Apple will phase out Rosetta 2 in macOS 28

Posted by summarity 10/24/2025

Apple will phase out Rosetta 2 in macOS 28(developer.apple.com)

318 points | 335 commentspage 3

ioma8 10/29/2025|

Does this mean end to macOS wine gaming? From what I know you need to be using x86_64 build of wine on macos to run the x86 built windows games.

BirAdam 10/29/2025|

No, follow the link. The article states that a subset of Rosetta 2 will remain for things like games.

rowanG077 10/29/2025||

It will be interesting to see whether they keep optional TSO in their SoCs after Rosetta 2 is no longer working.

ngcazz 10/29/2025||

Tangentially, this was surprising

  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!

spacechild1 10/29/2025|

Seems like you're trying to load an Intel-only plugin binary in a native ARM application. This doesn't work. DAW and plugins must use the same archicture. You would either have to run Ableton in Rosetta or use a plugin bridge. (This is similar to Windows if you want to run 32-bit plugins in a 64-bit DAW.)

lukeh 10/29/2025||

AU plugins work, the AU framework itself spins up a separate process to host the translated Intel plugin.

ngcazz 10/29/2025|||

That's actually what's going on, it turned out -- I'm using the AU version of the plugin, Activity Monitor lists an Intel process when I add it to a track.

Not sure this will be of any help to my projects once Rosetta 2 gets sunsetted...

spacechild1 10/29/2025|||

Yes, that's how you do it. I have written a VST plugin host for Pure Data and SuperCollider and it supports sandboxing/bridging. It's not rocket science. I'm not sure why Ableton never bothered to implement this.

anthonyskipper 10/28/2025||

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.

evmar 10/28/2025||

From the OP: "Beyond [the two-year] timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks."

difosfor 10/28/2025||

What about the newer games that are maintained, just not supported on anything but windows?

anthonyskipper 10/30/2025||

This is the real issue. Mac is not a target for a large number of triple A games, and rosetta made that possible. Apple has a vested interest because if they support rosetta you don't need to by Windows laptops to game... you can just use your Mac. Otherwise they are routing money to their competition.

mxey 10/28/2025|||

Isn’t that part of Rosetta also used in their own Game Porting Toolkit?

Cloudef 10/29/2025|||

mac for gaming is just not a good idea

fragmede 10/29/2025||

What are you talking about? There's Do I have enough RAM to run Slack, all my Chrome tabs, and a terminal program; there's what terminal program shall I run today: Ghost edition; there's Can I get Colima to run, now with docker DLC. There's Kubernetes on Mac: Kind edition; there's Let's with Tart!; Nix is for Ops: New and more obtuse config edition. With so many fun games to play, who's got time for anything else?

snvzz 10/29/2025||

Fortunately, whoever has money for a Mac can also afford hardware that will actually run games.

wooger 10/29/2025||

A Macbook (air) is no longer a crazy expensive unobtainable thing, just a perfectly reasonable mid-price choice for most people.

Whereas a good graphics card alone is still insane money.

gbear605 10/29/2025||

Yep, Macs are cheaper than many graphic cards alone

vbezhenar 10/29/2025||

May be M7 CPU will run qemu emulation of x86 fast enough for Rosetta to not be required.

tonyedgecombe 10/29/2025||

Hopefully this will finally push Sonos to produce an Apple Silicon binary.

aranw 10/29/2025|

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

More comments...