There’s been some skepticism about whether or not Apple’s next Operating System, Snow Leopard, will support 32-bit. Many believe Snow Leopard will be 64-bit exclusive and with what’s rumored to be less than a month ’till release, only time can truly tell. While this may be true, some pretty convincing information has been released on Amazon.com that leads me to believe otherwise.
On Amazon’s Pre-Order page for the Snow Leopard $29 Upgrade, it clearly lists the System Requirements. The System Requirements are split into two sections and it’s these two sections that give me what I believe to be the convincing information that I need to believe Snow Leopard will support 32-bit. If you look at the second section, Feature-Specific requirements (Read: Optional Requirements), you will see listed “64-bit support requires a Mac with a 64-bit processor.” In other words, 64-Bit support is Feature-Specific/Optional and only needed for certain features (such as the 64-bit kernel). Everything listed in the “Feature-Specific requirements” is optional as can be seen by the other items listed in this section including Boot Camp, Time Machine, and Photo Booth, all of which are optional. If all of these are optional then there’s no reason why if 64-Bit Support, which is listed under this same section, wouldn’t also be optional. Screenshots of the page are below, just in case Amazon tries to change their page. By the way, if the image looks a little funky its because I put together two screenshot to make one panoramic image.
So what do you think? Is this evidence enough? Drop a comment below and let me know.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:12 PM
Can you provide us with the a guide on the sets you took to install snow leopard on your 1525.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:36 PM
Ummm…. would this do?
August 16th, 2009 at 8:41 PM
If you needed any more proof.
August 14th, 2009 at 9:52 PM
For anybody still wondering, Snow Leopard does support 32-bit. I used to own the Dell 1525 and have posted on this site before, but since then I have upgraded to a MacBook Pro and am running Snow Leopard Build 10A432. You can specify whether you’d like it to boot in 32-bit mode or 64-bit mode using kernel flags, and the developer documentation that comes with it states that it will run on macs that aren’t 64-bit capable. Also, the MacBookPro1,1 (not my model) has a Core Duo which is 32-bit only, and it runs fine.
However, my 1525 (and I assume many others) had a 64-bit capable processor; Leopard was running in 64-bit mode on mine. Basically, Snow Leopard shouldn’t pose much more of a problem than Leopard from what I can see.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:32 AM
Woohoo!
August 12th, 2009 at 12:02 AM
If it does support 32-bit, I’m going to be installing it on my Mini 9 when it comes out.