Tag Archives: 64-bit

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

Another Leopard Wart

I have VMWare Fusion on my Mac for one reason, and one reason only: connectivity to my day job’s office. I don’t use it often, but when I do, it’s usually important.

Tonight, I’ve been trying to hit some of my lesser used applications after loading both my MacBook Pro and Doc Oc with Snow Leopard, and switching both of them to 64-bit mode. When I hit VMWare, it yelled at me:

VMWare Warning

We are not amused.

I went to VMWare’s site, and found them proudly touting experimental support of VMWare on the 32-bit kernel, and apologetically saying that VMWare running on the 64-bit Snow Leopard kernel is hard: “The transition to the 64-bit kernel of Snow Leopard is a major undertaking and something that we are taking seriously as we plan future products.” I’m sorry that it’s hard, but I expected more.

And I’m sure this is coming across as whiny, but I look at it this way. I have 64-bit ready hardware that I paid a gob of Benjy’s for. I have a 64-bit ready OS that’s been at the public dev forefront for many, many months. Yet, still I can’t get the kind of 64-bit love for my tools and toys as I could on the Windows platform. (Shudder.)

I get that not every app needs to be 64-bit. I mean, do I really need a 64-bit LOLcats screensaver? (OK, so maybe I do, but that’s a problem on my end!) But when big tools like VMWare and Photoshop are lagging on this front after so much lead time, well, I guess I expected a bit more than nebulosity at this stage of the game. I’m not knocking the tools — they are great — but I do have a bit of a struggle with the product planning. None of this 64-bit stuff should’ve been a surprise to anyone.

It’s simple. I drank the Kool-Aid, and want my gear to live up to the hype. I want it to just work.

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

Update on Snow Leopard

I’ve committed Snow Leopard to Doc Oc, but not without a few things to ponder.

Despite it’s 64-bit yellings and screamings, the OS is designed to boot in 32-bit mode out of the box. How big a deal is that? Well, I don’t really know. There’s loads of rantings out there talking about whether it matters or not. I look at it this way: if my OS is 64-bit capable and my hardware is 64-bit capable, why wouldn’t I run in 64-bit mode? From Apple, there’s no way to permanently change which way you boot. But, there’s unofficial ways. Here’s one. MIssion solved.

That leads me to my color calibration puck. I have an Eye-One Display2 from X-Rite (well, it was GretagMacbeth when I bought it), and it appears that the code that runs it only runs under Rosetta, which means it’s PowerPC code, not Intel. I never realized that, and wouldn’t have except that Rosetta isn’t installed by default with the OS. I’ve read about the puck not being detected, but I didn’t have that problem on the MacBook Pro, and now it’s all nice and calibrated.

All in all, things have gone pretty smoothly, although I won’t do the server for a couple of weeks — gotta bake the new goodies on the gear!