But, on behalf of us lay folks, can someone explain what is so hot about 10.6 (other than setting up for future HW/SW developments, smaller footprint, and a few eye-candy enhancements)? I am not saying improvements are not welcome, but I am just failing to see the great leap forward.......
Take a deep breath. It isn't even clear what you're arguing about.
64 bit calculations are not quicker for the majority of tasks. The reason why 64 bit apps are quicker is because of optimizations that occurred along side of the 64 bit transition, not because of the 64 bit support.
It is baffling why this simple clarification is causing so much consternation.
Perhaps you should go back and reread the beginning of this conversation.
I posted a reply to a poster who asked a question about what 64 bit meant to him. His question, which consisted of "64????" indicated that he was not aware of what it is, nor what it will mean to his computing experience.
My answer was a simple one, meant to answer that simple question. The 64 bit nature of SL WILL mean more speed. Refer to the posts above from folks who have actually used it, compared to your purely theoretical answer.
My posts have been my attempt to deal with the frustration of your being unable to understand that your answer was not helpful. It may have been correct, but it was unnecessary.
To say that an OS must be optimized in order to take advantage of the architecture of the hardware it runs on is obvious, and does not need to be detailed to the uninitiated, and the initiated already know the answer, so why get into the details on an open forum? 8 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 8 bit architecture, 16 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 16 bit architecture, and 32 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 32 bit architecture.
So why is it so important to point out the obvious point that 64 bit OSes will ALSO need to be "optimized" to run on 64 bit chips? Do we have to actually SAY it when they come out with 128 bit systems, or will we finally have that figured out?
I have no choice but to buy-other things on my system are slow too since the last "security patch:". The security is so that the upgrade path to Snow Leopard is SECURE!!
Yeah, I'd seen that already. That's what I looked at first. That's a lot of Apple-talk.
I was looking to get a 'sophisticated' user perspective from AI readers, that's all.
The short answer is that it will speed up your basic OS functions, it?ll be more secure, and there will plenty of apps that will run faster. What little UI changes there are seem to be for the best with Expose finally working really well, in my opinion. As more apps get updated to utilize Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, if your GPU can use it, you?ll see a lot more performance gains over the life of the product. For $29 I think it?s a great buy. As we?ve already talked about, it?s also more stable out of the gate than any other OS X release I?ve used.
Dude it's 30 bucks, and practically free for anyone buying since june. Even if it's not that big of step you might as well get it just so you know that you'll be supported by apps down the road.
Windows 7 does NOT come with OpenGL 3.0. You will have to install it separately.
Snow Leopard has a full 64-bit kernel on any 64-bit Mac.
That being said, Snow Leopard runs VERY nicely on my 32-bit MacBook Pro (Core Duo) and my 64-bit iMac (Core2Duo).
So you just registered to spew this BS ?
OpenGL 3.0 is available for Windows. IS it for mac ? No ! Why ? Mostly because of Apple.
SSD is bleeding edge of technology that is NOT being best utilized by best operating system ? Why is it that "old" Windows will in couple of months ?!
I can boot 64bit Kernel Windows 7 on my mac pro 8 core with 16 gigs of ram. I wont be able to do that with "best operating system". Dont ask me why i want it , if such a crappy old and useless operating system as windows cn do it how come best in the world cant ?
Is this worth my money if I am just a regular user that doesn't even take full capacity of my existing system? Microsoft 'gives' you Service Pacs for 'free', and Apple gives you Leopard updates for 'free'. Regardless of whether you like MS or not, practically speaking, the mac regular home user may not even benefit huge amounts, but may purchase this for bragging
Leopard to snow Leopard is not a service pack. MS would certinly not give away a complete re-write of explorer. Just because there is not a ton of glitz and wizbang doo-dads but they redid the plumbing in such a way that they are laying the foundation for the next decade of development in the same way that OSX 10.1 did a decade ago.
Some may upgrade to brag, but most will because there is a speed improvment in daily operations and in a few months there will be a flood of better/slicker/faster versions of apps that will use all of the plumbing that OSX 10.6 provides.
The short answer is that it will speed up your basic OS functions, it?ll be more secure, and there will plenty of apps that will run faster. What little UI changes there are seem to be for the best with Expose finally working really well, in my opinion. As more apps get updated to utilize Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, if your GPU can use it, you?ll see a lot more performance gains over the life of the product. For $29 I think it?s a great buy. As we?ve already talked about, it?s also more stable out of the gate than any other OS X release I?ve used.
