Snow Leopard: going to a full 64-bit OS

Question

Even with Snow Leopard installed, many applications remains in 32-bit. I've listed my apps still in in 32-bit:

• Adobe Reader
• Firefox
• QuickSilver
• iTunes
• GrowlHelperApp
• Dropbox
• SQuirreL SQL (it's a Java app)
• Flash Player
• PlugSuitAgent
• twhirl (runs over Adobe Air)
• GoogleTalkPlugin

Is there a 64-bit version of any of the above applications? Where can I find them? I could search one-by-one, but there should be a central place where one could download all 64-bit version of these common applications for Snow Leopard

Answer 1

The apps will go 64 bit as time permits, I'm sure. Stay up to date and 64 bitness will gradually pervade your non-Apple (and Apple's -- many Apple apps are still 32 bit and will likely be for a while) applications.

Unless you can eliminate every last 32 bit process from your machine, there is no penalty to running 32 bit applications in that all of the 32 bit versions of the frameworks & dylibs will be loaded anyway.

Answer 2

64-bit flash player is ONLY available on linux,according to what adobe says Here

Answer 3

You can use the built-in 64-bit Preview application to replace most of the functionality of Adobe Reader. There isn't a 64-bit version of iTunes, Dropbox, Flash Player or Evernote yet.

Answer 4

As for SQuirreL, you just have to run it with the Java 6 64 bits version of Java.

What I did was to download the latest version from SQuirreLSQL home page.

And in the Java Preferences select Java 6 64 bits as preferred for applications.

If you need to swap between java versions, you could modify the following script:

/Applications/SQuirreLSQL.app/Contents/MacOS/squirrel-sql.sh

To make it point to the Java 1.6 path:

I have it like:

oscarreyes$ head squirrel-sql.sh 
#! /bin/sh

[ ${JAVA_HOME} ] && JAVA=${JAVA_HOME}/bin/java || [ /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/Home ]  && JAVA=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/Home/bin/java  || JAVA=java

I had it like this even before using SnowLeopard.

Answer 5

It is yet to soon to find 64-bit software for Snow Leopard. Give it time and they should pop up. But the general trend is to leave the software as it is unless they are forced to change it.

Answer 6

Some applications are not available in 64 bit. Some applications won't be available in 64 bit. And some applications don't have to be available in 64 bit.

Snow Leopard, as did leopard, only supports 64 bit Darwin and Cocoa applications (ignoring Java). Carbon remains 32 bit. iTunes is a Carbon application and will remain 32 bit until Apple rewrite huge parts of it to port it to Cocoa.

Apparently all of the Cocoa applications (except Terminal.app?) that came with Snow Leopard are not 64 bit (if running on a 64 bit computer). But for some applications there is simply no benefit of running them as 64 bit code.

Incidentally, I found that the Snow Leopard kernel and many (or possibly all) of the Unix tools are universal binaries supporting x86 (32 bit Intel), x86_64 (64 bit Intel) and PPC (PowerPC).