system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
MacOS No Longer Supports 32-Bit Programs

I know this is not news, but whatever.

Since MacOS no longer supports 32-bit programs, I cannot play certain games on Steam on it (ik, Macs are not for gaming, but BL2 runs fine). My question is, why is it not as simple as adding 32 0s to the beginning of everything in order to convert it into 64-bit? If it *is* that simple, why doesn't the computer just do that automatically whenever a 32-bit program is opened?
gpt
You are correct. If it was as simple as adding the extra zeroes for padding then you could do just that. The issue is that what we call 32 bit and 64 bit are actually not really the same instruction set. 32 bit is Intel x86 and 64 bit is AMD64 (which can also be considered an extension of x86). AMD64 has different calling conventions as well as different memory modes from x86 which means that they aren’t 100% compatible and running 32 bit apps on a 64 bit processor was always going through a translation layer even if you didn’t realize (look up WOW64)