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June 14, 2007

geekery

Hey Carbon, no 64 bit for you

Posted Jun. 14, ’07, 6:38 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Geekery

64 Bit One of the tools that Apple provided to developers in the OS 9 to OS X transition is the Carbon API. More recently though, it’s been used in situations that it’s not possible to do particular things in Cocoa. It’s even an essential part of some Cocoa programs. It looks like, at least for now, any Carbon programs will have to be 32 bit.

Apple’s pages on 64 bit in Leopard have always made mention of both Cocoa and Carbon. That is until now.

In addition to the POSIX and math libraries supported in Tiger, Leopard enables developers to build complete 64-bit applications using the Cocoa, Quartz, OpenGL, and X11 GUI frameworks. You can even use 64-bit Java on capable Intel processors.

It’s an odd omission, until you see the buzz on the Carbon list. This could keep some applications that have just a few non-Cocoa bits from being compiled as 64 bit binaries. Now, you may argue that it doesn’t matter for software that doesn’t need to address massive amounts of memory, but that’s not the only effect. You also get the benefit of additional registers in the processor itself. For compute bound tasks, this means less memory interaction and faster operation.

64 bit isn’t a universal gain for all software, but there are non pure Cocoa apps that could benefit that may not. It also leaves Carbon apps out. That’s a shame.


4 Comments

Developer said:

A shame? It's downright disgusting!

Apple had us working on 64bit versions of our Carbon apps for a year since last WWDC, where it was announced, and now they have pulled the rug out from underneath us. All that work gone in a flash. And why? It was pretty much perfect as far as I could see in previous seeds... so I can only think that their resources to complete it were deployed elsewhere. iPhone perhaps?

Shame on you, Apple.

June 14, 2007 7:26 AM
Walt said:

Considering that Carbon’s entire purpose for breathing was to help the transition from 9 to X, I'm not surprised. Once it has done its job, let’s let it rest in piece. Converting it over to 64 bit would only extend the inevitable – that one day, there will no longer be Carbon. Not 64? One more reason to *not* code in Carbon. I view this as the flushing of older technology. Technology whose continued support would lend to bloating and unnecessary man-hours. Like the floppy, (built-in) modem, and serial port, it’s time to move on. It has served its purpose and performed valiantly. Even the new Office from our friends in Redmond have left it behind in the forthcoming version of their flagship suite.

June 14, 2007 7:35 AM
spiderbat said:

In the last 6 years I have been developing Cocoa applications, even larger ones, for in-house use. In many occasions, I've had to incorporate routines from the Carbon framework to achieve some functionality. I'd guess I'm not the only developer who did. Therefore, I'd be a little surprised (to say the less!) if Apple would restrict the 64-bit heaven to hyper-pure Cocoa apps.
Maybe the restriction will apply to the part of Carbon that drives the user interface, the direct heir of the venerable Mac Toolbox. Or, maybe, kosher equivalents will be offered for the Carbon routines that are likely to be used in Cocoa.

June 14, 2007 10:49 AM
Snafu said:

That could be Carbon's initial purpose in life, but it's Apple the one who actually insisted on us not looking at Carbon as a second class citizen but as a main player.

The next Mac:Office will be Carbon, actually. And certainly most multiplatform apps will keep on being Carbon-style code, too. Do we really want to lose their 64 bit versions? No MacMaya 64, no Lightwave 64?

(Funnily, I remember how Apple flushed all these technologies so prematurely: instead of letting then get old and die naturally, it killed them before their time, forcing many of us to fill their need paying sometimes ten times their internal components counterpart value. Faxing still is the securest way to verify the receiver has gotten your document in an uncontestable way, Apple acknowledges the necessity of faxing by including some basic fax services in OS X, and then retires the internal fax/modem component and produces a greedily expensive USB part. Just brilliant)

June 14, 2007 2:42 PM

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