Apple removing Rosetta 2 x86 emulation!?

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

Parallels was introduced way back when XP was still an OS you could install. It's a little more than a "machine on top of a machine" in a similar way that Windows XP mode was on Windows Vista. Basically it just spins up a virtual machine, but the video driver acts as a "remote desktop" which is what allows for a seamless use of the mac and windows applications on the mac. This is likely also how Windows 10 is dealing with Linux on Windows UI stuff, but I haven't explored it.

 

To put things succinctly, Parallels is just a virtualization platform with some clever tricks to make it easier to use than say, QEMU (Virtualbox) and VMWare, as the latter are more about virtualizing a machine with no integration.

 

So it would be difficult to get Parallels to work as well as it does on the Intel Mac since even if it could leverage Rosetta2, Windows applications in the future might use code paths that aren't available. The OS though, should work unless they phase out installation on cpu's without AVX (which was introduced with the 4th gen intel cpu's), which I don't see Microsoft doing as long as there's no reason for it.

 

 

So no pc gaming on m1s it seems.

[Kisai]

 

2 hours ago, igormp said:

Then you didn't express yourself properly, or I did get it wrong.

This is a pattern between you and I sometimes, where I say something, you somehow read something that wasn't there. Don't stress it. 

 

2 hours ago, igormp said:

MSVC isn't the only compiler in existence. GCC supports asm blocks no matter the ISA.

Right, and inline assembly from code developed for GCC won't compile on Visual C, but intrinsics on MSVC will compile on GCC.

 

Which comes back the the original question as to why Apple would remove Rosetta2. If it's simply about making x86-64 Mac software compatible. In 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 Rosetta was available and then no longer available after 10.6. So the expectation should be that it might be removed after two versions, which can then presume that any x86-64 compatibility in the SoC would also be removed. That wouldn't necessarily remove the ability to emulate the x86-64 on ARM, but it would likely only be available inside VirtualBox(QEMU.)

 

[Video Beagle]

11 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

So no pc gaming on m1s it seems.

Well, other than the various videos showing people doing that.

 

M1 etc macs are still really new. I know it seems like they've been around forever, but that's just because time has been broken in 2020/2021. The only people who know anything about the future of what can and can't be done on the M1 macs are highly paid apple people who aren't talking.  WWDC has been anounced for June so I imagine we'll know a lot more then, since that's the point of it.

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

Well, other than the various videos showing people doing that.

 

M1 etc macs are still really new. I know it seems like they've been around forever, but that's just because time has been broken in 2020/2021. The only people who know anything about the future of what can and can't be done on the M1 macs are highly paid apple people who aren't talking.  WWDC has been anounced for June so I imagine we'll know a lot more then, since that's the point of it.

The thing about those videos though is those may be Mac versions of the game.  Steam had a lot of games that would run on intel macs.  It followed the standard behavior though.  Generally older more popular titles only.

[LAwLz]

8 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The thing about those videos though is those may be Mac versions of the game.  Steam had a lot of games that would run on intel macs.  It followed the standard behavior though.  Generally older more popular titles only.

Has anyone ever bought a Mac to play games on?

I think the whole "oh no, you can't play games on the M1!" is way overblown. It affects a small percentage of buyers.

 

I think the lack of both DirectX and Vulkan is a way bigger issue than the CPU being ARM based and not x86.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, LAwLz said:

Has anyone ever bought a Mac to play games on?

I think the whole "oh no, you can't play games on the M1!" is way overblown. It affects a small percentage of buyers.

 

I think the lack of both DirectX and Vulkan is a way bigger issue than the CPU being ARM based and not x86.

Yes they have, but not for a long time.  There was a period where Mac games were better than PC games if you put up with the B&W.  It was that long ago though.  It’s a rare Mac that has never had a game run on it. 

[Craftyawesome]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I think the lack of both DirectX and Vulkan is a way bigger issue than the CPU being ARM based and not x86.

It might be better than you expect. MoltenVK can covert vulkan to metal. WineD3D, DXVK, and vkd3d support directx 1-12. You might be more limited by opengl 4.1 and obviously anti cheat.

 

I don't know what the user experience or compatibility is like, though.

[Video Beagle]

18 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Has anyone ever bought a Mac to play games on?

