16 bit?

S

Silock

Registered
Is the underlying structure of OS X 16-bit? I thought that Mac OS had been fully 32 bit for years...am I wrong?

Note: I don't do linux, I don't do unix. I do graphic design and the extent of my technical knowledge is keyboard shortcuts :) Go easy on me guys. Talk to me like I'm stupid. I just MIGHT understand then :)
 
I don't know where you got the idea OS X might be 16 bit. It's based largely on NeXTStep and assorted BSD Unix OSes, which have been 32 bit longer than Mac OS.
 
Windows has some 16-bit things here and there lying around in the cruft that has accumulated since Win 3.1 ran on top of DOS. Back in the early nineties, many PCs used 16-bit chips. Windows 2000 will be the first version of Windows that gets rid of all that cruft (at least, if we believe Microsoft, it will)

I don't know about old 68K macs, but PowerPC has used 32-bit instructions from the word go. Since the only 68K code anywhere in OS X should be 68K emulation inside Classic's OS 9, that would be the only place where there might conceivably be 16-bit code.
 
The mac has never ever used 16bit code, ever. Ever ever ever. Not even the oldest crustiest mac software ever written.

How do these rumors get started?
 
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