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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 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.
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.
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
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.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Much as no one really likes Java exists, more the ideal of what it should be.
He already found a solution, he's not going to follow your hostile advice.
He found a "solution" which may lead to him becoming a shuffling zombie. It's in no one's best interest to defend that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What about the people who exploit bugs after they're been disclosed and fixed? They're people too!
If no one stayed on old unsupported software, that entire industry would collapse. Think of the job losses all over Romania, Russia and Nigeria.
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".
Sure 64 bits improve things, but providing a 64 bit build does not forbid also providing a 32 bits build for older machines.
Then I guess she wont mind using a browser thats 10 years old either.
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/
The problem is the new xcode will soon drop support for the 32 bit versions of the OS and for some reason, mac developers can't figure out how to make a fat binary that runs on everything from about 10.0.0 to 10.11.00 even thought it requires having 3 versions of X code running on two or 3 different (virtual?) machines and then copying a few files. It is amazing how many open source packages just compile with older version of Xcode if you add in a few #DEFINES for things that aren't used anyway.
Never trust anything that can't spit out a Makefile, or equivalent.
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
While it works, why not? Not everybody has the needs, means or compulsion to use the shiniest and the latest.
Windows 64Bit: Stable version 37 is currently available as an opt-in:
https://www.google.com/chrome/...
Running this version of Chrome requires that I install a new OS which means that I need to back up all of my application settings spread out across the entire system, install the new OS, and then try to put all of the pieces together again. And that's if the new OS supports my old hardware. So it's not as easy as you make it out to be unless you're willing to pay for my new hardware.
I will get a machine with at least 32 GB of RAM.
This one have 8 GB.
And it's a Windows 8.1 machine not a mac. I think I said that. Possibly not just giving general experience what do I know.
I don't know whatever it support 32 bit plugins and whatever my bankid plugin is 32 bit and whatever that could increase the memory load more.
My feel for it was that it used more RAM at least.