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Chrome For Mac Drops 32-bit Build
jones_supa writes Google has revealed that it's launching the finished 64-bit version of Chrome 39 for OS X this November, which already brought benefits in speed, security and stability on Windows. However at this point the 32-bit build for Mac will cease to exist. Just to make it clear, this decision does not apply to Windows and Linux builds, at least for now. As a side effect, 32-bit NPAPI plugins will not work on Chrome on Mac version 39 onwards. The affected hardware are only the very first x86-based Macs with Intel Core Duo processors. An interesting question remains, whether the open source version of Chrome, which is of course Chromium, could still be compiled for x86-32 on OS X.
They're completely phasing out NPAPI by the end of the year: http://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation
They're trying to force others to adopt their own PPAPI, in the most heavy-handed way possible. Because once they do, other browser vendors will have no choice but to adopt it. All in the name of our "security". It's almost glorious. Soon there will be no need to pretend that the web is an open place driven by many voices.
While progress is good, as a Firefox user I'm sensing that this will be yet another disaster. Any time that the Firefox crew has tried to me-too what Chrome has done first, they bungle it badly. It always ends up hurting us users for some time, at least until somebody comes up with yet another add-on we have to install to undo the damage. Although maybe that's not even possible in this case.
Please, Firefox devs, if you're going to rush into something similar just to play catch-up with Chrome, please, please, PLEASE don't let it be a total, unmitigated disaster like when you started doing rapid releases, or every UI change since Firefox 4. Give us ample warning, and please, think it through this time! I don't want to have to spent hours upon hours getting Firefox fixed up because you guys broke it in some way. If that happens, I might just leave Firefox for good this time. I'm barely holding on as it is.
Switching to 64 bit builds means that they will have to drop OSX 10.6, right? It's about time this one is left behind!
I'm hoping their auto update thingy won't try to force the 64 bit version (which won't work) down my throat.
8 to 16: Z80 to 8088 (8-bits in memory access, but kinda mixed 8- and 16-bits internally... but the 286 was 16-bit, anyway)
Got confused by that brain damaged paginated-memory scheme.
16 to 32: after a long struggle against abandoning 16-bit and Windows 3.11 (which I paid for), it seemed I was doomed to buy Win98.
Alas, Linux saved the day and I could avoid '98 and flip it at M$.
32 to 64: still happening over here... I thought I'd be able to just use 64 this year, then realized my 2GB computers get a little less nimble.
Apparently, Google is ending the this phase... a difference now is that the computers got cheap; hence, people have a lot of (old) 32-bit machines.
Things go faster these days, I may catch the next two transitions, 64 to 128 and 128 to 256 (512? 1024?). Let us see.
As much as I hate Chrome, and although I refuse to use Google's offerings (including their search engine), I can't blame them for doing what they're doing. Everyone should expect them to act in a way that will further their interests.
If anyone is to blame, I think it should be Mozilla. Firefox had 35% of the market a few years ago. They provided real competition to IE and the other browsers. But then once Chrome started making some inroads, mostly by drawing away IE 6 users, the Mozilla devs went stupid and decided to clone Chrome in every respect.
We now live with the outcome that resulted from these awful decisions. Firefox is now just a poor imitation of Chrome, offering almost no original functionality. Firefox has become unusable for many people, especially those of us who dislike Chrome's philosophy of how a browser should act and behave. None of these changes have brought any new users to Firefox. Firefox is still slower and more bloated than its competitors. And because of all of these factors, users have had to leave Firefox for a better browsing experience elsewhere. Even IE 11 is providing people a better browsing experience than Firefox is for many people these days, as awful as that sounds.
Now that Firefox has less than 10% of the browser market, it has basically no influence over how the other more dominant browser developers have to act. Google, Microsoft and Apple don't have to give a fuck what Mozilla and its users want, because there are comparatively so few of them.
It didn't have to be this way. A few years ago, Mozilla could have kept developing Firefox with an independent mindset. Instead of cloning Chrome, Firefox could have continually improved the browsing experience. Its performance could have been improved, and its memory usage decreased, instead of its UI being trashed. It could have been a browser that perhaps 30% to 40% of users use. Chrome, rather than getting all of these Firefox refugees, would itself only have perhaps 30% to 40% of the market, instead of almost totally dominating it like it does today. IE would be less significant of a player than it is today.
Nobody forced Mozilla to make the stupid decisions that they did. In fact, a lot of Firefox users very vocally said, "No! We don't like that!" time and time again, release after release. But Mozilla didn't want to listen. Mozilla did everything in their power to ruin the Firefox experience. And now the entire web has to suffer.
All I noticed was that it was chewing up a lot more RAM so I installed the 32 bit version again instead.
As far as I know, NPAPI plugins can't be sandboxed effectively. So they are indeed security risks. You could argue whether it is Google or the end user that should decide what risks to take with plugins, but given how easily people click "Yes" without even reading the question, I don't really blame them for not leaving this to the end user.
As for an open web, what did plugins ever do to open the web? The most popular plug-in is Flash, which is proprietary. Silverlight is proprietary; it has an open source clone that never actually worked when I tried. Java is open source but Java Applets are pretty much obsolete today.
I do share the concern that Chrome is becoming too dominant. Moving to PPAPI plugins would not be a step forward, but phasing out plugins altogether would be.
As browsers become more and more app platform engines it is essential to use cpu instructions included after the Pentium IV in this day and age. It is 2014 and 10 years is enough. XP is the sole reason 32 bit is still around.
Yes if it aint broke don't fix it became a conservative motto here with the nerds who are approaching middle age now, but the web is still evolving and HTML 5 and HTML 5.1 will include WebGL, more AJAX, and other things where a not just additional memory addresses but also cpu instructions which no one still uses can be utilized.
