[OtinG]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I think that Apple announced that 32 bit apps would be phased out several years ago. The current version warns that the app is not optimized for the mac if it's 32 bit. I would suggest that any company that hasn't updated their apps to 64 bit by now might not be actively working on that app. Heck, even Bare Bones updated Yojimbo to 64 bit.

With that said, if older apps are important, then don't upgrade. I keep my mac mini at Sierra for just that reason since several apps that I use stopped working with High Sierra.

One of the big reasons that Microsoft had so many problems with various releases of Windows is that they wanted to maintain support for old versions of software, many of which depended on "undocumented features" of the operating system. Maintaining backward compatibility can be a huge drag on moving forward. Apple has always been aggressive about forcing developers to only use the documented API and has been very upfront about backwards compatibility not being a major design criteria.

From a personal point of view, when I notice that an app hasn't been updated in a while and no longer seems to be under active development, I like to start looking for a replacement for it. That's not always possible, especially if you have hardware support requirements (I have a weather station hooked up as well as a USB scanner) but I've found it to be a good rule of thumb. At the moment, on my main computer, I don't have any 32 bit apps left that I actively use.

I certainly don't blame Apple for dropping the 32 bit app support. And yes, a lot of current developers are being lazy and cheap by not updating their apps. However, the biggest impact to me personally will be over freeware developed for my two hobbies of astrophotography and amateur radio (I'm a ham operator). It is rare to find any apps for these two niche areas, and unfortunately most of those were written long ago and do not support 64 bit. Since they were freeware, I cannot complain. I understand the authors not wanting to spend the time and money to update them. I used to publish a new book every few years to help people studying for the US Amateur Radio Extra Class exam pass their math portion. In the book I looked at each possible math question and showed how to resolve it. Since the question pool was updated every few years, I had to create a new edition of my book every few years. I sold it for only $0.99 at first only because Amazon would not let me list it for free several years ago when I published the first edition. Eventually they allowed me to list at for free, so I dropped the price to $0.00. The point was not to make money, but to help other hams on their more advanced exams. It took a lot of work to create each new edition, so I finally stopped doing that with the last question pool update. Too much time was required, and not enough energy left in my old bones! So I get why these app authors don't want to invest any more time in their old freeware apps. But it will still be an inconvenience to no longer have them on my main Mac.

I always wait until the final release of MacOS and iOS before installing. I prefer to let others find the bugs. And I prefer to wait and see how the new OS will effect speed and performance on my older devices. I'll decide whether to install Catalina in the Fall. I'm pretty sure I'll install iOS 13 on my iPhone XR and iPad Pro 9.7" though. The new iPhone XR will definitely have the power to use iOS 13, but I'm not sure about my older iPad as it is already a bit sluggish on iOS 12.