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Rosetta support in Sonoma?

CalMin

CalMin

Contributor
Original poster
Nov 8, 2007
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Did Apple say anything about Rosetta2 support in Sonoma?

The transition has been amazing and only a couple of legacy apps that I have don't have native Apple Silicon support at this time. Of my three current Macs, I have managed without installing Rosetta on two of them, so dropping of support for non-Universal apps would be something that I think could be done safely without adversely affecting too many users.
 
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Rosetta is also available for Linux VMs and a big selling point on that front.. I'm sure Apple doesn't care as much, but, they cared enough to offer the feature, so that might slow down the deprecation of Rosetta 2
 
Does it mean that in Sonoma I can still start Photoshop 24 under Rosetta? Asking just because I`m not sure if I have understood it rightly
 
Intel Macs still represent the vast majority of current Mac user base, especially pros. Rosetta 2 is not going anywhere anytime soon.
 
I posted this back in June. Given how successful Apple silicon has been as well as how much of the software that I personally use is now universal, I was just curious.

For those who lived through the PowerPC --> Intel transition, I remember Apple being pretty swift.

  • First Intel Macs (with Rosetta) shipped with 10.4
  • First Intel only OS was 10.6
  • Rosetta 1 was dropped in 10.7

This was over about 4-5 years but I remember being surprised at how quickly it went and how many apps got left behind.

So, with the first Apple silicon Macs shipping with MacOS 11 (Big Sur), and us having had MacOS 12 (Monterey) and MacOS 13 (Ventura), I was wondering if MacOS 14 (Sonoma) might actually move the OS to Apple silicon only or taper off Rosetta2 to push developers to ship universal apps only. This might be perhaps with MacOS 15 or MacOS 16?

Things are different now with Macs being MUCH more popular than they were in the old era. But also, the transition has been very smooth for me personally, and there's really no need for me to run non-universal apps now. (I am pretty stubborn about it after a clean install, and I only have 1 Mac with Rosetta, that I'll wipe next time I have a free weekend.). I've also paid for upgrades when I needed to for a new version that supports Apple silicon because developers need to eat.

Still - it was just a bit of innocent speculation on a rumors site, because I don't run beta OS on my Macs.
 
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I asked also because I use Configurator reloaded with Photoshop 24, now under OSX Ventura.
And I dont want to lose my workflow when updating to Sonoma.
Seen in this light I want to know if I can be sure that after updating from Ventura to Sonoma I can still start Photoshop 24 under Rosetta.
 
10.13 I was fine with installing Rosetta 2, now the transition is complete I find it hard to support why many more popular apps have not transitioned by now, so this time in 10.14 I refuse to install Rosetta 2 and subsequently any apps which are still intel.
 
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After update from Ventura to Sonoma I can still use Rosetta for to open Photoshop 24, I need this for a certain for me important Panel.
 
CalMin said:
This was over about 4-5 years but I remember being surprised at how quickly it went and how many apps got left behind.
Click to expand...
I've heard a few times that Rosetta 1 was developed by a third party and then licensed by Apple, so it was to Apple's benefit to get rid of it and save money. Rosetta 2 was developed in-house.
 
Nermal said:
I've heard a few times that Rosetta 1 was developed by a third party and then licensed by Apple, so it was to Apple's benefit to get rid of it and save money. Rosetta 2 was developed in-house.
Click to expand...
It was also only meaningful with Universal apps that have dual architectures. Having more than two ends up with a lot of bloat. Apple needed to make space for x86/x86_64 in Lion.

With Porting Kit, we are looking at a different use case running pure x86/x86_64 Windows executables.
 
As previously stated, Rosetta is still needed for both the Game Porting Toolkit and Crossover (which GPTK relies on), so it will likely stick around for a couple of releases after Sonoma, if not longer.
 
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Nermal said:
I've heard a few times that Rosetta 1 was developed by a third party and then licensed by Apple, so it was to Apple's benefit to get rid of it and save money. Rosetta 2 was developed in-house.
Click to expand...
interesting. I hadn’t heard that.

Another issue was universal binaries which had PPC and x86 code. Getting rid of them saved disk space and load times in 10.6.
 
I have an M1 Mini, that I just upgraded to Sonoma... When I try to force install Rosetta, it's telling me that it's not supported on this system?

Any ideas?
 
pusherd said:
I have an M1 Mini, that I just upgraded to Sonoma... When I try to force install Rosetta, it's telling me that it's not supported on this system?

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

You don't need to force Rosetta2. If you have an app that requires it then you will get a prompt to install it and then it's just there in the background.

Unlike the original Rosetta (PowerPC to Intel transition) Rosetta2 actually translates the app upon first launch, so the first time running it will be a bit slower. After that it should launch more quickly.
 
Apple Silicon has hardware support for Rosetta 2. It's one of the reasons why it's so fast.

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A Secret Apple Silicon Extension to Accommodate an Intel 8080 Artifact - Byte Cellar

Lately I’ve been spending time on Mastodon for … reasons. Here’s my link: https://oldbytes.space/@blakespot. In my recently active time on the platform, I have found quite a few excellent retrocomputing-related posts by creative members of the community. One such post, … Continue reading →
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