macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

https://twitter.com/Lina_Hoshino/status/2046112493320458649

by tasoeur • 3 months ago

68 98 3 months ago

https://xcancel.com/Lina_Hoshino/status/2046112493320458649

Related? "Apple will phase out Rosetta 2 in macOS 28" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45692116 24-oct-2025 335 comments

icf80• 3 months ago

executive decision

kalleboo2• 3 months ago

I hope they keep around the underpinnings for Rosetta 2 (without the macOS parts) just to keep supporting Intel virtualization for things like Docker. Heck then anyone who really needs to run some old Intel app can run a virtualized older version of macOS.

But I wonder if they're eager to drop support for the Intel TSO memory model from their CPUs.

zitterbewegung• 3 months ago

Apple will keep Rosetta 2 support for Intel virtualization. See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/abou...

andor• 3 months ago

The page doesn’t actually say that explicitly

kalleboo2• 3 months ago

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about the weird "games" exception. At least that means they'll keep parts of Rosetta 2 around in the code, but they could also end up doing some weird whitelisting for the specific games they want to support and not let anyone else keep using it.

stetrain3• 3 months ago

I read somewhere that the part that allows a virtual machine to use Rosetta inside the VM is sticking around.

MacOS on ARM can't directly virtualize an Intel OS using Rosetta today using the native virtualization framework, you need something like qemu for that. But you can use an ARM linux VM with the Rosetta framework installed internally to run x86 containers, which is I think how docker desktop and similar alternatives are handling it.

mrpippy4• 3 months ago

Correct, that is staying around.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...:

There will continue to be support for older, unmaintained gaming titles leveraging Rosetta along with software running Intel binaries in Linux VMs.

lxgr4• 3 months ago

Same here. Would be very sad to lose Wine capabilities as well, and presumably these have minimal macOS dependencies.

jeroenhd2• 3 months ago

Wine can run on aarch64 with FEX reasonably well already, no special instructions or hardware acceleration required. There's a bit of extra overhead, but that shouldn't be a problem for old games on modern hardware, they should run about as well.

ralphc• 3 months ago

If Intel virtualization works for Docker, why doesn't it work for things like VMWare or VirtualBox for Intel VM's?

nerdjon• 3 months ago

This seems less about why it won't be supporting Intel and more about why Rosetta 2 will be going away, which seems mostly related to cleaning up code that is no longer necessary once Intel is not supported.

skywhopper• 3 months ago

Bad headline. This tweet attempts to explain why Rosetta 2 will no longer work. Which is because the OS no longer supports the Intel platform. That does not explain why the OS does not support the Intel platform.

Ygg22• 3 months ago

Because Apple is the King of Deprecations. And they get away with it.

stetrain3• 3 months ago

Because Apple is the King of Deprecations.

Google might wear that particular crown: https://killedbygoogle.com

lxgr4• 3 months ago

But it does?

Rosetta 2 requires almost the entire OS to have Intel support.

The implication here being that (almost) the entire OS having Intel support is not trivial.

icedchai3• 3 months ago

Because it costs them money to maintain it, and they'll make more money when people upgrade to M series?

In all seriousness, it's a little lame. Consider that the Intel Mac Pro (2019 model) was still selling in 2023! That's not that long ago, and those were their highest end machines in terms of memory capacity. The "new" Mac Pro has since been discontinued...

microtonal• 3 months ago

Though buying a Mac Pro in 2023 would be a bit weird. The writing was on the wall. By that point the M1 was almost out for three years and even the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra had been out for a year.

(IMO it stopped making sense buying an Intel Mac after the M1 Air or if your want to be generous the M1 Pro/Max-based MacBook Pros.)

kirb• 3 months ago

The official statement from Apple (emailed to developers 10 days ago) is that macOS 27 is the “final release to support Rosetta”, so the title is a bit off.

They also say:

Please note that Rosetta functionality for older, unmaintained gaming titles that rely on Intel-based frameworks will continue to be supported.

I interpret that to mean just enough of Rosetta and Intel frameworks will continue to be around, at least for macOS 28. Not specified which ones, or whether it stays any longer than that.

