There
is a totalitarian frame of mind that favors what I would call routinely
hyperbolic language. Some years ago, I
read a book that was published during the Great Cultural Revolution in the
Peoples' Republic of China from 1966 to 1976.
It described the work of an English doctor who had defected to China and
cooperated fully with the regime's propaganda machine. The actual good he did medically, which was
considerable, is not the point. But the
title of the book was classic totalitarian-speak: Away With
All Pests.
Apple
is not the PRC, but their attitude toward individuals and smaller companies in
their orbit of influence is, shall we say, hardly cooperative and democratic in
all cases. Take, for example, the
situation of a small or medium-size software developer, for whom a total rewrite
of their software product is a crippling and possibly prohibitive
undertaking. Now, I'm not a computer
scientist, and so some of what I say may be speculative or even wrong. But from what I can tell, taking an
application written for a 32-bit operating system (which was the typical PC and
Mac system until about 2004, when Intel introduced their 64-bit processor), and
rewriting it for a 64-bit OS is a big deal, and presents all sorts of
backward-compatibility and other issues that may be insurmountable in some
cases. So it's understandable that many
software firms simply haven't bothered yet.
Well,
along comes Apple last June and announces that the next OS upgrade—OS
10.14, called Mojave—will be the last version to support 32-bit software at
all. High Sierra—the one my fairly new
Mac runs—will tolerate 32-bit stuff, but it's the last one that will do so
without problems. So what that means is,
if I have to upgrade my OS beyond what I have now, I risk losing, and am
eventually certain to lose, all my 32-bit software.
Up
until 2016, that included near-vital things like Microsoft Office. Microsoft finally got in gear and issued
64-bit versions of Office for Mac, but those of you clinging to the old
friendly version of Excel that I used to like so much are going to be out of
luck when 32-bit becomes anathema.
Personally,
I stand to lose three different apps that are specialized enough that the supporting
companies are fairly small, or in one case is just open-source freeware hosted
by a government agency. I have no idea
whether these organizations are going to offer 64-bit versions in time for me
to keep using them when the dark day comes that I kiss High Sierra good-by and
grit my teeth and get the new 64-bit-only OS.
But if experience is any guide, I'll lose some valuable software, and
the ability to work with its legacy files, in the process. The last time this happened I lost an
expensive video editing application and all its video files—toast, after only
three or four years.
Of
course, if I had the attitude prescribed by our fearless Apple corporate
leaders, I would not harbor such traitorous thoughts as the notion that Apple
can do anything wrong, and think that the latest OS upgrade is anything other
than an unalloyed boon to humanity. And
I would regard the 32-bit software vendors as running dogs of imperialism, or
whatever the latest totalitarian insult is.
But
I have a life outside of the time I spend on my computer, and in that life I
try to relate to things of permanence and eternal significance: God, for instance, and my place in His
universe. And to God, as the psalmist
tells us, even an entire human lifetime is like grass that springs up in the
morning and dries out and dies by the same afternoon. We may not like that idea, but if an entire
lifetime dwindles into insignificance in the light of eternity, how can I take
seriously the urging of even a corporation as large as Apple that their new
operating system is the greatest thing to come along since—well, since we hope
you can't remember back farther than last week, when we just made you give up
your last 32-bit application.
I'm
not making a lot of sense here, perhaps, but I'm trying to express something
about the culture of Apple, or at least the attitude it tries to encourage
among its customers, that I find distasteful, unhelpful, and pernicious if
carried outside the narrow field of software and applied to life in
general. It's basically the attitude
that I must have the newest, latest, most advanced of everything in order not
just to be happy, but to be able to function in society at all. And because so many things we do now, from contacting
friends to doing our jobs, depend on software products, Apple has the raw power
to enforce that attitude at the pain of our being severely inconvenienced in
various ways. I don't expect the Apple secret
police to show up at my door and haul me away if they find out I'm running
32-bit scanner software. But just the
other day, I had to let go of a Canon scanner that was still mechanically
perfect because I discovered that there are no drivers available for it that
are compatible with the operating system of the Mac I bought last spring. What's the difference between having a
scanner worth $100 quit working because of something Apple did, and paying a
$100 fine to the cops? Not a lot that I
can tell.
Calmer
heads will urge me to take the bitter with the sweet, and will remind me of all
the good things I can do with computers and software that I wouldn't be able to
do otherwise, and to take upgrade losses like this in stride. Well, maybe they have a point. But Apple in particular is running its 32-bit
ban in a rather cultural-revolutionish way, and unless everybody decides to abandon
Macs altogether in protest (which is about as likely as it was for 700 million
Chinese to revolt in 1966), we will all have to knuckle under and give up our
32-bit applications. All I can hope for
is that my new machine keeps running a long time and I don't have to get the
new OS for any reason. And maybe those
three software outfits will come out with 64-bit versions of their software,
but I'm not holding my breath on that either.
Sources: Last
July 9, Computerworld carried the article "What Apple's 32-bit app phase-out on Mojave means to
you" at https://www.computerworld.com/article/3269007/apple-mac/what-apples-32-bit-app-phase-out-on-mojave-means-to-you.html. And I also referred to an article at the PC
Magazine website at https://www.pcmag.com/article/350934/32-bit-vs-64-bit-oses-whats-the-difference.
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