So far nobody even demo'ed OpenCL app , not even Apple at WWDC had any demos. If any worthy app utilizes it before 10.7 is out i'll be surprised.
Same goes for GDC. From benchmarks it seems newest Motion and Compressor export are +-5% on Leopard and Snow Leopard... so it begs the question. If its "so easy" to code for multicore now , how come Apple is not doing it ?
Because its not easy , not easy at all.
Its nice that groundwork is being laid out , but its little unrealistic to expect this new tech to be utilized anytime soon.
I can boot 64bit Kernel Windows 7 on my mac pro 8 core with 16 gigs of ram. I wont be able to do that with "best operating system". Dont ask me why i want it , if such a crappy old and useless operating system as windows cn do it how come best in the world cant ?
But you also can?t NOT boot into a 64-bit version of Windows and are required to run 64-bit of every app. This is a huge plus for Apple, especially for consumer machines. BTW, the March 2009 Mac Pro can boot into 64-bit or 32-bit kernel.
I have to ask, why do you want a 64-bit kernel of Snow Leopard? Just to say you have it even if it reduces your operation efficiency? Is it not best to have the best running machine possible? If you can run 64 or 32-bit apps natively and your system is considerably more efficient because of it then why are you so worked up about this terminology?
PS: You should try testing the battery duration of any Windows and Leopard/Snow Leopard on any Mac notebook. Perhaps MS should worry more about making their OS more efficient than trying to win over customers with jargon marketing.
So far nobody even demo'ed OpenCL app , not even Apple at WWDC had any demos. If any worthy app utilizes it before 10.7 is out i'll be surprised.
Same goes for GDC. From benchmarks it seems newest Motion and Compressor export are +-5% on Leopard and Snow Leopard... so it begs the question. If its "so easy" to code for multicore now , how come Apple is not doing it ?
Because its not easy , not easy at all.
Its nice that groundwork is being laid out , but its little unrealistic to expect this new tech to be utilized anytime soon.
GDC was created because multicore coding is extremely difficult, not in spite of it. It?s only been a few months that Apple stated that all GDC work has been complete at this stage so that 3rd-party developers can finally work on it without a looming change to the structure. GDC is so very fresh so give it some time to get worked in. The apps that will need it are the slow to be updated anyway, but how is it you know that nothing in Snow Leopard is utilizing it out of the box?
I can boot 64bit Kernel Windows 7 on my mac pro 8 core with 16 gigs of ram. I wont be able to do that with "best operating system". Dont ask me why i want it , if such a crappy old and useless operating system as windows cn do it how come best in the world cant ?
BS, all 8-core Mac Pros will be able to run in 64-bit mode with a 64-bit kernel under Snow Leopard, I've seen Apple knowledge base articles saying as much. If you had an original quad core Mac Pro, then you're out of luck with a 32-bit kernel, supposedly software can run in 64-bit mode though.
How much RAM do you get to use in OS X in Leopard? Or are you blustering here? OS X in 32 bit mode can already access more than 4GB using PAE, this has been true since 10.4. I have not been able to get 32 bit Windows to do the same. My Mac Pro runs Tiger and Leopard in 32 bit mode, and both can access the whole 10GB of RAM that I have.
BS, all 8-core Mac Pros will be able to run in 64-bit mode with a 64-bit kernel, I've seen Apple knowledge base articles saying as much.
Can you show a link to that? The last info on which Apple HW will be able to run a 64-bit kernel are a few betas old but it’s the latest info I have seen.
To say that an OS must be optimized in order to take advantage of the architecture of the hardware it runs on is obvious, and does not need to be detailed to the uninitiated, and the initiated already know the answer, so why get into the details on an open forum? 8 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 8 bit architecture, 16 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 16 bit architecture, and 32 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 32 bit architecture.
So why is it so important to point out the obvious point that 64 bit OSes will ALSO need to be "optimized" to run on 64 bit chips? Do we have to actually SAY it when they come out with 128 bit systems, or will we finally have that figured out?
You don't understand what dfiler is trying to say. What he means is:
For a program written using Cocoa APIs or no APIs at all (e.g. simple C or C++ programs using standard libraries) "optimisation" is not required when going from 32 bit to 64 bit, it's just a matter of recompiling. This will not result in a faster app (according to dfiler).
