Mac OS 64 Bit version

[MHF NE7]

Support for 32bit Mac Apps will end with macOS 10.15 Catalina, due to be released October 2019. Will there be a 64bit version of HanDBase for Mac?

Thank you for your help.
Mike

[ddhsoftwareadmin]

Hi there,

Thanks for your question. Sadly as of now there isn't a 64 bit version available- I had a beta version to testers in late August but it turned out to have a major issue and the issue is due to some compiler bug, and so far have not found a workaround. So the shorter answer is that as of now I'm still working on this, but a bit frustrated and stymied by the current issue- hopefully I can find a solution soon! In the meantime, if you use HanDBase on your Mac, you may want to wait to upgrade to Catalina when it ships.

[stentor007]

Hi Dave,

I know you have been toiling essentially alone and with really not enough recompense on the whole project. Amazingly this is the best relational DB there is for IOS, yet it would be great to have either a 64bit version or a cloud accessible version. One still worries about losing data and it was nice to have the robust version backup that the Mac Desktop gave. That said, If my iPhone is backed up every night the Handbase data is as well so I’m not too worried.

Big picture, If you had some capital, could you change the business model for HB to expand the usership and ultimately make the continued work on this sustainable with a cloud-based mirror and or a 64bit version?

Best wishes and thanks for all your work.


Dr. Jim — HDB for Palm OS changed my life and practice!!

[leonsphinx]

Still waiting and hoping for a HanDbase update for 64bit Catalina OS support ...

[ddhsoftwareadmin]

Hi Leon- I am still at it, and trying to find a solution to the compiler bug I'm struggling with. I'll post here when I have made some sort of breakthrough!

Dr Jim- just for the sake of completeness, I wanted to share with others that we have been speaking over email about this very topic!

[ddhsoftwareadmin]

Hi everyone,

For the first time in a while I have some good news to share about HanDBase- I have a build that is working in 64 bit mode of HanDBase for Mac!

Spent the entire weekend working at it and really thought I had made some progress yesterday with a workaround that didn't really make any sense to me, but did allow me to load a database (mostly) in the 64 bit version. I sent it to one of the best beta testers on the planet and he found several issues with it and these issues were related to the same issue, just in different instances. Spent all day and evening on it and finally have an understanding of what is going on. Skip ahead to the last paragraph if you're not interested in the why!

So basically the error is due to a compiler optimization on x86 processors only in regards to byte alignment. The symptom I was having was that one section of code would set a variable within a structure, but the rest of the code would see that set somewhere else within the structure. I played for a long time with various data aligning options to try to force them to line up similarly but in the end it was a feature called SSE that is built into the compiler that automatically moves data structures as I'm passing them around in the code. For devs who are interested, this article was the key to explaining it: https://pzemtsov.github.io/2016/11/06/b ... n-x86.html

Once I disabled the SSE feature on the offending functions, things started working like a charm! The headache with this is that I can't disable SSE across the whole app since it also is needed for floating point math to work and so I have to only disable it where things are problematic. So the short version of this is that while it appears to be working now, there may be other features and functions within certain field types and aspects of the program we haven't tested yet that will show their face over the next few weeks while we put the beta through its paces. This means that yes, I do have a beta, and yes, I'd love people to contact me directly if they'd like to test it, but also that there is a possibility that your databases could become corrupt, or lose functionality when using it with this beta build. Hoping that's not the case, but don't want anyone with anything mission critical testing. So for now, i'll start with a small sample size of testers and as we gain confidence in things will distribute to more users. Anyway, good news overall! Have a great week.

[stephenc00]

Yay! Good job. Wish I could help. Not codie enough. Looking forward to the progress!

[MattKauf]

Thank you for your efforts.

I too am not a codie and am simply waiting around looking for the 64-bit version.

Everything I need to know about my contacts and many of the people I look brilliant next to because of the information that is at my fingertips I owe to HanDBase. So the sooner I am able to move data from the stored on Mac to my iPhone, the better.

Good luck on your research.

Matt

[paulori]

I'm with Dr Jim (and I think Evan in another thread). I use HanDBase for lots of things including my anesthesia log and billing. I haven't paid you anything in absolute ages (because you haven't asked!). Would gladly pay a subscription for the app and desktop application. Seems I have to pay subscriptions for so many things nowadays and _none_ of them give me the value that HandBase does.

Dr Paul

[bikerdog]

Like the little train....I knew you could. Thanks for the update and your hard work. Like so many others have noted, HanDBase is part of my life.

Steve F / Boston


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