Is my imac 32 bit or 64 bit

Support for the bit kernel requires four things to be true: You need obviously a bit Intel processor, a Mac that supports bit EFI, hardware for which OS X has bit drivers graphics cards are usually the problematic area here , and a Mac that has not been specifically disallowed from booting the bit kernel — most new Macs support the bit kernel, but white MacBooks are still artificially limited by Apple from booting the bit kernel in Snow Leopard despite hardware that fully supports it. Most if not all of these artificial limitations have been removed in Lion for machines that meet the other bit criteria.

Apple began really pushing bit with its marketing for Snow Leopard, and has been dropping support for bit APIs like Carbon for years — giving developers aiming for Lion guaranteed bit capability both enables them to better take advantage of the architecture improvements and saves them the effort and file size of also supporting a bit version.

That said, bit programs will continue to run fine in Lion, just as they ran fine in Snow Leopard and Leopard before it. The disappearance of bit programs will be gradual, but it is something to be wary of if you continue to use a Core Solo or Core Duo Mac going forward.

The continued push for bit makes me think that we could see machines incapable of running the bit kernel dropped, though that line in the sand could be too faint for most consumers to see, especially given the scarce and not-always-clear documentation on what Macs support it in the first place.

The more likely cutoff point for If Apple continues its trend of dropping products that hold back the platform in one way or another, pre-OpenCL machines seem to be the most likely candidates on the chopping block.

Back to the Mac: Remember that these processor upgrades, while technically possible, were never supported by Apple. Due to the technical difficulties traditionally involved in making applications optimized for multicore CPUs, the majority of computer applications do not effectively use multiple processor cores.

Grand Central Dispatch includes APIs to help programmers efficiently use these cores for parallel programming. Grand Central Dispatch shifts thread handling focus to itself rather than leaving it to specific applications to distribute jobs evenly across cores and clears up unused memory created by inactive or old threads to achieve maximum performance. Apple is also releasing APIs for Grand Central Dispatch for developers to use in their applications and also to analyze specific blocks of code running on Grand Central Dispatch.

A new C and Objective-C language feature named " Blocks " facilitates creation of code that will easily optimize to take advantage of Grand Central Dispatch. OpenCL Open Computing Language addresses the power of graphics processing units GPUs to leverage them in any application, and not just for graphics-intensive applications like 3D games.

OpenCL automatically optimizes for the kind of graphics processor in the Mac, adjusting itself to the available processing power. OpenCL provides consistent numeric precision and accuracy, fixing a problem that has hampered GPU-based programming in the past. Only the most process intensive parts of the application need to be written in OpenCL C without affecting the rest of the code.

It only works with the following Mac GPUs: CUPS the printing system used in many Unix-like operating systems has been updated to version 1. Power management has been improved, with implementation of a new wake on demand feature supported on more recent Macintosh hardware. Should the request require the host computer to wake up , the router sends the necessary special wake-up-packet [50] to the sleeping computer. The Safari web browser has received updates to version 6.

Snow Leopard breaks compatibility with several older versions of some applications, such as Parallels Desktop 3. Printer and scanner drivers used by previous versions of Mac OS X are not compatible with Snow Leopard and will be replaced during Snow Leopard installation. Since the initial release of Snow Leopard many manufacturers have provided compatible drivers that are available via Software Update. Engadget's opinion was that this could be largely because most users would not see a noticeable change in the look and feel of the system.

CNET editors gave it 4 stars out of 5, stating "Intel Mac users will like Snow Leopard's smartly designed interface enhancements, and its Exchange support is a must-have especially with Outlook for Mac on the way. On October 21, , SFGate blogger Yobie Benjamin wrote that the "MacBook Pro that came preloaded with Snow Leopard kicks butt and is a screaming fast machine", but "when I tried to upgrade one of my 'older' MacBooks, it was a fricking disaster from hell". Apart from upgrading, Benjamin also tried a clean install.

But he complained of slowness even after his clean install. He wrote, "I ended up downgrading back to OSX If you want to roll the dice and try, go ahead Lesson learned I'll wait. Mac OS X Server includes these features and other server-related features. Apple initially stated that Server would include ZFS support, but mention of this feature later disappeared from Apple's website and it was not included in the final release due to licensing issues.

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