Apps that use Carbon (e.g. Microsoft Office) cannot just be recompiled, because Apple abandoned 64-bit Carbon. So any developers out there with Carbon-based apps who want to move to 64 bit, also have to move from Carbon to Cocoa. In the process of re-writing their app, they may well optimise the code at the same time, resulting in a faster app. The fact it will also compile to a 64 bit binary is a bonus.
Now for the ironic bit: having defended dfiler, I have to say that he's not entirely correct. 64 bit x86 has twice as many registers as 32 bit x86 and therefore a lot of 32 bit binaries do run faster when the source-code is recompiled as a 64 bit binary. This is not the case with PPC, where 32 bit binaries recompiled to 64 bit binaries will run slightly slower.
On top of that, it's possible that in the process of moving from Carbon to Cocoa (which is not trivial) an application may get slower. If the transition is done quickly, the Cocoa code could well be not as well optimised as the Carbon code was.
AppleInsider published a long article about 64 bit a while back (here). Hopefully, ArsTechnica will soon publish a nice long article about 10.6 that will include discussion of 64 bit (ArsTechnica reviews of OS X are always a good geek read).
Moving on, some folks asked about Core Duo processors. Well, here's the low-down: in their infinite wisdom, Intel decided to decouple the Core brand from the Core microarchitecture. So, despite the "Core Duo" processors having the word "Core" in their name, they are not based on the Core microarchitecture (which is 64 bit), but on a minor evolution of the Pentium-M (which is 32 bit), itself based on the P6 microarchitecture.
Can you show a link to that? The last info on which Apple HW will be able to run a 64-bit kernel are a few betas old but it?s the latest info I have seen.
MacPro4,1 refers to the March 2009 update.
I thought you gave us the link I was talking about, but apparently Dlux posted it a week and a half ago.
Thanks for the link, though that is only to show if you have a 32-bit or 64-bit processor. It does not tell you if you will have a 64-bit kernel available.
For example, The late-2008 Unibody 13” MacBook has a 64-bit C2D, 64-bit EFI, and the Nvidia 9400M chipset but it can only boot using the 32-bit kernel, while the early-2009 unibody 13” MacBook Pro has all those same things, except with a slightly faster CPU, yet it boot using the 64-bit kernel. The limitation seems very artificial, and if it is I’m sure a hack will come along fairly quickly.
You don't understand what dfiler is trying to say.
I understood what he said well enough. MY point is that I was posting in reply to a poster that seemed not to understand what 64 bit would mean TO HIM.
I did not feel that going through all that stuff you did would mean much to him, but instead, wanted to answer him with a short answer that would sum it all up.
You are probably right, from what I've read elsewhere, but as I said, the details are unimportant. YOU know it, I know it and DEFILER knows it, but the poster I was answering didn't need to know all the gory details, he just wanted to know what it meant to him.
In a nutshell, that means speed. Yes, there may be caveats, but that wasn't important. Others have covered the fact that stability and security would also be included in the reasons for buying in, too, so I didn't need to address those issues.
Thanks for the link, though that is only to show if you have a 32-bit or 64-bit processor. It does not tell you if you will have a 64-bit kernel available.
For example, The late-2008 Unibody 13” MacBook has a 64-bit C2D, 64-bit EFI, and the Nvidia 9400M chipset but it can only boot using the 640bit kernel, while the early-2009 unibody 13” MacBook Pro has all those same things, except with a slightly faster CPU, yet it boot using the 64-bit kernel. The limitation seems very artificial, and if it is I’m sure a hack will come along fairly quickly.
You're right, I realized my mistake a few minutes ago. We'll have to see how well the hacks work out. I wonder if a hack is worth it though, you would be concerned about every 10.6.x point release update causing problems.
I remembered about the up to date program about two weeks ago and submitted my form then. my order status is "on backorder". i find that amusing. i'm sure they will send a lot of dvd's out.
I paid $A15 as I bought my MacBook at the end of June, it's set for delivery on the 28th so I'll possibly have it before a lot of you because of the International Dateline.
This is my first update since I updated my Mac Plus from OS 6 to OS 7 many years ago, I remember trying to install a 32 bit program which popped up a window advising me to donate my Plus to the Smithsonian as it wouldn't run on a 16 bit system. (Oh the shame!)
Comments
OK..... this will ruffle a few feathers.
