Seems premature. My scanner software, SnapScan, still regularly updated, requires Rosetta. Abbyy FineReaser, the best Mac OCR, requires Rosetta. Although they may be related, as the SnaScan software does OCR with the FineReader engine.
The M1 chip and Rosetta 2 were introduced in 2020. macOS 28 will be released in 2027. 7 years seems like plenty of time for software vendors to make the necessary updates. If Apple never discontinues Rosetta support, vendors will never update their software to run natively on Apple chips.
There is lots of existing software (audio plugins, games, etc.) that will never see an update. All of that software will be lost. Most new software has ARM or universal binaries. If some vendors refuse to update their software, it's their problem. Windows still supports 32-bit applications, yet almost all new software is 64-bit.
I spent what I would consider to be a lot of money for a unitasker Fujitsu scanner device and am just astounded by how unmaintained and primitive the software is. I only use it on a Windows machine though, so I'm not in the same boat.
I think this is exactly what they're issuing this notice to address. Rosetta performs so well that vendors are pretty okay just using it as long as possible, but a two year warning gives a clear signal that it's time to migrate.
They were pretty quick to sunset the PPC version of Rosetta as well. It forces developers to prioritize making the change, or making it clear that their software isn’t supported. It
The one I have my eye on is Minecraft. While not mission critical in anyway, they were fairly quick to update the game itself, but failed to update the launcher. Last time I looked at the bug report, it was close and someone had to re-open it. It’s almost like the devs installed Rosetta2 and don’t realize their launcher is using it.
I usually agree with Apple but I don't agree with this. Rosetta 28 is basically magic, why would they take away one of their own strongest features? If they want big name apps to compile to Apple Silicon, why can't they exert pressure through their codesigning process instead?
Owning a Mac has always meant not relying on 3P software. Forget printer/scanner drivers. Even if they target macOS perfectly, there will come a day when you need to borrow a Windows PC or old Mac to print.
It happens to be ok for me as a SWE with basic home uses, so their exact target user. Given how many other people need their OS to do its primary job of running software, idk how they expect to gain customers this way. It's good that they don't junk up the OS with absolute legacy support, but at least provide some kind of emulation even if it's slow.
For those unfamiliar with Apple’s new version-numbering system, this is the version that will be released in 2027, presumably around September or October of that year.
How does this work currently? I was under the impression that Docker for Mac already ran containers in an x86 VM. Probably outdated info, but I’m curious when that changed.
This seems to basically only apply to full-fledged GUI apps and excludes e.g. games, so potentially stuff like Rosetta for CLI isn't going anywhere either
But games are full fledged GUI apps. At a minimum they have a window.
It’s really unclear what it means to support old games but not old apps in general.
I would think the set of APIs used by the set of all existing Intel Mac games probably comes close to everything. Certainly nearly all of AppKit, OpenGL, and Metal 1 and 2, but also media stuff (audio, video), networking stuff, input stuff (IOHID etc).
So then why say only games when the minimum to support the games probably covers a lot of non games too?
I wonder if their plan is to artificially limit who can use the Intel slices of the system frameworks? Like hardcode a list of blessed and tested games? Or (horror) maybe their plan is to only support Rosetta for games that use Win32 — so they’re actually going to be closing the door on old native Mac games and only supporting Wine / Game Porting Toolkit?
This is awful. I love playing games on my MBP and the latest crossover releases have been amazing in the ability to play almost all windows PC games at full speed. Losing rosetta means crossover is dead.
You would hope that apple would open source it, but they are one of the worst companies in the world for open sourcing things. Shame on all their engineers.
I've already lost my "studio" (a few appliances in the corner of my room) due to upgrade from windows 7 to 10. Now it will happen again after I migrated to mac. I guess the "studio" should be left alone when it comes to upgrades. I'm starting to believe, that a "studio" is a set of software AND hardware, so I guess I won't sell my mac to buy new, but rather maintain it with given software and hardware on it, just maybe unplug it from the internet.
-- EDIT --
or just move back to windows, but I can't imagine it with the current state of AI bloat
I lost access to decades of my albums which can no longer open on my MacBooks. Some open partially running Ableton Live with Rosetta. My record label recently reached out asking for stems for an old song for a sync deal with Rocket League — after spending a week trying to revive the old sessions I concluded that it was impossible and they were forever lost thanks to apples complete abandonment of backwards compatibility. It’s heart breaking really.
Hopefully this means macOS 27 will be a Snow Leopard type release to focus on bug fixes, performance, and the overall experience, rather than focusing on new features.
They barely just released Containerization Framework[0] and the new container[1] tool, and they are already scheduling a kneecapping of this two years down the line.
Realistically, people are still going to be deploying on x64 platforms for a long time, and given that Apple's whole shtick was to serve "professionals", it's really a shame that they're dropping the ball on developers like this. Their new containerization stuff was the best workflow improvement for me in quite a while.
