Apple Prepares MacOS Users For Discontinuation of 32-Bit App Support (arstechnica.com)

Last year, Apple announced that macOS High Sierra "will be the last macOS release to support 32-bit apps without compromise." Now, in the macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 beta, Apple is notifying users of the impending change, too. "To prepare for a future release of macOS in which 32-bit software will no longer run without compromise, starting in macOS High Sierra 10.13.4, a user is notified on the launch of an app that depends on 32-bit software. The alert appears only once per app," Apple says in the beta release notes. Ars Technica reports: When users attempt to launch a 32-bit app in 10.13.4, it will still launch, but it will do so with a warning message notifying the user that the app will eventually not be compatible with the operating system unless it is updated. This follows the same approach that Apple took with iOS, which completed its sunset of 32-bit app support with iOS 11 last fall. Developers and users curious about how this will play out will be able to look at the similar process in iOS for context. On January 1 of this year, Apple stopped accepting 32-bit app submissions in the Mac App Store. This June, the company will also stop accepting updates for existing 32-bit applications. iOS followed a similar progression, with 32-bit app submissions ending in February of 2015 and acceptance of app updates for 32-bit apps ending in June of 2015.

Comments

Re:Apple compatibility is a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft needs to maintain Windows compatibility because it's used extensively in the business world for mission-critical applications, sometimes requiring that old and unsupported software still work the way it always did. Apple can get away with this more easily because most Macs are in the home, being used for... well I'm not exactly sure what people use them for, Facebook or something I guess, but they wouldn't be caught dead using old software.

Re:Going to be some resistance to this one

[sit1963nz]

What the hell are you talking about ????

If you do not move to the new OS, all you existing Apps will work just fine, there is no "hit"

You do NOT have to move, you do NOT have to upgrade, these choices are 100% the end users. Version 13.4 of OSX will simply be warning you in advance that OSX 14 will no longer support 32 bit Apps. You can then either choose to stay on 13 and get support for another couple of years or move to version 14 and upgrade your Apps.
Apple is not going to kill anyones tools, they will continue to function tomorrow just as they did today.

For example my old iPad still works today even though Apple no longer supplies updates for it. It is stuck at IOS 9.
Bento on it however works fine and is still useful.

Opensource

[DrYak]

Macs haven't run my 68K {NOTE: binary} apps for years. 8088 MS-DOS 3.1 batch {text, source} files still (mostly) work in Windoze, though.

NOTE: {notes} are mine.

Which makes a great argument in favor of accessible source.
Because your batch file are human readable text-file, you can even edit what's needed to remove the "(mostly)" part of the sentence.
Much more difficult with binary 68k machine code.

If you had access to the original C / Pascal code that the 68k apps were compiled from, it would be much more easy for devs to adapts them to modern architectures/APIs.