Apple unveiled the next iteration of its macOS at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2018 yesterday. The newest version of macOS is called Mojave and it brings a handful of features to the platform. It has now been confirmed that Mojave will be the last version of macOS to support 32-bit apps. It’s going to significantly accelerate the phasing out of 32-bit apps.
Apple announced support for 64-bit apps with Mac OS Leopard back in 2007 and it has gradually been phasing out 32-bit apps since then.
Apple vice president of software Sebastien Marineau confirmed at the WWDC State of the Union event that macOS Mojave version 10.14 will be the last release of the operating system to “support 32-bit at all.”
He added that one of Apple’s key missions with Mac has always been to extend its capabilities and leverage latest technologies. This often requires to deprecate legacy functionality to ensure that it doesn’t hold the platform back. That’s why Apple has decided to not support 32-bit apps beyond Mojave.
This will result in the QuickTime framework, Carbon HLTB, and Java 1.6 Apple framework being removed. Apple has also confirmed that the new Xcode 10 is going to drop support for 32-bit apps as well. This significant change is obviously going to have no impact on the development of 64-bit apps.
Filed in . Read more about macOS Mojave.