But, on behalf of us lay folks, can someone explain what is so hot about 10.6 (other than setting up for future HW/SW developments, smaller footprint, and a few eye-candy enhancements)? I am not saying improvements are not welcome, but I am just failing to see the great leap forward.......
http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/
http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/
Yeah, I'd seen that already. That's what I looked at first. That's a lot of Apple-talk.
I was looking to get a 'sophisticated' user perspective from AI readers, that's all.
Take a deep breath. It isn't even clear what you're arguing about.
64 bit calculations are not quicker for the majority of tasks. The reason why 64 bit apps are quicker is because of optimizations that occurred along side of the 64 bit transition, not because of the 64 bit support.
It is baffling why this simple clarification is causing so much consternation.
Perhaps you should go back and reread the beginning of this conversation.
I posted a reply to a poster who asked a question about what 64 bit meant to him. His question, which consisted of "64????" indicated that he was not aware of what it is, nor what it will mean to his computing experience.
My answer was a simple one, meant to answer that simple question. The 64 bit nature of SL WILL mean more speed. Refer to the posts above from folks who have actually used it, compared to your purely theoretical answer.
My posts have been my attempt to deal with the frustration of your being unable to understand that your answer was not helpful. It may have been correct, but it was unnecessary.
To say that an OS must be optimized in order to take advantage of the architecture of the hardware it runs on is obvious, and does not need to be detailed to the uninitiated, and the initiated already know the answer, so why get into the details on an open forum? 8 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 8 bit architecture, 16 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 16 bit architecture, and 32 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 32 bit architecture.
So why is it so important to point out the obvious point that 64 bit OSes will ALSO need to be "optimized" to run on 64 bit chips? Do we have to actually SAY it when they come out with 128 bit systems, or will we finally have that figured out?
Yeah, I'd seen that already. That's what I looked at first. That's a lot of Apple-talk.
I was looking to get a 'sophisticated' user perspective from AI readers, that's all.
The short answer is that it will speed up your basic OS functions, it?ll be more secure, and there will plenty of apps that will run faster. What little UI changes there are seem to be for the best with Expose finally working really well, in my opinion. As more apps get updated to utilize Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, if your GPU can use it, you?ll see a lot more performance gains over the life of the product. For $29 I think it?s a great buy. As we?ve already talked about, it?s also more stable out of the gate than any other OS X release I?ve used.
And it it really worth the upgrade?
is safari faster?
Bootup time, is it faster?
does your pc Think a lot(rainbow cirlce)
is iphone and moblie me synching better?
Please reply
Thanks :-)
Dude it's 30 bucks, and practically free for anyone buying since june. Even if it's not that big of step you might as well get it just so you know that you'll be supported by apps down the road.
2/10 - weak troll.
Trim is nice, but only if you have an SSD.
Windows 7 does NOT come with OpenGL 3.0. You will have to install it separately.
Snow Leopard has a full 64-bit kernel on any 64-bit Mac.
That being said, Snow Leopard runs VERY nicely on my 32-bit MacBook Pro (Core Duo) and my 64-bit iMac (Core2Duo).
So you just registered to spew this BS ?
OpenGL 3.0 is available for Windows. IS it for mac ? No ! Why ? Mostly because of Apple.
SSD is bleeding edge of technology that is NOT being best utilized by best operating system ? Why is it that "old" Windows will in couple of months ?!
I can boot 64bit Kernel Windows 7 on my mac pro 8 core with 16 gigs of ram. I wont be able to do that with "best operating system". Dont ask me why i want it , if such a crappy old and useless operating system as windows cn do it how come best in the world cant ?
Is this worth my money if I am just a regular user that doesn't even take full capacity of my existing system? Microsoft 'gives' you Service Pacs for 'free', and Apple gives you Leopard updates for 'free'. Regardless of whether you like MS or not, practically speaking, the mac regular home user may not even benefit huge amounts, but may purchase this for bragging
Leopard to snow Leopard is not a service pack. MS would certinly not give away a complete re-write of explorer. Just because there is not a ton of glitz and wizbang doo-dads but they redid the plumbing in such a way that they are laying the foundation for the next decade of development in the same way that OSX 10.1 did a decade ago.
Some may upgrade to brag, but most will because there is a speed improvment in daily operations and in a few months there will be a flood of better/slicker/faster versions of apps that will use all of the plumbing that OSX 10.6 provides.
