Apple removing Rosetta 2 x86 emulation!?

[Bombastinator]

On 4/8/2021 at 3:31 AM, 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.

More perhaps. most of em sucked though. Call it the HyperCars era maybe is what I am thinking of.  There was some pretty good smaller stuff that never made it to PC because of the greyscale thing. 

[Bombastinator]

On 4/8/2021 at 3:20 AM, 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.

True these days definitely. I was PC till the late 80’s at least then switched. Switched again around the early 2000s mostly because of games.  Have yet to switch back but if Apple comes out with a capable gaming capable machine in even the 3 grand range I’ll do it.  

[Donut417]

7 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.

The rumor was they removed Rossetta 2 in some regions. Just be aware that Rossetta 2 is not  permanent. Apple does intend to remove it when enough of there devs have complied their stuff to work on the M1 natively. 

 

I doubt Steam will have an M1 version. And if they do I doubt that the current offerings for Mac will work, there are games that dont work because 32bit support was dropped in Catalina. 

[Pickles von Brine]

On 4/4/2021 at 9:52 AM, Drama Lama said:

It’s just a logical step. Rosetta 2 was only meant to be for the transition like Rosetta one ( this was used for the transition from Power PC to x86 ). What surprises me is how fast Apple plans to do this.

The ability to transistion to native code from x86 is pretty easy with the tools provided by Apple. So, it doesn't suprise me they are moving so fast. THough it is sad th at soon so many x86 systems are going to be left in the dust. 

[Donut417]

5 minutes ago, Pickles von Brine said:

The ability to transistion to native code from x86 is pretty easy with the tools provided by Apple. So, it doesn't suprise me they are moving so fast. THough it is sad th at soon so many x86 systems are going to be left in the dust. 

Apple supports machines for like 5 years. And I see tons of people using older machines that are no longer updated. It comes down to what you do. I have the last gen Intel Mac. Ill get my money out of it I figure. Even if Apple only gives me another 2 years of updates I think that will be fine. Most laptops dont last more than 4 or 5 years anyway. By that time the battery is fucked or you have lots of wear and tear. 

 

Apple even said they expected to have all their machines ARM in like 2 years, and that was originally announced in 2020. The way I see it, they are on schedule. 

[Bombastinator]

19 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Apple supports machines for like 5 years. And I see tons of people using older machines that are no longer updated. It comes down to what you do. I have the last gen Intel Mac. Ill get my money out of it I figure. Even if Apple only gives me another 2 years of updates I think that will be fine. Most laptops dont last more than 4 or 5 years anyway. By that time the battery is fucked or you have lots of wear and tear. 

 

Apple even said they expected to have all their machines ARM in like 2 years, and that was originally announced in 2020. The way I see it, they are on schedule. 

It Rosetta 2 like really expensive to maintain or something? I don’t get it.  Rosetta2 is the first really toothy switch-to-Apple killer app the company has had in a really long time.  Like the last one this good was photoshop. Notice there is no number after that.  It says “buy a mac! We run most stuff as well as intel and we run our own things better “ it’s enough faster while being enough easier that companies will move their apps anyway if they were ever going to do it at all and it allows Apple to be able to say “yeah we’re just better” and actually make it stick instead of just sounding like sour grapes douches like vegans do.  Imho ditching Rosetta quickly is a fantastically stupid move.

Edited July 11, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

It Rosetta 2 like really expensive to maintain or something?

Remember when Apple went from Power PC to Intel? Well they did the same thing, they made a compatibility layer to do it. This is the same thing, they intend to keep compatibility until enough software runs native. Remember x86 is dead to Apple. Why should they support it if their computers dont use the architecture? Apple pretty much even said when Rosetta 2 came out that it was a temporary thing. Now they are starting to have enough software on the platform where Rosetta 2 is not needed. Also if they kept it, what would be the driving force to make programs run natively? 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Remember when Apple went from Power PC to Intel? Well they did the same thing, they made a compatibility layer to do it. This is the same thing, they intend to keep compatibility until enough software runs native. Remember x86 is dead to Apple. Why should they support it if their computers dont use the architecture? Apple pretty much even said when Rosetta 2 came out that it was a temporary thing. Now they are starting to have enough software on the platform where Rosetta 2 is not needed. Also if they kept it, what would be the driving force to make programs run natively? 

 

 

I do. I get that there is history that makes it a predictable scenario.  I’m not saying I don’t think it will happen. Apple has a history as well of shooting itself in the foot with both barrels.  It’s merely a hope.  I’d like to see Apple do well even if I don’t use their hardware. Pressure on the industry is good for consumers. Look at what AMD suddenly becoming more competitive has done. 

[LAwLz]

People make it sound like Apple has already dropped support, which they haven't. 

The original Rosetta was supported for 5 years and I expect rosetta 2 to be supported for a similar amount. 

So we should still have roughly 4 years left. 

 

Apple aren't stupid. They will support Rosetta 2 until just before it is not needed, and then they will announce end of support for it to push the last remaining devs to release native ARM versions. 

They don't EoL it because it costs a lot to maintain. They do it to pressure developers and force change, but they'll only do it when the time is right. 

[hishnash]

Just now, LAwLz said:

They don't EoL it because it costs a lot to maintain. They do it to pressure developers and force change. 

I think this string is there just in case Apple get used by Intel in some region of the world forcing them to stop distributing it in that region. When apple does remove it they will not do it mid year as a background thing that just stops new users from downloading it they will do it as part of a new OS release saying it no longer works. And like the drop of 32bit support they will likely start to put warning messages on screen of users with x86 apps a few years before warning them to contact the app developer that the app will no longer be supported in the future.  I expect 5 to 7 years of support, (unless apple get hit with legal cases form intel or someone else about IP).