Will I be able to run a Carbon application under Leopard, or is it time to start looking for an alternative?


No, you will still be able to use it.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
61 months ago
So, this means AppleWorks will STILL be dog slow when placing 8GB image files :mad:

:p
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives

[ Read All Comments ]