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Apple to Phase Out Rosetta 2 Starting With macOS 28 as Intel Era Ends
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We should rename this The Apple Luddite Forum 🤣. I started using Macs with System 6 on a Mac SE30. I have upgraded my hardware over the years from Motorola 68000 to Power PC G5 to Intel I9 in a 2017 iMac and now to a M4 Pro Mac Mini. If you are going to complain, complain to the app developer for not updating their software. This hand wringing reminds me of one of my friends - he is a PC user and bemoans the fact that Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP! So he has an old laptop to play PC games that were not updated since Windows XP.
Exactly. Don’t rock the boat as high end tech in general is pricey. I’m a builder and was chatting with a surveyor a couple of years ago, who was showing me how his gps was accurate to a couple of mm for marking out boundaries; I asked how much and he replied that his office spent $60kNZD per year on it. Computers, tablets, phones, watches etc are engineering marvels, super tough and reliable, last for many years with free updates and generally cost a fraction of the price of other tech!
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It seems like it. Though they did manage to figure out how to get 32-bit apps to run when Apple dropped support.
Back in 2005, remember...? Steve Jobs' "it's TruE"... Moving from PPC to Intel. (BTW, both CEOs from back then, Steve Jobs and Paul Otellini, have passed away...).
What a moment that was....! The start of a new era!
My first Intel based Mac, was the 2008 Mac Pro (3.1). What a superb machine that was. Fast, upgradable grfx card, Boot Camp..... it was all computer to all things for me! So much better than the Quad G5 I had before it.
I love my current M4 Max Mac Studio for sure, but I loved that period of affordable Intel-based Mac Pros!
I know most people over here are happy to see Intel's gone, but to me: it saved the Mac for over 15 years. So reading this title "... with macOS 28 as Intel Era Ends" does make me somewhat sad.
What a moment that was....! The start of a new era!
My first Intel based Mac, was the 2008 Mac Pro (3.1). What a superb machine that was. Fast, upgradable grfx card, Boot Camp..... it was all computer to all things for me! So much better than the Quad G5 I had before it.
I love my current M4 Max Mac Studio for sure, but I loved that period of affordable Intel-based Mac Pros!
I know most people over here are happy to see Intel's gone, but to me: it saved the Mac for over 15 years. So reading this title "... with macOS 28 as Intel Era Ends" does make me somewhat sad.
Some application developers are no longer alive, some are working for different companies, some applications may require too much refactoring and need to consider their ROI...There are numerous reasons some software will not be updated, and Apple just gave developers with small MacOS user bases yet another reason to drop support for MacOS altogether.
I'm particularly concerned about older video games and indie game developers. I use my MacBook for productivity primarily, but it's nice to know I can fire up some games, like Hades, Undertale, etc. To be fair, I'm not sure which or how many of my games could still be using x86 architecture, but that is something that will impact my personal purchasing decision when the time comes to upgrade my laptop. At least Windows has a compatibility mode.
What you say about the app developers is absolutely true. ROI is also a consideration for Apple too, they have to decide how much money to spend for supporting Intel compatibility vs. how much it gains them in sales. There is also time/money/performance to save by not having to have to support two different codes in the OS. Intel is also a major contributor to this problem: 1) Not willing to develop the processor that Apple needed for the iPhone. 2) Their technology stalled for the longest time at 14 nm which was too hot running for the Apple laptops.
As for the older video games on older hardware, sooner or later the hardware will die and finding replacement parts is going to be difficult or impossible (yes, there are people that have repaired broken older hardware and there are others like Blue SCSI that make adapters to use Compact Flash Drives to replace original Mac SCSI drives) but for how long until it become too expensive for them?
Yet another doomsday prognostication painting Apple as having one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel. How much longer do we have to listen this?
People say this while completely ignoring the most obvious fact, which is that…
The only people purchasing $50,000 Mac pros were/are massive corporations like production Studios and science departments.
These corporations were likely to replace their slate of workstations every 3 to 5 years anyway, and even if they weren’t, it’s not like $50,000 is really hurting them.
We are talking about Pixar/Disney, Warner Bros., massive massive companies.
Rosetta 2 is essential for bioinformatics workflows. Looks like I’ll be stuck on macOS 27 for a good amount of time.
Agreed on hardware. That's a good reason for emulators to exist.
I'm not sure where I suggested Apple hurting as a business. They make fantastic laptops. However, if my use case doesn't change, and their products no longer support my use case, then I'm no longer their target audience.
Not trying to start an argument here, but appreciate constructive debate and feedback. I think that Apple releasing a new game launcher and releasing news of pulling support for something that lets x86 games run from Steam is not a coincidence.
Why yes, yes they would.
I have a slew of tools at work that cost 10 to 100 times as much. $50,000 isn't even an expensive repair.