Well I bought my iMac instead of a Mac mini because it was better for games...went to the Apple Store with Arkham City on a flash drive and tried it on differetn machines to find the best performance... I mean, it wasn't between a Mac and a PC cuz I'm mainly a Mac user and use it for graphics and stuff (I do have a PC for games and other graphics stuff now, as well)

 

18 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Yes they have, but not for a long time.  There was a period where Mac games were better than PC games if you put up with the B&W. 

Yes, but Microsoft bought Bungie and Halo became the X-Box launch title rather than the new flagpole for Mac gaming and Oni only got a semi-release, and that was a long long time ago.

 

Apple in the M1 Presentation put a bunch of emphasis on games..heavily focusing on one big name that escapes me right now at 2:30am...BUT, and I say this as someone who's been an Apple user since Oct. 1980....If you want to focus on gaming,,,get a console or PC...Even at the hight of Intel Macs, only a very small amount of games would get ported to the mac, and Mac focused companies like Aspyr and Feral didn't find enough of a market to last.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Video Beagle said:

Well I bought my iMac instead of a Mac mini because it was better for games...went to the Apple Store with Arkham City on a flash drive and tried it on differetn machines to find the best performance... I mean, it wasn't between a Mac and a PC cuz I'm mainly a Mac user and use it for graphics and stuff (I do have a PC for games and other graphics stuff now, as well)

 

Yes, but Microsoft bought Bungie and Halo became the X-Box launch title rather than the new flagpole for Mac gaming and Oni only got a semi-release, and that was a long long time ago.

 

Apple in the M1 Presentation put a bunch of emphasis on games..heavily focusing on one big name that escapes me right now at 2:30am...BUT, and I say this as someone who's been an Apple user since Oct. 1980....If you want to focus on gaming,,,get a console or PC...Even at the hight of Intel Macs, only a very small amount of games would get ported to the mac, and Mac focused companies like Aspyr and Feral didn't find enough of a market to last.

It was a long time ago.  The period I am talking about may predate bungee entirely.  Definitely the Xbox.  By maybe 20 years.  There was a time when the Mac was b&w only. They didn’t do color at all.

[Video Beagle]

4 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

It was a long time ago.  The period I am talking about may predate bungee entirely.  Definitely the Xbox.  By maybe 20 years.  There was a time when the Mac was b&w only. They didn’t do color at all.

Oh.  I thought you meant the Blue and White G3 Macs...not the original grey scale macs with Black Tower and so....even then you tended to have more games on the PC side. You need to look at the Apple II era and Wizardry and Ultima and early EA stuff (was it Skyfox I had...a space flight game of some kind, with a Space Invaders mini-game inside of it) when Apple was a gaming leader.

[RejZoR]

I don't think anyone buys Mac for gaming, but if they can get games working it's neat. Just like no one gets Linux for gaming. It's always "cool if you can get it working".

 

I like Linux, but I just game too much to put up with all the issues it has so I'm just with Windows. Latest Windows 10 isn't even bad really. It's really good. So, why bother. But I can see someone using production Mac to play some games without having to buy a x86 Windows PC...

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

Oh.  I thought you meant the Blue and White G3 Macs...not the original grey scale macs with Black Tower and so....even then you tended to have more games on the PC side. You need to look at the Apple II era and Wizardry and Ultima and early EA stuff (was it Skyfox I had...a space flight game of some kind, with a Space Invaders mini-game inside of it) when Apple was a gaming leader.

That works better, but I was looking at the end of a period rather than its height.  there were still people who bought macs to play games on as late as the toaster Mac era.  They also wanted to do other stuff, but at that time PCs were just kind of a PITA at the time whereas macs just worked. There were other systems bought to play games on more frequently as well but a few people were still doing it 

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I don't think anyone buys Mac for gaming, but if they can get games working it's neat. Just like no one gets Linux for gaming. It's always "cool if you can get it working".

 

I like Linux, but I just game too much to put up with all the issues it has so I'm just with Windows. Latest Windows 10 isn't even bad really. It's really good. So, why bother. But I can see someone using production Mac to play some games without having to buy a x86 Windows PC...

