64-bit

Caution: Don’t rush to upgrade to macOS Catalina

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macOS Catalina is here. But proceed from Mojave with caution.
macOS Catalina is here. But proceed from Mojave with caution.
Photo: Apple

Catalina the island is a paradise. Catalina, the Mac operating system, could be hell for some creatives, including DJs, writers and photographers if they immediately upgrade.

Adobe, makers of Photoshop and Lightroom, are telling users to hold off on updating to macOS Catalina until it can iron out a number of compatibility issues.

Aspire is ditching its entire catalog of 32-bit Mac games

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Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops
Black Ops is one of many titles getting dropped.
Photo: Activision

Aspyr has confirmed plans to ditch its entire catalog of 32-bit games developed for Mac.

The news comes just a few weeks after Apple announced macOS Catalina — the first version of its operating system that won’t support 32-bit apps. A number of big titles will get the boot, including Call of Duty, Civilization, and Sims.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III is ready to murder your Mac’s hard drive

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Black Ops III
You can just buy the multiplayer starter pack if you don’t want the full game.
Photo: Treyarch

Call of Duty: Black Ops III has finally made its way to the Mac after being available on Windows PC since its launch over three years ago.

The Mac version of Call of Duty: Black Ops III was revealed by Aspyr today. It comes all the same content in the Windows version, plus 64-bit and Metal support. If you’re ready to rack up some kills though you better be ready to say goodbye to all the free space on your hard drive.

Here’s how to find which apps are about to stop working on your Mac

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drill bits
Imagine 64 of these drill bits all working together.
Photo: Steven Depolo/Flickr CC

Sometime, probably quite soon, your Mac will stop running 32-bit apps. All new Macs have 64-bit processors, and Apple wants to phase out older 32-bit apps in order to “enable faster system performance” for your Mac as a whole. What this means is that, in an as-yet-unspecified future version on macOS, 32-bit apps will stop running altogether.

If you’re running macOS High Sierra 10.13.4, then you may already have seen a warning pop up onto the screen when you launch older apps. Today we’ll see how to view a list of all the 32-bit apps on your Mac, so you can either harass the developer to update them, look for a better-supported alternative, or just delete them.

Apple warns macOS users that it will drop support for 32-bit apps

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macOS update
A macOS update adds support for Messages in iCloud.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple has begun issuing notifications to macOS users that confirm plans to drop support for 32-bit applications.

“This app needs to be updated by its developer to improve compatibility,” reads the warning users will see when they load a 32-bit app for the first time in macOS High Sierra 10.13.4. This is the final version of macOS that will allow 32-bit apps to be opened “without compromise.”

iOS 11 might make 200,000 apps obsolete

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iPhone 7 in hand
Some of your favorite old games might get booted from iOS.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple’s decision to drop support for 32-bit apps in iOS 11 later this year could kill about 187,000 apps, based on a new report that shows some old apps have been slow to catch up.

Analytics firm Sensor Tower estimates about 8% of all apps on the App Store will become obsolete. That small percentage may sound insignificant, but old games might be impacted the most.

Apple pulls last non-Retina iPad from stores

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Apple stops selling its last non-Retina iOS device.
Apple stops selling its last non-Retina iOS device.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

The last iPad with a non-Retina display was sent to the grave today, almost three years after its debut.

Apple quietly pulled the iPad mini from its online store, leaving just the iPad mini 2 and 3 behind to go with the iPad Air 2. In doing this, Apple made a significant milestone stone: the Apple Store no longer sells non-Retina iOS devices.

Apple says all apps must support iOS 8 and 64-bit from February

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Craig Federighi has bragged about iOS 8's adoption, even though it's considerably slower than Apple's used to.
Craig Federighi has bragged about iOS 8's adoption, even though it's considerably slower than Apple's used to.

iOS 8 has only been out a short amount of time, but Apple’s already keen that it takes over as the company’s go-to mobile OS.

In a new posting on its developer portal, Apple announced that starting February 1, 2015, all new iOS apps uploaded to the App Store must include 64-bit support, and be built using the iOS 8 SDK, included in Xcode 6 or later.