Running Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer. I can't even put a tabbed browser on there because no one supports Win2000 anymore.
And we still buy from that company. Everyone does. Intel does.
I have tools still running MS-DOS 3. You know where I can get DOS 3 support?
So yes, the industry is well aware of obsolescence. And having full software updates for 7 years is pretty good. You do know that You can't install Windows 10 or 11 on a non eufi Intel motherboard? That's kind of the same thing. Then they get a full 10 years of support for security updates. That is entirely reasonable. Or did you think Apple was going to agree to a lifetime supply of Mac Pros because they bought the first set?
Imagine being someone who doesn't realize time is money when you're in business and using a seven year old computer is wasting time and therefore losing money. Oh... you don't have to imagine.
OCLP do your thing.
Magic, I expect them to do magic.
I keep reading incorrect statements on this topic, so I am putting this out there so people remember.
Apple didn't want to kill Rosetta 1 for running PowerPC apps on Intel with Lion. It was IBM that refused to continue to license the tech to Apple. Apple was not expecting that to happen either and had no say in the matter. Apple wanted to continue support for PowerPC apps through new Mac OS versions and had no issues with paying for the license.
There are still PowerPC apps people use today that were never migrated to Intel. I expect the same again with Intel apps, but I see that Apple is learning a little over these transitions and keeping the gaming parts alive.
What we really need is the ability to run older Intel macOS versions (like 10.6 and others) on Arm via Virtualization etc. If those were options, then there would be no issue.
Apple didn't want to kill Rosetta 1 for running PowerPC apps on Intel with Lion. It was IBM that refused to continue to license the tech to Apple. Apple was not expecting that to happen either and had no say in the matter. Apple wanted to continue support for PowerPC apps through new Mac OS versions and had no issues with paying for the license.
There are still PowerPC apps people use today that were never migrated to Intel. I expect the same again with Intel apps, but I see that Apple is learning a little over these transitions and keeping the gaming parts alive.
What we really need is the ability to run older Intel macOS versions (like 10.6 and others) on Arm via Virtualization etc. If those were options, then there would be no issue.
Maintaining legacy support is a difficult task, so I appreciate tools like Rosetta might not be viable to maintain forever.
However, seems like a bit of scammy behaviour toward the consumer. Entice customers to move to ARM by providing compatibility, then drop the compatibility tools once they've made the switch.
However, seems like a bit of scammy behaviour toward the consumer. Entice customers to move to ARM by providing compatibility, then drop the compatibility tools once they've made the switch.
Not really. Your Mac will still function, you’ll just need to start on this version
Well…not so much Vulkan although there is the MoltenVK project that is a wrapper for Vulkan on Metal. Rosetta both v1 and v2 in conjunction with WINE and its better known commercial version Crossover is what allows Intel based Mac games to play on Apple Silicon. And the Game Porting Toolkit or GPTK v1-3 was basically WINE with Apple centric extensions that allowed not only better Intel based gaming experience but allowed developers to use it to see what they needed to do to make a native version of that Intel based game….IF they so chose to do so. And that’s a BIG IF !
The big question is…when the HECK is Crossover going to finally make an Apple Silicon version of Crossover? They’re two years late from the time they said it was near completion. Right now, astonishingly, Rosetta 2 has to FIRST translate the Intel based Crossover in order for Crossover to then translate the Intel based game to Apple Silicon !! That’s INSANE !! And yet…right now you can get between 60-80 FPS on the Intel based Cyberpunk 2077 EVEN AFTER the double translation of the Intel based Crossover first and then the translation of Cyberpunk by Crossover to Apple Silicon. Just think what the FPS could be if that first translation layer didn’t have to happen because Ceossover was Apple Silicon native.
But Crossover has also said that if Rosetta 2 goes away they’ll be ready for that. How ? The WINE project and Crossover have done magnificent thing along with Rosetta. The GPTK would not exist without WINE. But because there is no word yet 2 years on about an Apple Silicon native Crossover much less what Crossover’s plan for the inevitable deprecation of Rosetta leaves me a bit concerned.
There are probably more active, health platform ports of Linux at this point than there are of Mach . Mach wasn't inherently structured for multiple platforms. The "micro kernel" style wasn't necessarily for porting ease.
Linux is tracking x86 , Arm (and Adroind fork) , RISC-V .. everything that is growing has a Linux port. Linux is hobbled by uni-platform limitations at all.
Arthur C Clark
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
It isn't 'magic'. OCLP is closer to the old MIT Media Lab paraphrased version of Clark's law.
"Any sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo "
A substantive part of OCLP is rigging other peoples work to get something that just happens to work.
There is some technique and skills needed to do the rigging , but pretty far from 'magical'.
If the basic fundamental pieces of the 'puzzle' are missing, then there is no 'magic' to bring them into existence.
