• Welcome to SC4 Devotion Forum Archives.

Apple Phasing Out Support for 32-bit Applications in 2018; SC4 Likely Effected

Started by Tarkus, December 16, 2017, 05:25:31 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Tarkus

For those who haven't heard yet, Apple announced at this year's Worldwide Development Conference (WWDC) that it was going to be phasing out support for 32-bit applications for macOS in 2018.  The main points of the announcement are as follows:


  • Beginning January 2018, no new 32-bit applications will be allowed on the Mac App Store.
  • Beginning June 2018, all apps on the Mac App Store must have 64-bit support.
  • macOS High Sierra (10.13) will be the last version of macOS to support 32-bit applications "without compromise".

As SimCity 4 is a 32-bit application, and it is very, very unlikely that Aspyr would invest in conversion to 64-bit (it would require a complete re-work of the original source code from EA), this would appear to put the future of the Mac port of the game in doubt, particularly once macOS 10.14 is released.  If so, this is a pretty huge blow on Apple's part, and even more damaging to SC4's Mac userbase than Microsoft's changes were for Windows users.

-Alex

dyoungyn

That is truly a sad fact of technology and archaic software that Windows could possible follow suit in the future.  Does this not give hint to the demise of SC4? 

Tarkus

Fortunately, I think Windows, in spite of all the nonsense Microsoft pulled with the SafeDisc drivers on Windows 10 (and the KB3086255 update on Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1), is going to keep 32-bit support around for quite some time still.  Heck, they even went to the extent of making a 32-bit version of Windows 10.  Apple tends to be much, much more prone to wiping out legacy support, and making it difficult to work around that loss (case in point being what they did with PowerPC apps).

-Alex

tomvsotis

Ugh. I can certainly see why Apple is moving toward full 64-bit - it's the endpoint of a long transition that started w Tiger in 2005 - but this sucks for macOS-based SC4 users like me. I haven't upgraded to 10.13 yet because I worried that the new file system might mess w legacy applications (including SC4), and this news means i won't be in any hurry to upgrade to 10.14, either.

fishtick

One Alternative for Mac users is to partition your hard drive and run High Sierra on one side of the partition and the successor to High Sierra on the other side of the partition. I hope most Mac users are backed up and can reinstall SimCity4 from the backup.

I have an old G5 Mac and I partitioned the hard drive to run Leopard on one side and Tiger on the other. (this also allows me to boot into classic layer) I still have the original CD version one SimCity and Rush hour in Leopard.

This technique is still viable to keep playing SimCity4 into the far future. I hope this will quell some of the concern about bit support.

I will contact a Mac expert tech and post more specific advice after I discuss the issue with one of my Mac experts.

evarburg

I don't play on Mac anymore (but I played a loooong time on it and I can empathize !) I finally gave up a few years back, partitioned and installed Win8.1. I reently ugraded to HighSierra 10.13 (because my keyboard died. Don't ask. It became the can of worms from multidimensional Hell) ; had to reinstall the Parallels partition and Windows 8.1. Reinstalled all my SC4 tools programs. Everything works except SC4 Tools. I am having the same problems as I did last summer, (some of the functions... don't function ; I duly went back to the thread I opened here then and followed the instructions again (setting the paths for Steam and saving them) -- except if it worked for the T.E. Editor, and some functions seem OK, it doesn't work for the rest (see pict ; I spare you the actual pict. I took).

My question for now is : can there be a problem of 32 bits versus 64 bits here, even though I am on the partition ? Or is it something else ? (than the last time)