- When will their toolset drop support for compiling for Intel / x86_64?
- When will they drop Rosetta2?
Compiling/delivering universal binaries is something that as a developer, especially for some markets, you’d like to keep. meaning we try to support older Macs as possible.
For Rosetta2, it might be less needed with all apps transitioned, but for developers using containers, it might be more important to have Intel based containers for a longer period.
• Rosetta will remain available as a general-purpose tool through macOS 27 to help developers migrate their Intel apps, with limited gaming-focused functionality continuing beyond that timeframe
• Intel-based Macs will continue receiving security updates for 3 years following macOS Tahoe
• After the general Rosetta support ends, Apple will maintain a subset of Rosetta functionality specifically for older unmaintained gaming titles that depend on Intel-based frameworks
Apple killing gaming on their platform again, like they did with the 32->64 bit transition...
No, "new" ports to arm of 5 year old games sold at full price as app store exclusives don't count...
Says the Ars Technica article about this topic.
Doesn't sound like Wine at all to me...
This is is great to hear, but even 3 years are probably not enough. 2020-made computers should be used 5+ years more.
Based on appstore accepting only last {#}os SDK (not deployment target). Usually Xcode (and Safari) gets support for the previous OS. meaning,
Xcode 26 min macOS is Sequoia 15.x.
So, Xcode 27 min macOS will be macOS 26.
That gives about 2.5 years for Intel Macs to allow complete AppStore integration.
I guess https://github.com/xtool-org/xtool might become more dominant. iiuc, it also valid to use it on "a Mac" even if it was phased out :)
I guess Apple Rosetta support will be a mix of interests.
1. Apple currently has interest in getting games on their platform. They even made a debugger tool running on Windows so a game dev could profile/debug from his Windows machine :)
2. Unless Apple will have enough power (meaning they will have leverage over games devs), they won't be able to decide when they completely drop Rosetta2.
3. Most likely that companies with personal connections with key people at Apple would take part in when/if the pull the plug on Rosetta2. I guess big software companies might be able to convince Apple is they'll decide to remove it prematurely.
Most of the games I have from Steam/GoG on my M1 Mac are running through Rosetta2 ... and that probably won't change in the future.
It seems like dropping Rosetta2 is yet another way for Apple to murder their own relevancy for any kind of gaming... despite ok hardware.
Apple in the past couple of years was all like, "oh look, gaming on macOS is good now".
I can run a 1995 game OOB on my Windows laptop in 2025.
My question is: on macOS, what's the actual market for casual games, like most of what's on Apple Arcade - especially against iOS? What's the market for the few AAA titles they promote - vs Windows?
People want their existing libraries. With Arm64 in the way, developers who up until now only had to target x86, will care even less. Factorio only cared because they already had a Switch port underway: <https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-371>
Dropping Rosetta2 will be the final nail in the coffin. If Apple did actually care about games, they would strike a deal with Codeweavers to integrate Crossover directly with the system.
Maybe I'll finally get a proper Windows gaming machine.