On Fri, 9 Nov 2007, Phil Meyer wrote:
The problem is much deeper than ISVs not porting to 64 bit systems.
1. SUN has been building 64 bit systems for many years. All SUN platforms
sold from late 1997 on have been 64 bit. That is 10 years now. Where is the
64 bit Java?
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/jre/install-linux-64.html
2. Itanium was a bomb (sales wise) and intel and HP are now twice bitten on
64 bit platforms for commodity users.
Almost everything that HP and Intel sell is 64-bit these days. The reason
that they do not run 64-bit on most of the machines sold is not
capability, but that Windows is still not very stable under 64-bit.
Itanium was a bomb because it took almost forever to compile anything on
it and the initial development systems weighed about as much as a VW Bug.
3. Microsoft has no reason to go to 64 bit platforms and barely pays lip
service to it in order to manage large account requirements.
They are trying to go to 64-bit. They just don't push it because they
know it is not stable.
4. AMD's success building a 64bit commodity 686 compatible CPUs is what
motivated intel to bolt it onto all current intel CPUs.
Yep. And it is still a bitch trying to tell from the packaging if it
supports 64-bit or not. I don't think Intel marketing can count to 64.
5. It is still quite impossible for consumers to recognize 64bit capable CPUs
from marketing materials and part numbers for many main line products. Test:
Which intel Core Duo models are 64bit capable? Test: Are there AMD Turion
models that are 64bit capable that do NOT have 64 in their name?
Currently sold? I doubt it. It is hard finding anything current that
does not support 64 bit. (Using it is a different story.)
So with the heart of US based computing services all dragging their heals on
64 bit platforms, ISVs are extremely reluctant to even look at it.
Unless they run Linux. I have run 64-bit since FC2 and it has worked VERY
well. The number of non-64 bit apps I need to run I can count on one
hand. (And they run fine on my three year old AMD64 laptop.)
If Microsoft actually did what they said they would do (and what they should
have done) and release a 64bit only Vista, then Adobe (and everyone else)
would already be there.
They don't do it because people want to run old apps. (Some of which
cannot be upgraded since they are no longer supported.) They know that if
they ever release a 64-bit only Vista, very few people will use it. They
did the same thing with Windows 95 because people still had Windows 3.1
apps they wanted to run. There are still people who want to run old DOS
games. (And the funny thing is that the people I know who run them do so
on Linux.)
So were they really serious about going to 64bit based platforms?
Yes. They know they have to go there no matter what. 4 gigs is just not
enough ram.
For myself, the actions of a company speak for that company.
Just because they cannot do a thing does not mean they do not want to
do a thing. It just means they are pretty crappy at it.
--
Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.
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