> and given that Apple's whole shtick was to serve "professionals",
When was the last time this was true? I think I gave up on the platform around the new keyboards, who clearly weren't made for typing, and the non-stop "Upgrade" and "Upgrade" notifications that you couldn't disable, just push forward into the future. Everything they've done since them seems to have been to impress the Average Joe, not for serving professionals.
I'm guessing they don't want to maintain and build and test x86_64 versions of all the macos libraries like Appkit and UIKit (including large changes like liquid glass) when they are no longer shipping x86_64 macOS versions. Which is not entirely unreasonable as I'm sure it takes a lot of effort to keep the whole ui library stack working properly on multiple archs.
Perhaps that's what they're hinting about with the note about a "subset of Rosetta". So maybe there is hope that the core x86_64 binary translator will stick around for things like VM and emulation of generic (linux? wine?) binaries, but they don't want to maintain a whole x86_64 macOS userspace going forward.
Space savings from not shipping fat binaries for everything will probably also be not insignificant. Or make room for a new fat binary for a future "arm64v2" :)
The system prevents you from mixing
arm64 code and x86_64 code in the
same process. Rosetta translation
applies to an entire process,
including all code modules that the
process loads dynamically.
I've been using this VST from Arturia (Minimoog V) since they distributed it for free back in like 2011 or 2012, and it runs as well on my M1 Mac as it did on my previous Intel Macs.
I mean, it's literally the same DMG from way back when and there's no chance it doesn't run under Rosetta, but I run Ableton natively!
For a few years now it's been feeling like Apple are pushing devs away and are more interested in catering for general consumers. Just look at what DHH has written and said about it, and his move to Omarchy
This is very frustrating. As if they couldn't afford to continue it. And at the same time they keep making the system more and more closed, so that you can't even run applications without Apple's permission. I don't understand why people still buy such products.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 65.3 ms ] threadIf you're not willing to commit to supporting the latest and greatest, you shouldn't be developing for Apple.
[1] https://www.hamrick.com
The one I have my eye on is Minecraft. While not mission critical in anyway, they were fairly quick to update the game itself, but failed to update the launcher. Last time I looked at the bug report, it was close and someone had to re-open it. It’s almost like the devs installed Rosetta2 and don’t realize their launcher is using it.
It happens to be ok for me as a SWE with basic home uses, so their exact target user. Given how many other people need their OS to do its primary job of running software, idk how they expect to gain customers this way. It's good that they don't junk up the OS with absolute legacy support, but at least provide some kind of emulation even if it's slow.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42483895
It’s really unclear what it means to support old games but not old apps in general.
I would think the set of APIs used by the set of all existing Intel Mac games probably comes close to everything. Certainly nearly all of AppKit, OpenGL, and Metal 1 and 2, but also media stuff (audio, video), networking stuff, input stuff (IOHID etc).
So then why say only games when the minimum to support the games probably covers a lot of non games too?
I wonder if their plan is to artificially limit who can use the Intel slices of the system frameworks? Like hardcode a list of blessed and tested games? Or (horror) maybe their plan is to only support Rosetta for games that use Win32 — so they’re actually going to be closing the door on old native Mac games and only supporting Wine / Game Porting Toolkit?
You would hope that apple would open source it, but they are one of the worst companies in the world for open sourcing things. Shame on all their engineers.
-- EDIT --
or just move back to windows, but I can't imagine it with the current state of AI bloat
Modern day Apple cannot. A bugfix-only release is not going to sell anything.
Realistically, people are still going to be deploying on x64 platforms for a long time, and given that Apple's whole shtick was to serve "professionals", it's really a shame that they're dropping the ball on developers like this. Their new containerization stuff was the best workflow improvement for me in quite a while.
[0] https://github.com/apple/containerization
[1] https://github.com/apple/container
When was the last time this was true? I think I gave up on the platform around the new keyboards, who clearly weren't made for typing, and the non-stop "Upgrade" and "Upgrade" notifications that you couldn't disable, just push forward into the future. Everything they've done since them seems to have been to impress the Average Joe, not for serving professionals.
I do have sympathy for those that still use this in their daily work flow, but also... this is Apple. This is how they have always rolled.
Perhaps that's what they're hinting about with the note about a "subset of Rosetta". So maybe there is hope that the core x86_64 binary translator will stick around for things like VM and emulation of generic (linux? wine?) binaries, but they don't want to maintain a whole x86_64 macOS userspace going forward.
Space savings from not shipping fat binaries for everything will probably also be not insignificant. Or make room for a new fat binary for a future "arm64v2" :)
I mean, it's literally the same DMG from way back when and there's no chance it doesn't run under Rosetta, but I run Ableton natively!
It feels like keeping it alive could really help long-term x64 support on Apple Silicon, even if Apple decides to move on.