The short answer is that it will speed up your basic OS functions, it?ll be more secure, and there will plenty of apps that will run faster. What little UI changes there are seem to be for the best with Expose finally working really well, in my opinion. As more apps get updated to utilize Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, if your GPU can use it, you?ll see a lot more performance gains over the life of the product. For $29 I think it?s a great buy. As we?ve already talked about, it?s also more stable out of the gate than any other OS X release I?ve used.
So far nobody even demo'ed OpenCL app , not even Apple at WWDC had any demos. If any worthy app utilizes it before 10.7 is out i'll be surprised.
Same goes for GDC. From benchmarks it seems newest Motion and Compressor export are +-5% on Leopard and Snow Leopard... so it begs the question. If its "so easy" to code for multicore now , how come Apple is not doing it ?
Because its not easy , not easy at all.
Its nice that groundwork is being laid out , but its little unrealistic to expect this new tech to be utilized anytime soon.
I can boot 64bit Kernel Windows 7 on my mac pro 8 core with 16 gigs of ram. I wont be able to do that with "best operating system". Dont ask me why i want it , if such a crappy old and useless operating system as windows cn do it how come best in the world cant ?
But you also can?t NOT boot into a 64-bit version of Windows and are required to run 64-bit of every app. This is a huge plus for Apple, especially for consumer machines. BTW, the March 2009 Mac Pro can boot into 64-bit or 32-bit kernel.
I have to ask, why do you want a 64-bit kernel of Snow Leopard? Just to say you have it even if it reduces your operation efficiency? Is it not best to have the best running machine possible? If you can run 64 or 32-bit apps natively and your system is considerably more efficient because of it then why are you so worked up about this terminology?
PS: You should try testing the battery duration of any Windows and Leopard/Snow Leopard on any Mac notebook. Perhaps MS should worry more about making their OS more efficient than trying to win over customers with jargon marketing.
So far nobody even demo'ed OpenCL app , not even Apple at WWDC had any demos. If any worthy app utilizes it before 10.7 is out i'll be surprised.
Same goes for GDC. From benchmarks it seems newest Motion and Compressor export are +-5% on Leopard and Snow Leopard... so it begs the question. If its "so easy" to code for multicore now , how come Apple is not doing it ?
Because its not easy , not easy at all.
Its nice that groundwork is being laid out , but its little unrealistic to expect this new tech to be utilized anytime soon.
GDC was created because multicore coding is extremely difficult, not in spite of it. It?s only been a few months that Apple stated that all GDC work has been complete at this stage so that 3rd-party developers can finally work on it without a looming change to the structure. GDC is so very fresh so give it some time to get worked in. The apps that will need it are the slow to be updated anyway, but how is it you know that nothing in Snow Leopard is utilizing it out of the box?
I can boot 64bit Kernel Windows 7 on my mac pro 8 core with 16 gigs of ram. I wont be able to do that with "best operating system". Dont ask me why i want it , if such a crappy old and useless operating system as windows cn do it how come best in the world cant ?
BS, all 8-core Mac Pros will be able to run in 64-bit mode with a 64-bit kernel under Snow Leopard, I've seen Apple knowledge base articles saying as much. If you had an original quad core Mac Pro, then you're out of luck with a 32-bit kernel, supposedly software can run in 64-bit mode though.
How much RAM do you get to use in OS X in Leopard? Or are you blustering here? OS X in 32 bit mode can already access more than 4GB using PAE, this has been true since 10.4. I have not been able to get 32 bit Windows to do the same. My Mac Pro runs Tiger and Leopard in 32 bit mode, and both can access the whole 10GB of RAM that I have.
BS, all 8-core Mac Pros will be able to run in 64-bit mode with a 64-bit kernel, I've seen Apple knowledge base articles saying as much.
Can you show a link to that? The last info on which Apple HW will be able to run a 64-bit kernel are a few betas old but it’s the latest info I have seen.
MacPro4,1 refers to the March 2009 update.
To say that an OS must be optimized in order to take advantage of the architecture of the hardware it runs on is obvious, and does not need to be detailed to the uninitiated, and the initiated already know the answer, so why get into the details on an open forum? 8 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 8 bit architecture, 16 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 16 bit architecture, and 32 bit OSes were "optimized" to run on 32 bit architecture.
So why is it so important to point out the obvious point that 64 bit OSes will ALSO need to be "optimized" to run on 64 bit chips? Do we have to actually SAY it when they come out with 128 bit systems, or will we finally have that figured out?