When will IE and Firefox jump ship next?
http://saveie6.com/
I've been running Waterfox (Firefox recompiled as 64 bit) for over a year. It's usually a week or two behind the official FF release but it runs well. In fact it co-exists with FF and the configuration is shared between them.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
intel atom systems keep 32 bit systems around longer then they should of been. Windows 8 should of been the end of 32bit windows.
Windows Server 2008 R2 was first 64-bit-only operating system released from Microsoft
Much as no one really likes Java exists, more the ideal of what it should be.
their revenue came from the google search bar. when that goes, mozilla may cease to exist.
I'd rather just run the nightlies and help Mozilla actually finish the official 64-bit Windows version. All these clone versions do is tear out the testing suite and call it a day. If all the people running these unstable bastard children actually helped out with the official unstable version then Mozilla would have probably been able to finish it long ago. But nope, easier to pretend you're running something superior because it's not called Firefox.
I'd agree, but it still doesn't change what I'm saying. Google didn't exactly work with others to develop PPAPI, nor did they wait for others to think about adopting it before they joined forces with Adobe to ensure that the NPAPI version was left in a relative shambles, so only Chrome gets a "good" version of Flash? Security doesn't mean anything when only Chrome gets a secure version, after all. Unless you happen to want Chrome to be the only game in town, I guess.
My 85 year old Grandmother has one of the early white macbooks with a 32 bit Intel CPU (Core Duo, but not Cure 2 Duo). It was her first computer. She bought it new from Apple. It works fine for her, and spending a thousand bucks on a new Mac is out of the question. The ROI just isn't there. Great machine, other than apple no longer supporting it with OS updates.
Chrome is quite possibly the least customizable browser available. Whereas FF is far and away the MOST customizable, perhaps even better than Opera 12 in that respect.
Even IE allows for some pretty major GUI surgery with BrowserHelpers, and extensions. I use Quero for IE, and hide the "native address-bar".
Good Riddance!
Chrome is handy for 'legacy' content but for flash's main deployment - videos, for day to day use, the HTML5 player in Firefox on Linux works well enough.
The universe is plenty big enough. 2^64 is about 1.8x10^19 and there are around 10^59 atoms in just one average-sized star. That leaves 5.5x10^39 atoms per bit. That's a lot of atoms; a lot more than a trillion kilograms, in fact.
The universe is really, really big..
Why would there be any question that Chromium could still be compiled for 32-bit CPUs? It it's open-source, it can be. The only question is whether anyone cares enough to do it.
The Firefox devs walked away from PPC processors some time ago, but there's enough interest in that platform that an independent fork of its code has been maintained.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Plenty of time to switch to Firefox. Probably they'll keep offering 32-bit for a while yet, and when they stop a third-party project will come along that will, a la TenFourFox.
All hail open source - Chrome is not (completely) open source, Firefox is. Google doesn't want or care if you want 64bit (or don't want it).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Windows 64Bit: Stable version 37 is currently available as an opt-in:
https://www.google.com/chrome/...
This is a good point. In 1997 plugins were important, but now pretty much any web application you hope to implement can be done in pure HTML5 and Javascript. We even have WebGL these days.
a) the post is about Macs. In my country, a Mac costs near 5x a PC (I'm being conservative here, it might be worse). No Mac for me.
b) everybody will go 64-bit one day, if not by need then simply by cost -- 32-bit will get costlier in time. But not many apps require 64-bit.
c) not many apps require more than 32-bit, 16-bit is enough for a handful and a few even would be fully content with 8-bit;
d) recently, ONE use of 16-bit has arisen in word processors: long (64K chars) paragraphs -- and that could be done with 8-bit, if needed;
e) 32-bit is not enough for graphic apps (insufficient shades of the same color), but probably neither 64-bit... there's an article elsewhere about the PS3 being 128-bit and much better than 64-bit;
f) I'm not against changing to 64-bit; but lack of memory will always be a problem. We'll have to break 64-bit words in 8 bytes because records in a file will still be made of chars. Primeval 16-bit CPUs had 8-bit instructions, I don't read specs anymore... are 64-bit ones quick with 8-bit operations?
g) I got some 7 old pieces of equipment (English sucks!) here (mostly PCs packed when I last moved)... they still work but probably wouldn't do as desktops anymore; but I used one as server, another will see the same use and others can be donated. Aside from one, maybe 6 can be reused.
h) in the end, it's a first-world problem; if I was into graphics production, we would not have this conversation; we do because 32-bit FPS are good enough for me, since I have other things to do instead of playing all day.
Personally, I find PAE a bad idea, just like that old DOS Himem thing (when "640KB should be enough for everyone"); we still have, as of today, Z80 derivatives for certain 8-bit (embedded?) uses. Of course some consolidation will take place... I wonder which word sizes will remain in the future.
I couldn't find an authoritative reference, but someone cited have seen a worst figure of 20,000,000 shades being perceived ( http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/10208/how-many-colors-and-shades-can-the-human-eye-distinguish-in-a-single-scene ). This is not color perception, but for instance grey shades (yeah, I know)... so, assuming that scenario, we would have some 24-bits ( 16,777,216 colors) which should be multiplied for 3 (for RGB) or 4 (with Alpha), giving a needed width of 96-bits for "perfect" graphics -- that is, if we can provide OLED or better technology and ideal viewing lighting at all times for everyone.
And we're not taking into account everyone -- e.g. the tetrachromatic ladies... I feel 128-bit will eventually stay with us longer than 64-bit, supposing that qubit thing does not make all that obsolete.