Linux is always too fidgity to get games working, even native ones. MacOS games, even going back to the beginning, were never as good on the Mac as they were on the PC with the exception of a few games that were native (eg Myst) and took advantage of the hardware that was absent on PC's (MPEG support was available on Mac's long before it was on PC's, likewise CD-ROM's), but it's been a long time since there was any incentive to build games natively for Mac's, that all moved to iOS, and M1 mac's can run iOS software if the developer allows it to.

 

But you wouldn't buy a m1 mac over an iphone if what you need is an iphone.

[hishnash]

On 4/6/2021 at 11:04 AM, Arika S said:

 

But then why would it only be in a few regions? Unless Intel doesn't own the rights to x86 everywhere or there is another company out there that bought rights from Intel to emulate x86 in certain regions? But I find that hard to believe 

Legal cases are normally only bound to the region fo the world they take place in, unless intel were to win in the US. If intel one a case in the UK then it would only legally apply to the UK and not to the rest of the world (US law is evil and dirty in that it thinks it is supper and applies to everyone else but most nations are respectful of others and do not extend law beyond their boarders).

Apple likely are confident they can defend it in the US (even more so after the resent google Java case) but in other nations intel might have a different situation. 

[Bombastinator]

14 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Legal cases are normally only bound to the region fo the world they take place in, unless intel were to win in the US. If intel one a case in the UK then it would only legally apply to the UK and not to the rest of the world (US law is evil and dirty in that it thinks it is supper and applies to everyone else but most nations are respectful of others and do not extend law beyond their boarders).

Apple likely are confident they can defend it in the US (even more so after the resent google Java case) but in other nations intel might have a different situation. 

Intel doesn’t own AMD64. They license it.  There’s a reason it’s called AMD64.  Neither here nor there though. There were several companies besides AMD and intel that have licenses.  They include Cyrix, transmeta (not sure about how transmeta licensing worked they made some extremely low wattage laptop CPUs for a while though) and a few others.  They just haven’t produced consumer CPUs recently.  Cyrix recently did a bunch of licensing stuff in China.  That’s how those Chinese not very fast CPUs happened iirc. My suspicion is that the whole thing is a big mess, with different entities having different licenses good in different areas.  I don’t know any details though.

[just_dave]

On 4/6/2021 at 10:51 PM, Bombastinator said:

So no pc gaming on m1s it seems.

If games get updated to support the architecture and Metal, M1 could put gaming on other mobile APUs (Xe graphics, AMD Vega) to shame

[hishnash]

On 4/9/2021 at 10:15 PM, just_dave said:

If games get updated to support the architecture and Metal, M1 could put gaming on other mobile APUs (Xe graphics, AMD Vega) to shame

Most game engines already have good support for metal and M1 since most engines need to support the mobile market (that is after all were most of the money in gaming is). So bringing a modern game that uses unity, unreal etc is not that big a deal, getting the most out of the M1 SoC will require your shader team to think a little differently due to being a TBDR pipeline.

Key difference is how TBDR pipelines work, rather than rendering each object out to a buffer (that is the full size of the screen) then mixing them together. On apple GPUs (and other PowerVR GPUs) the screen is cut up into small tiles rendering out all the objects for each tile doing depth testing and blending inline on the GPU cores cache only writing out the memory the final blended result after the tile is rendering.

 

[Maticks]

seems a bit premature to be doing that, making it an optional install to specifically download i understand.

when you go to load an app that requires rosetta it just throws up an error likely to download it.

It handles X86 damn well i can't see why they'd want to dump it so soon. had people's devices gone flat in 2 hours i understand the haste.. 

 

Pretty impressive Apple with how this all went, i remember powerpc it was not the same experience. you knew it was emulated.

[Stormtrooper501]

Apple did not kill Rosetta 2 since I myself am running a M1 MacBook Pro 14" with Steam and some Steam games installed, which run just fine. I run MacOS version 11.4. I'm living in Austria (as for the "in some regions" thing). I acquired the MacBook actually way after this announcement and it installed automatically just fine. 

 

EDIT: I should add that as of today Steam has neither released a M1 version nor announced that they will ever do one. 

Well, I know this thread is quite old. But it is actually one of the first few google results when searching for this topic and it scared the bejesus out of me when I first read it. Then realising that this topic itself is actually quite old and nothing more than clickbait rumours. Shame.

