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.

Comments

Re:Requirements ?

[gnasher719]

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!

No, 64 bit builds run on 10.6 just fine. You may be confused here: 10.7 requires a 64 bit processor. So if you don't support 10.6, then supporting 32 bit is pointless - anything running 10.7 upwards supports 64 bit.

What isn't supported anymore is machines with 32 bit processor.

Re:It did?

[Tailhook]

Here is a post from the Chromium Blog that explains how 64 bit improves Chrome. Incidentally this applies to software generally, not just Chrome. The key part of the post that explains the expected improvements:

64-bit Chrome has become faster as a result of having access to a superior instruction set, more registers, and a more efficient function calling convention. Improved opportunities for ASLR enhance this version’s security. Another major benefit of this change comes from the fact that most programs on a modern Mac are already 64-bit apps. In cases where Chrome was the last remaining 32-bit app, there were launch-time and memory-footprint penalties as 32-bit copies of all of the system libraries needed to be loaded to support Chrome. Now that Chrome’s a 64-bit app too, we expect you’ll find that it launches more quickly and that overall system memory use decreases.

While you may appear to be using more RAM because the 64 bit Chrome processes are larger than the 32 bit, the net memory usage should be the same or less because 64 bit Chrome will not pull the 32 bit stack into RAM to operate. ASLR is a security technique that mitigates vulnerabilities that appear in applications and libraries; lack of a form of ASLR is among the reasons Heartbleed became a thing.

So stop quibbling and use modern software. If you are experiencing a RAM shortage — as opposed to obsessing needlessly over monitoring tools and being difficult — then get more RAM or use a less demanding browser; Chrome use more resources than its contemporaries and makes no apologies for it.