You don't understand what dfiler is trying to say. What he means is:
For a program written using Cocoa APIs or no APIs at all (e.g. simple C or C++ programs using standard libraries) "optimisation" is not required when going from 32 bit to 64 bit, it's just a matter of recompiling. This will not result in a faster app (according to dfiler).
Apps that use Carbon (e.g. Microsoft Office) cannot just be recompiled, because Apple abandoned 64-bit Carbon. So any developers out there with Carbon-based apps who want to move to 64 bit, also have to move from Carbon to Cocoa. In the process of re-writing their app, they may well optimise the code at the same time, resulting in a faster app. The fact it will also compile to a 64 bit binary is a bonus.
Now for the ironic bit: having defended dfiler, I have to say that he's not entirely correct. 64 bit x86 has twice as many registers as 32 bit x86 and therefore a lot of 32 bit binaries do run faster when the source-code is recompiled as a 64 bit binary. This is not the case with PPC, where 32 bit binaries recompiled to 64 bit binaries will run slightly slower.
On top of that, it's possible that in the process of moving from Carbon to Cocoa (which is not trivial) an application may get slower. If the transition is done quickly, the Cocoa code could well be not as well optimised as the Carbon code was.
AppleInsider published a long article about 64 bit a while back (here). Hopefully, ArsTechnica will soon publish a nice long article about 10.6 that will include discussion of 64 bit (ArsTechnica reviews of OS X are always a good geek read).
Moving on, some folks asked about Core Duo processors. Well, here's the low-down: in their infinite wisdom, Intel decided to decouple the Core brand from the Core microarchitecture. So, despite the "Core Duo" processors having the word "Core" in their name, they are not based on the Core microarchitecture (which is 64 bit), but on a minor evolution of the Pentium-M (which is 32 bit), itself based on the P6 microarchitecture.
More info as always from Wikipedia:
Core Duo
Core Microarchitecture
Pentium-M
P6 Microarchitecture
Can you show a link to that? The last info on which Apple HW will be able to run a 64-bit kernel are a few betas old but it?s the latest info I have seen.
MacPro4,1 refers to the March 2009 update.
I thought you gave us the link I was talking about, but apparently Dlux posted it a week and a half ago.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3696
I thought you gave us the link I was talking about, but apparently Dlux posted it a week and a half ago.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3696
Thanks for the link, though that is only to show if you have a 32-bit or 64-bit processor. It does not tell you if you will have a 64-bit kernel available.
For example, The late-2008 Unibody 13” MacBook has a 64-bit C2D, 64-bit EFI, and the Nvidia 9400M chipset but it can only boot using the 32-bit kernel, while the early-2009 unibody 13” MacBook Pro has all those same things, except with a slightly faster CPU, yet it boot using the 64-bit kernel. The limitation seems very artificial, and if it is I’m sure a hack will come along fairly quickly.
You don't understand what dfiler is trying to say.
I understood what he said well enough. MY point is that I was posting in reply to a poster that seemed not to understand what 64 bit would mean TO HIM.
I did not feel that going through all that stuff you did would mean much to him, but instead, wanted to answer him with a short answer that would sum it all up.
You are probably right, from what I've read elsewhere, but as I said, the details are unimportant. YOU know it, I know it and DEFILER knows it, but the poster I was answering didn't need to know all the gory details, he just wanted to know what it meant to him.
In a nutshell, that means speed. Yes, there may be caveats, but that wasn't important. Others have covered the fact that stability and security would also be included in the reasons for buying in, too, so I didn't need to address those issues.
Thanks for the link, though that is only to show if you have a 32-bit or 64-bit processor. It does not tell you if you will have a 64-bit kernel available.
For example, The late-2008 Unibody 13” MacBook has a 64-bit C2D, 64-bit EFI, and the Nvidia 9400M chipset but it can only boot using the 640bit kernel, while the early-2009 unibody 13” MacBook Pro has all those same things, except with a slightly faster CPU, yet it boot using the 64-bit kernel. The limitation seems very artificial, and if it is I’m sure a hack will come along fairly quickly.
You're right, I realized my mistake a few minutes ago. We'll have to see how well the hacks work out. I wonder if a hack is worth it though, you would be concerned about every 10.6.x point release update causing problems.
This is my first update since I updated my Mac Plus from OS 6 to OS 7 many years ago, I remember trying to install a 32 bit program which popped up a window advising me to donate my Plus to the Smithsonian as it wouldn't run on a 16 bit system. (Oh the shame!)
Here's to a smooth transition.