Now, try rebooting and forcing 64-bit mode by holding down the “6” and the “4” key during boot.
![macbook 32 or 64 bit macbook 32 or 64 bit](https://photos5.appleinsider.com/archive/gallery/12237-5921-150320-Boot_Camp-l.jpg)
See that line “64 bit Kernel and Extensions”? The value “no” means that you’re not running in 64-bit mode. Click on “Software” and if you’re running in 32-bit mode, you’ll see this: This will launch “System Profiler” and if you look down the left side you’ll see the major categories of “Hardware”, “Network” and “Software”. This doesn’t show you whether you’re running in 32-bit or 64-bit mode, though, so to ascertain that you have to go through a slightly different hop… click on the “Apple” menu and choose “About This Mac” then click on the “More Info…” button. Hmmm… I expect that to change fairly soon! But if you look closely, you’ll see that iTunes is also still a 32-bit application. Third party apps, like Adobe Air (which runs Seesmic Desktop) and Microsoft Entourage run as 32-bit applications, no surprise there. As you can see, some programs run in 64-bit mode, while others run in 32-bit mode, approximately 50/50 on my computer. Launch it and you’ll see something like this: One example that’ll be critical for our needs is the Activity Monitor, which you can find in “Applications” –> “Utilities”. In a lot of ways, I think that the 64-bit capability of the operating system is there for future growth of the platform, not because your iMac or PowerBook can handle it (or needs it, for that matter).įor an operating system that Apple has said is all about fixes and tweaks, there’s actually rather a lot of new stuff that shows up, and a lot of code has been rewritten and enhanced without much fanfare.
#Macbook 32 or 64 bit mac os x
Before we go further, realize that the majority - if not the vast majority - of people running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard are running in 32-bit mode.