What's it doing that would benefit from the extra horsepower? If there's not much to be gained, I guess it's a lot easier to just keep it more backwards-compatible by keeping it 32-bit.
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Not that I want to get caught up in this, but I suppose it depends on your definition of 'more powerful'. To me it's contextual: for a particular given task, I think a useful working definition would be 'gets the job done faster'. So for audio or graphics or maths processing (for example), a true 64-bit application working with a lot of ram will be able to move more stuff around per second than one using only 32 bits, assuming the processor is up to the job.
In a non-processor-intensive situation, such as just playing music through speakers (which a 400MHz G4 with 512Mb of ram will do quite happily in iTunes) then 64-bit is superfluous, I think.
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#546201 - 12/03/1009:29 PMRe: Why is iTunes not 64-bit?
[Re: padmavyuha]
carp
Dino's are Babe magnets
Registered: 04/19/02
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Correct - Pady Yep depends on ones point of view.
Analogy if I can. Car engines.
You have a 240 horse power engine - throwing in a high octane gas, will make it run faster --> However the engine is still 240 horse power and certainly not more powerful, ya just fooled it or tricked it into thinking, its faster.
The basic limitation is a hard-drive one. I think the hard-drive access of the library-size of iTunes is a maximum 4 TeraBytes, which, of course, is greater than the 32-bit addressable limitation of 4 GigaBytes. iTunes is listed in System Profiler as being a 32-bit application, but this pertains mainly to the maximum RAM/virtual-memory-size of the running executable (assuming, of course, that one has a machine with that much RAM/virtual-memory, with room for the other apps and MacOSX Operating System to spare). You really don't have all of the iTunes library loaded into RAM/virtual-memory at once. Theoretically, 64-bits can address 18.44 (decimal) ExaBytes (18.44 quintillion unique combinations), but no one person has that much RAM/virtual-memory. Even Apple's 64-bit executables don't use that full range.
I have to disagree with your analogy, carp - if you choose to use the word 'powerful' just to describe the rated horsepower of the engine (its measured ability to pull against resistance, a standard which is measured assuming a particular grade of fuel), then yes, that hasn't changed.
But the actual horsepower increases when you use a richer fuel - the engine can do more work with the same hardware when you introduce a richer fuel. It's not a trick, it actually happens.
*edit* Someone mentioned getting a Ferrari and only being allowed to drive it in 1st gear. I suppose the analogy here is that driving around the suburb of iTunes, there's no need to be going at 160mph, so top gear (or 64-bit processing) is irrelevant. It's only in places where you actually could drive the hardware that fast (such as maths/graphics etc. contexts) that it would make a noticeable difference if you could go into top gear.
Edited by padmavyuha (12/04/1010:07 AM)
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While 64-bit memory addressing will speed up certain operations, like applying filters to massive Photoshop images, or encoding video, I'm not sure iTunes would benefit a whole lot from getting 64-bit. Hard drive speed has more to dow with those operations too.
I suppose if you were converting a ton of MP3s at once it **might** benefit a tad bit, but that really requires processor power and hard drive speed, not RAM power.
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