Microsoft reveals Office for Mac 2011 will be 32-bit only

the8thark · Jun 10, 2010

Microsoft reveals Office for Mac 2011 will be 32-bit only
AppleInsider | Microsoft reveals Office for Mac 2011 will be 32-bit only

Set for release this fall, Microsoft's forthcoming Office for Mac 2011 will only be available as a 32-bit product because it hasn't completely transitioned to Cocoa for Mac OS X.

One word Lazy. Microsoft haver had long enough to learn how to code in Cocoa and get products into 64-bit. Seriously I can see 2011 being a big year for 64-bit on OS X. And a lot of the apps being native and taking full advantage of 64-bit. Sure most people won't know the difference. But it just means Office 2011 will be behind the 8 ball to begin with. Not a good start for the application.

NumberSix · Jun 10, 2010

Excuse my ignorance, but if you say "Sure most people won't know the difference", then what's the big deal?

What's the difference between a 32bit and a 64bit app?

the8thark · Jun 11, 2010

NumberSix said:
Excuse my ignorance, but if you say "Sure most people won't know the difference", then what's the big deal?

The big deal is the few people who will notice usually work for large companies or are major software developers or media publishers. And these few people spend up very big with their software purchases for themselves or on behalf of the company they work for. And if they go "no 64-bit? I won't buy" then that is a lot of revenue dollars MS would not have gotten.

And to answer your other question:
A 64-bit App is designed to run on a 64-bit OS. And some links can help explain what a 64-bit OS is.

The Lifehacker Guide to 64-bit vs. 32-bit Operating Systems
Understanding the Difference between 64-bit and 32-bit Systems.

A google search wil get you more info.

chscag · Jun 11, 2010

Not to mention the fact that a 32 bit app will not utilize all the memory that is available to the OS as would a 64 bit one. Not sure how much memory Office 2008 uses (I guess I could check easy enough) but I know it uses more than iWork and is slower.

BTW, Office 2010 for Windows (selling right now) is 64 bit. So we can see where MS placed its priority.

Regards.

NumberSix · Jun 11, 2010

Well in the very first article posted, MS is saying that the 32bit version is selling more than the 64bit version

Anyway, i wasn't saying "what's the big deal" in the sense of "who cares" but really wondering if that was a problem

From what I've read in all these articles, it really won't make that much of a difference. The only place it would make a difference would be on very large databases.

I can see where this would be a problem for media files (very large image/video/audio files), but not so much for the average Word or Excel document

louishen · Jun 11, 2010

Not sure it is much of an issue.

You are doing something seriously wrong if you are doing a PowerPoint presentation that needs more than 4 gig of RAM.

Remember, that even in 32 bit OSX each app can grab up to 4 gig of memory

Steelgrave · Jun 11, 2010

the8thark said:
The big deal is the few people who will notice usually work for large companies or are major software developers or media publishers. And these few people spend up very big with their software purchases for themselves or on behalf of the company they work for. And if they go "no 64-bit? I won't buy" then that is a lot of revenue dollars MS would not have gotten.

The big deal is a "few" people... lol

Large companies all have volume licensing and enterprise agreements. It's paid for whether the 3 Mac guys use it or not.

Not to mention the idea of needing 64 bit for a word document or excel spreadsheet is completely ridiculous. If your word doc sucks down more than 3.25GB of ram, you need to re-evaluate what you're doing to start with.

technologist · Jun 11, 2010

Compatibility and features are far more of an issue with Office than memory limits. If Microsoft addresses those as it has promised to do, then it'll have a winner on its hands.

Besides, even Keynote and Pages are still 32-bit apps.

louishen said:
You are doing something seriously wrong if you are doing a PowerPoint presentation that needs more than 4 gig of RAM.

Very true. I find it hard to imagine the kind of Office documents that would require that kind of memory.

Given how slow the current Office runs even with small documents, I imagine the layout and display code would seize up long before any file hit the RAM limit.

Microsoft reveals Office for Mac 2011 will be 32-bit only

the8thark

NumberSix

the8thark

chscag

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NumberSix

louishen

Steelgrave

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