Re:Ending Support for macOS and Linux
by Wowfunhappy on Friday January 24, 2020 @06:16AM
(#22137130)
I'm not a game developer, so I can't really answer your question. But it's worth noting that most of these games are 32 bit on Windows too. I don't know if that's because of middleware or an actual desire to support 32 bit hardware, but regardless, it probably doesn't make sense to use 32 bit on Windows and 64 bit on macOS.
For non-games, a lot of the Mac software that was still 32 bit was using Carbon, which doesn't have a 64 bit variant. Carbon is old as heck, but if you're using it, there's no upgrade path other than a complete rewrite. That may or may not be worthwhile versus EOL'ing the software.
(As a complete tangent, I recently learned that Apple did once promise a 64 bit version of Carbon. The library was present in the developer preview of Leopard, and many devs began building with it. But then it was gone in Leopard's final release, and Apple never mentioned it again.)
For non-games, a lot of the Mac software that was still 32 bit was using Carbon, which doesn't have a 64 bit variant. Carbon is old as heck, but if you're using it, there's no upgrade path other than a complete rewrite. That may or may not be worthwhile versus EOL'ing the software.
(As a complete tangent, I recently learned that Apple did once promise a 64 bit version of Carbon. The library was present in the developer preview of Leopard, and many devs began building with it. But then it was gone in Leopard's final release, and Apple never mentioned it again.)