[BondiBlue]

2 minutes ago, Stormtrooper501 said:

Apple did not kill Rosetta 2 since I myself am actually running a M1 MacBook Pro 14" with Steam and some Steam games installed, which run just fine. I run MacOS version 11.4. I'm living in Austria (as for the "in some regions" thing). I acquired the MacBook actually way after this announcement and it installed automatically just fine. 

Well, I know this thread is quite old. But it is actually one of the first few google results when searching for this topic and it scared the bejesus out auf me when I first read it. Then realising that this topic itself is actually quite old and nothing more than clickbait rumours. Shame.

To be perfectly fair, the topic was based on a beta. The title isn't really clickbait - Rosetta was possibly going to be removed in future updates. 

[whispous]

Apple wants people to compile apps for native running. Rosetta 2 was always going to be a tool to aid the traisntion, not an ongoing feature - if they left it as an ongoing feature, the same culprits would simply never update their software and would continue to pump out the same 15+ year old software with a bunch of inefficient hacks to keep it coughing and stuttering on.

 

Forced upgrading of software is the only way progress is made.

 

That said, releasing enough documentation for a community to be able to get their own compatibility layers going would be very pro-user - so that's clearly never going to happen. pain.gif

[Stormtrooper501]

27 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

To be perfectly fair, the topic was based on a beta. The title isn't really clickbait - Rosetta was possibly going to be removed in future updates. 

Yes the topic was based on a beta, but the rumours actually got to the point sometimes, that it was seen as given. For example in this post about the M1 version of Spotify: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Mac/Apple-Silicon-and-Spotify/m-p/5168503

 

Which was the link that actually pointed me to this topic. 

 

BTW, I didn't actually criticise the title. Based on the topic it originated from the title is perfectly reasonable. 

 

EDIT: Actually scratch that. It would have been reasonable if the title was "Rumour: Apple removing Rosetta 2 x86 emulation". As it is now it is in a grey area regarding clickbait IMHO.

[Stormtrooper501]

12 minutes ago, whispous said:

Apple wants people to compile apps for native running. Rosetta 2 was always going to be a tool to aid the traisntion, not an ongoing feature - if they left it as an ongoing feature, the same culprits would simply never update their software and would continue to pump out the same 15+ year old software with a bunch of inefficient hacks to keep it coughing and stuttering on.

 

Forced upgrading of software is the only way progress is made.

 

That said, releasing enough documentation for a community to be able to get their own compatibility layers going would be very pro-user - so that's clearly never going to happen. pain.gif

Which is nice and all, but actually goes a little bit off topic which is the rumour that Apple removes Rosetta 2 in MacOS 11.3 (which it hasn't). 

Actually, are you aware how long the original Rosetta coming from PowerPC was supported? Something short of 4 Years. So a pretty damn long time to be honest. And PowerPC wasn't even as big of a platform in general as x86 is today. So I would expect at least something in that neighbourhood regarding support time. 

That said, I completely agree that this is destined to happen at some point, but not any time soon. Seems extremely unlikely.

[Bombastinator]

On 4/9/2021 at 5:15 AM, just_dave said:

If games get updated to support the architecture and Metal, M1 could put gaming on other mobile APUs (Xe graphics, AMD Vega) to shame

This whole thing isn’t clear to me.  M1 laptops have metal based “iGPs” or whatever they should be called, and they will emulate some stuff, so it’s possible that Apple could run at least some PC games with a more powerful apple designed “dGP” if they release one.  Right now I’m sitting around like a mushroom waiting to find out what happens.

[Bombastinator]

6 hours ago, Stormtrooper501 said:

Apple did not kill Rosetta 2 since I myself am running a M1 MacBook Pro 14" with Steam and some Steam games installed, which run just fine. I run MacOS version 11.4. I'm living in Austria (as for the "in some regions" thing). I acquired the MacBook actually way after this announcement and it installed automatically just fine. 

 

EDIT: I should add that as of today Steam has neither released a M1 version nor announced that they will ever do one. 

Well, I know this thread is quite old. But it is actually one of the first few google results when searching for this topic and it scared the bejesus out of me when I first read it. Then realising that this topic itself is actually quite old and nothing more than clickbait rumours. Shame.

I tend to think of Austria as being a lot like Germany but a bit more conservative and has better food and classical music.  Not sure how accurate that is.   It’s likely very out of date and tourist centric. I did a hike tour but it was back during the Cold War. Long time ago.