Holy moly! Is anyone else wondering why this took so long? It's almost 2018 for god sakes. I don't think I've used a 32-bit program in over a decade.
Yeah flash is 32 bit but flash has been dead for the greater part of that decade. Not sure how it could possibly be the case that moz was still shipping 32-bit Firefox as default until yesterday.
You must run a very limited set of programs to not have run a single 32-bit one in over 10 years. Even now, on my 64-bit Windows 10, I open my task manager and see over a dozen 32-bit programs running (mostly background processes). You might be running 64-bit Windows, but WoW64 (32-bit binaries on 64-bit Windows) is used constantly.
Nope, I just don't use Windows. I use Linux and MacOS where, if you don't do anything too out of the ordinary you are in 64bit land 100% of the time. On my Mac I don't see any 64 bit programs running and on Arch everything is pretty modern.
Windows still ships both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and there are still a lot of people with older devices, such as netbooks, that are running 32-bit versions.
Consequently, when you're shipping software for Windows, it's beneficial to have a 32-bit version to capture that part of the userbase. But since 64-bit Windows will also happily run 32-bit apps, once you have a 32-bit version, there's no particular reason to have a 64-bit one. The only time you get something from 64 bits is when you need a lot of memory, which most apps do not. On the other hand, by having a single version, you simplify the acquisition and installation story for the users, cut your testing matrix in half etc.
I don't play games on my computer but if I did I think that is an OK divergence especially for older titles. This is a web browser we are talking about.
The venn diagram of Firefox users and people who believe Windows 7 32bit is still the best version of Windows and refuse to upgrade probably has a decent amount of overlap.
These are the realities of shipping for the minority not the majority. Users who are a blip for some companies end up being huge to others.
Are there slam-dunk arguments why 64-bit is always better for applications? If so, I haven't seen them, and neither have various people I follow who seem to know what they're talking about.
When our CAD people work on large 3D models, Autodesk Inventor will happily gobble up 32 GB of RAM, and if they had machines with 64 GB, I suspect it would make good use of those, too. Also, I am told editing high-res graphics and video benefit both from the larger address space and the ability to use more RAM.
But I admit, these are the exception to the rule.
Having used both Linux and Windows in 32 and 64 bit versions - in a few cases on the same machine -, I did not notice a difference in performance[1]. If the performance hit due to 64bit is really that substantial, I could imagine the larger number of registers (and possibly larger caches) make up for that.
[1] Possibly, as so often in the days before SSDs, I/O was enough of a bottleneck that the difference between 32 and 64 bit code became unnoticeable.
There aren't. For most apps, producing 32-bit-only is preferable. If you're going to produce 32-bit and 64-bit, you should make available a stub installer that downloads the right one or an installer with both in it because most users have no idea if their OS is 32-bit or 64-bit. Mainly because they don't even know what that means.
Because of plugins. Browsers have more plugins than most other software and the bitness needs to match between all of them.
And saying the flash has been dead for the greater part of a decade is just completely wrong. You have to be just really, completely out of the loop if you think that applies to any kind of reality for general users.
Yeah flash is 32 bit but flash has been dead for the greater part of that decade. Not sure how it could possibly be the case that moz was still shipping 32-bit Firefox as default until yesterday.