When do you think Apple will disable universal binaries on Apple Silicon Macs?

[Faize]

Apple has a history of dropping support for anything old, and true to that the phase out of Rosetta is now starting. I imagine that at some point Apple will start requiring ARM-only thin binaries.

 

[Nermal]

As far as I'm aware, you can still run a universal app that contains a 32-bit PowerPC slice. It's one thing to require a new slice, but I don't see Apple actively blocking apps containing old slices.

 

[Bigwaff]

Apple has a history of dropping support for anything old, and true to that the phase out of Rosetta is now starting. I imagine that at some point Apple will start requiring ARM-only thin binaries.

Apple phased out the original Rosetta with Lion in 2011. Original universal binaries still worked after Lion, the PowerPC code was ignored.

Rosetta 2 is supposedly to phased out with macOS 28

Apple to Phase Out Rosetta 2 Starting With macOS 28 as Intel Era Ends

Following its WWDC keynote on Monday, Apple updated a developer document to indicate that Rosetta 2 will remain available through macOS 27. Rosetta...

www.macrumors.com

As far as binaries go, not sure it will require ARM-only. I imagine, just as with the original Universal binaries, after macOS 28, the Intel code in Universal 2 binaries will simply be ignored.

 

[benwiggy]

They won't stop developers from releasing Universal Binaries; but at some time, Apple will release an OS without any Intel code, and there will be decreasing point for third-party devs to make ARM/Intel binaries.