hoakley April 17, 2018 Macs, Technology

Is Apple about to drop QuickTime, DVD and iWork support, and Compressor?

Apple has started the process of naming and shaming those apps which still don’t run in 64-bit mode, in readiness for macOS 10.14 later this year. In doing so, it appears to have revealed some of its own intentions over macOS and its own apps, including the future of QuickTime and DVD support.

Follow Apple’s advice on how to check whether your Mac’s apps are still 32-bit, and you’ll only see the tip of the iceberg. As Apple makes clear in its documentation for High Sierra’s new (experts only) 64-bit testing mode:
“The 64-bit testing mode prevents 32-bit processes from launching. Launching an app that depends on 32-bit software results in a notification that the application can’t be opened. Other types of software may fail silently, such as 32-bit versions of Dashboard and WebKit plugins, preference panes, and background processes.”

My own tool 32-bitCheck, available from Downloads above, goes deeper than Apple’s app check, and checks all software bundles. In doing so, it reveals that many of the components included in High Sierra 10.13.4 are still not 64-bit. This could, of course, simply be that Apple hasn’t got round to updating its own products yet. But remaining 32-bit bundles form quite a distinctive pattern, or some extraordinary coincidence.

So, which Apple software in 10.13.4 is likely to “fail silently” when in this new 64-bit testing mode?

Quite a few items in /System/Library, including:

QuickTime – 13 components are still 32-bit, as are QuickTime-related items in /System/Library/Extensions and /System/Library/Components,
PrivateFrameworks – 7 of Apple’s private frameworks are still 32-bit, including DVD,
Frameworks – 7 public frameworks are still 32-bit, including QuickTime, Carbon (inevitably), and Scripting,
Input Methods/InkServer.app.

The pattern in /Library is similar:

Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins/AppleMXFExportFCP.bundle,
Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter,
QuickTime – 9 components.

In Applications, there are some significant additions:

DVD Player,
Numbers’ iWork converters,
iMovie’s Compressor Plugin and 7 components,
Keynote’s iWork support tools,
Pages’ iWork import and support tools,
Compressor – the app itself, 7 components, 5 frameworks, Droplet and its helper.

It’s worth recalling that Apple dropped support for QuickTime for Windows two years ago.

Apple is most unlikely to convert existing 32-bit software to 64-bit only to drop it in 10.14. While some of the affected products may yet live into macOS 10.14, Apple’s move to 64-bit has most probably revealed its intention to drop QuickTime, iWork compatibility support, DVD Player and replay of DVD-video disks, and Compressor. It also puts a question mark over the future of scripting, and Ink as an input method.

Apple may of course have decided to continue to support QuickTime in the 32-bit compatibility mode which is likely to be offered in 10.14, albeit running with a “penalty”.

We should learn more in early June, at WWDC.

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1

buggybite on April 17, 2018 at 10:30 am

This is scary stuff …not because Apple may be dropping things that people no longer use, but because they may be dropping things that people DO still use. (Yes, we do still watch DVDs on our computers, guys. In fact, we’ve invested quite a bit of money in our DVD collection.)

Pages import and support tools are also very important to me, for example. I’m not sure exactly what the relationship with the present Pages and iWork, may be, but if this change means I’ll be struggling to import and export files via the present version of Pages, this is really going to hamstring me.

The days when I used to regard ‘new’ Apple products and software with excitement and anticipation are long gone. Now, every time there’s an announcement like this, I think “Oh SHIT. What am I going lose the ability to do THIS time?”

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- 2
  
  hoakley on April 17, 2018 at 10:34 am
  
  As I wrote, I suspect that Apple may still be leaving some (if not all) in 10.14, but only when it is run in 32-bit compatibility mode.
  Looking into my crystal ball, that may be the case during 10.14, then in 10.15 the plan is to drop all 32-bit support, perhaps when starting the migration to new processors?
  We should know more in a couple of months, when Apple reveals the roadmap at WWDC.
  Howard.
  
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3

Jerry Fritschle on April 17, 2018 at 6:08 pm

The 4.4.1 Compressor update, of 4/9, does not produce this nag screen even though I understand it to still be 32-bit. This might mean that it’s making some sort of promise of future compatibility, and Apple trusts its own apps in that respect 🙂

I’ve personally thought that the dropping of Carbon support will be the first so-called “compromise.” I have one old favorite from this time, PageSpinner, that I still use with some regularity.

I’m just hoping that my 5,1 cheese grater MP makes the cut for 10.14. Some others have speculated that Metal would be the cutoff, but I don’t know how that would square with whatever 32-bit support is remaining.

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- 4
  
  hoakley on April 17, 2018 at 6:13 pm
  
  Thank you.
  Yes – not only does Compressor 4.4.1 not result in the warning, but DVD Player doesn’t either, although both are still thoroughly 32-bit. I’m not quite sure how they cheated those through, but not surprised.
  I don’t see any reason that your Mac should be excluded from the 64-bit future, and given Apple’s continuing delay in coming up with a new Mac Pro, it would seem only reasonable. My fingers are crossed for you, and many others.
  Howard.
  
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5

Michael Tsai - Blog - macOS 10.13.4 to Warn About 32-bit Apps Starting April 12 on April 17, 2018 at 6:38 pm

[…] Howard Oakley: […]

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6

Tony on April 19, 2018 at 3:29 pm

I agree with the comments here about still using DVDs on occasion; I also think that dropping DVD support could be construed as having a commercial motive for a company that sells downloads. It would also irk that Windows can still do both DVD and BluRay.

However, I’m not convinced that the 64-bit conversion is a big deal. QT may have some ancient components or tricky CODECs but DVD player was (IIRC) rewritten for OS X (isn’t that why it was missing in the first release?). That makes it modern in some important respects: it should be Obj-C, not Pascal, and likely contain no assembler. So, if it was well written, it will need some fairly simple review and then recompiling.

The same may go for components of the ‘new’ iMovie and, on reflection, QT Player too since that also is a new generation app (replacing QT around 2010).

Random example: I moved a non-trivial code base to 64-bit a couple of years ago. It was Obj-C (mine) and legacy, but portable, C. The original author of the C code advised me of a single change I should make then I recompiled… Nothing. The new app worked fine, just a little faster than the 32-bit compile. So if Apple’s code is clean, maybe they’ve just not got around to it yet.

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- 7
  
  hoakley on April 19, 2018 at 3:36 pm
  
  I’m sure that third parties will still be able to write apps which play DVDs in external (and any remaining internal) drives.
  I’m also fairly confident that, if Apple was intending to port any of these to 64-bit versions, then it would already have done so.
  There’s two feasible explanations, given the pattern: either the QuickTime engineers have been on sabbatical for the last year, or QuickTime will never go 64-bit. And I think the same applies to DVD Player and Compressor.
  Howard.
  
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8

Rachel Phillips on May 16, 2018 at 11:15 pm

10.14 the 32bit and dvd unsupport is a deal breaker for me.
I never installed high sierra, after so many issues with sierra: such as with contant address book errors, opendirecty errors.
Lets not forget the playing nanny and disabled root, without prompting to ask.

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- 9
  
  hoakley on May 17, 2018 at 5:03 am
  
  Have you checked to see how many of your current apps are still 32-bit?
  Other than DVD playing (which will surely be covered by 3rd parties), you may not be so badly affected.
  Howard.
  
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