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- Hacker News
- RIP a ton of older audio plugins.by shrinks99
- macOS has been sending mixed signals to musicians since Catalina. I'd be surprised if people are still seriously using it for studio work.by bigyabai
- Photoshop plugins also.by yborg
- Or current ones. I think Yamaha VOCALOID 6 still only ships for Intel and says to put your DAW in Rosetta mode.by redwall_hp
- 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
by p0w3n3d - 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.by braebo
- I’ve always been amazed by Rosetta, such an incredible piece of engineering. But I wonder if we’ll ever see its source code opened up.
It feels like keeping it alive could really help long-term x64 support on Apple Silicon, even if Apple decides to move on.
by darkamaul - I'd also love to see the source code of the embedded M68K emulator for PPC Macs. I believe there are two versions -- one interpreter style and one dynarec style.by ferguess_k
- Check out Asahi Linux, they run on Apple Silicon and have translation for 32 and 64 bit x86, so they even go further than what Rosetta achieved. Open Source as well.by smat
- 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.by al_borland
- No. Only Steve Jobs could have pulled this.
Modern day Apple cannot. A bugfix-only release is not going to sell anything.
by egorfine - Why would it mean that?
It's a myth that Snow Leopard was a bug fix release. Mac OS X 10.6.0 was much buggier than 10.5.8, indeed brought several new severe bugs. However, Mac OS X 10.6 received two years of minor bug fix updates afterward, which eventually made it the OS that people reminiscence about now.
Apple's strict yearly schedule makes "another Snow Leopard" impossible. At this point, Apple has accumulated so much technical debt that they'd need much more than 2 years of minor bug fix updates.
by lapcat - 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.by geoffpado
- 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 eitherby nasretdinov
- 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?
by TheTon - That means Steam will release a native Apple Silicon client circa 2028. Exciting!by pohl
- Steam already has Apple Silicon build in Steam Beta channel.by Sekhmet
- Phasing out Rosetta 2 seems like a reasonable move. Maintaining backward compatibility indefinitely adds complexity and technical debt. Apple has supported Intel-based systems for a long time, and this step aligns with their goal of keeping macOS streamlined for Apple Silicon.by kburman
- Backwards compatibility may be many things, but it is never technical debt.
- I wouldn't call 6 years a long time for support. Imagine if Microsoft announced that any software older than 2020 will not longer work. Not be out of support or not get any more updates, just become not runnable.
The problem I have with it is Apple unilaterally deciding that support ends. I don't see the harm in no longer supporting it but leaving it as an option for legacy support. No garentee that anything will work with it and no support for it. They've done this with their hardware before but here it's just a cudgel to force devs to update their apps.
by jajuuka - 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.by gumboshoes
- Me, too. Would be horrible to lose access to my scanner. I have no faith in Fujitsu tgat they would support my iX500.by e40
- 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.
by morshu9001 - 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.
by al_borland - 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.by sixothree
- You can most likely use Vuescan, I use that with an old ScanSnap i500 (or something)by eisa01
- 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?by poemxo
- 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.by joshuat
- 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.by caseyohara
- Well this kinda screws me over running docker on macos. Not all images I use have an arm version.by t_sawyer