NVIDIA’s 192-Core Tegra K1 Processor Is 3 Times Faster Than Apple’s A7 [CES 2014]

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CoA-CES-2014-bugYour smartphone and tablet will soon offer noticeably better performance than a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, thanks to NVIDIA’s new Tegra K1 processor, the successor to last year’s Tegra 4. The 192-core “Super Chip” will come in two versions, one of which is built upon a next-generation 64-bit Denver architecture and boasts clock speeds up to 2.5GHz.

Apple’s 64-Bit A7 Caught Entire Semiconductor Industry With Its Pants Down

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After Apple released the iPhone 5s with the A7, the world’s first 64-bit chip, ARM competitor Qualcomm made quite the fool of themselves about it. First, Qualcomm representative Anand Chandrasekher called a 64-bit ARM chip a “gimmick.” Then they ate their words, soft fired Chandrasekher, and announced their own 64-bit chip to ship in 2014.

If that seems like a disorganized, chaotic response, you’re right. But there’s a reason for that. According to a new report, Apple’s unveiling of the 64-bit A7 chip took the entire semiconductor industry with their pants down… and everyone’s now scrambling to catch up.

Intel: 64-Bit Android Tablets Will Be Available In 2014

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The 64-bit iPad Air will have competition from Android-powered rivals next year.

While Android hardware manufacturers were busy trying to pack as many cores as they could into their smartphone and tablet processors, Apple took a different route and decided to go 64-bit instead. It’s a move that makes the iPhone 5s and the latest iPads some of the fastest mobile devices on the market, and so it’s no surprise that its rivals are getting ready to follow suit.

Intel has promised that you’ll be able to buy Android-powered tablets with 64-bit “Bay Trail” processors next year.

Samsung To Adopt 64-Bit Chips & 16MP Cameras For Next Year’s Flagships [Rumor]

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Apple’s iPhone 5s became the world’s first smartphone with a 64-bit processor when it launched this September, but as you might expect, it’ll have plenty of competitors next year. Unsurprisingly, some of those will come from Samsung, which is already planning 64-bit chips and 16-megapixel cameras for its 2014 flagships, according to industry sources.

iPad Air Is The Full-Size iPad You’ve Been Waiting For [Review]

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[Editor’s note: This review has been stickied to the top of Cult of Mac. Scroll down for more news.]

Let’s face it, we’ve been waiting for Apple to make drastic changes to the iPad since it released the third-generation device in early 2012. While it did introduce a high-resolution Retina display with that model, and it has made nice improvements in speed and other areas since then, we’ve all been clamoring for improvements to its design.

We’ve got those with the iPad Air — and a whole lot more. The new slate looks just like a larger version of the iPad mini. It maintains its 9.7-inch Retina display, but it has narrower bezels, a substantially thinner design — it is now just as thin as the iPad mini at 7.5mm — and it’s 28% lighter than its predecessor at just one pound.

In addition to that, we get Apple’s incredible 64-bit A7 processor that promises up to two times the power and graphics performance of the A6X, the new M7 motion coprocessor that made its debut in the iPhone 5s last month, and two W-Fi antennas with MIMO technology. And all of this will cost you just $100 more than the iPad 2.

iPad Air Is 80% Faster Than Its Predecessor In Benchmark Tests

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Imagination
The iPad Air was a massive hit for Apple.
Photo: Apple

The fourth-generation iPad with its dual-core A6X processor was certainly no slouch, but it looks like one when you put it up against the new iPad Air. Thanks to that new 64-bit A7 chip, the iPad Air is an incredible 80% faster than its predecessor in Geekbench tests, and over five times than the iPad 2 (which is only $100 cheaper).

Pocket Casts Update Brings 64-Bit Support, UI Improvements & More

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Screen Shot 2013-10-28 at 16.24.58

Pocket Casts, now my favorite podcast management client for iOS, now supports the new 64-bit A7 processor built into the iPhone 5s and the new iPads, thanks to its latest update that’s available to download today. The release also brings back the ability to skip back and forth between podcasts by tapping artwork, unplayed episode counts, podcast sorting, and more.

Qualcomm Exec Soft Fired After Calling 64-Bit A7 Chip A “Gimmick”

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Last month, Qualcomm representative Anand Chandrasekher called Apple’s new 64-bit A7 chip a “gimmick.” It was a hugely stupid thing to say, leading to Qualcomm actually correcting Chandrasekher’s remarks. But it also might have killed Chandrasekher’s career, at least in part, as the former chief marketing officer seems to have been sent into exile within the company.