I’m pretty curious of what that will look like exactly, because there’s a fair amount of system frameworks/libraries needed to get to a bare minimum “hello world” AppKit app. Add on top any number of other frameworks that might be used by “older, unmaintained” games that Apple sees fit to keep supporting. Does this ensure OpenGL is kept on life support? Will they consider Wine important enough to support, perhaps even after they drop native Intel games?

pram• 3 months ago

Apple seems to slightly care about supporting Codeweavers/CrossOver from things I've seen, which indirectly makes Wine, Rosetta 2, and GPTK "important enough to support" since they're important features

bombcar5• 3 months ago

I read that as "Rosetta2 for 32 bit" will still be around, somehow.

p0w3n3d• 3 months ago

I wonder if Apple cares about docker/podman which uses rosetta on amd64 images

ieie3366• 3 months ago

I bet it must feel good for the macOS engineers to remove the intel support. Probably much easier to do development for the OS as well

404mm• 3 months ago

As a consumer, I’d like to see the end of “universal” builds for various apps. It made sense for a while but downloading and installing ~60% larger bins just doesn’t make sense 6 years later.

mghackerlady2• 3 months ago

If it's anything like the last time they dropped intel, I wouldn't be surprised if they make sure darwin still builds on x86. Going all arm all the time is good business, but it isn't like apple to not have some kind of fallback

ryandrake2• 3 months ago

The developer's feelings should not play a role in whether or not to drop support for devices that actual customers bought and use.

alin23• 3 months ago

Wait, so.. how are we supposed to test Intel builds of our macOS apps from now on?

I get it that macOS has to evolve, but that doesn't mean all apps have to drop Intel support at the same time.

On hardware-level apps like my Lunar app I have plenty #if arch(arm64) because some features like reading the brightness nits or reading ambient light is different or completely missing based on the architecture. I need to test the UI differences based on what features are available.

I don't see it viable to stay on macOS 26 for this, especially if we're going to see breaking changes again with the display and window server subsystem like we did with Tahoe. M5 support for Gamma table changes is still broken after so many months [0]

[0] https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/819331#819331021

htk• 3 months ago

Keep an Intel Mac around?

bombcar5• 3 months ago

Arguably if you're shipping new fat binary code today, you should already have an Intel Mac around to test, because there might be subtle differences between Intel-on-Rosetta2 and Intel-on-Intel.

fg137• 3 months ago

It works until that machine dies and you need to scramble for a solution (again).

stetrain3• 3 months ago

Keep a macOS 26 machine around for testing. All Intel Macs will be stuck on 26 as well, so testing under 26 is probably best anyway.

rimliu• 3 months ago

Same way you test them now?

ryukoposting6• 3 months ago

Wait, so.. how are we supposed to test Intel builds of our macOS apps from now on?

You don't. You could stay on an old MacOS. Apple would prefer that you tell your customers to stop being poor and buy a new computer. They will make your situation increasingly unbearable until you do.

The overwhelming majority of people haven't needed a new computer since 2016. The current economic situation makes a new computer a worse value proposition than it's been in 35 years. Vendors are responding to this situation by manufacturing obsolescence. Microsoft pulled the same stunt with Windows 11's TPM 2.0 requirement.

scioto• 3 months ago

I still prefer my pre-2016 Intel Mac since I can do more things that I want to do on it than my newer M4.

troad3• 3 months ago

I think it's a stretch to call Apple's ARM transition "planned obsolescence". The M-series chips are very clear improvements on what came before and there is a clear rationale for that transition.

We're talking here about an OS that hasn't even come out yet, that will get years of security support, for computers that Apple hasn't been selling for several years now. Seems pretty reasonable.

apetrovic• 3 months ago

That's overly dramatic. I don't think a new Macbook Air today is a worse value proposition than some Mac from 35 years ago. I just checked Apple prices from 1991:

    - Mac Classic II, the slowest of the bunch, $1.900, or about $4.661 today
    - Quadra 900, the fastest model in 1991, was $7.200 ($17.663 today)
    - PowerBook 170 was $4600 ($11.285)

throwaway27448• 3 months ago

Apple would prefer that you tell your customers to stop being poor and buy a new computer.

This is certainly an interesting way to characterize dropping support for old hardware. What is a reasonable way to go about hardware deprecation in your view?

forgotaccount3• 3 months ago

Wait, so.. how are we supposed to test Intel builds of our macOS apps from now on?

Isn't this a general form of 'how do we deal with the transition from a to b?'

If your client's can get intel Mac's, then you should be able to get one. If they can't, why do you need to keep supporting intel Mac's?

al_borland3• 3 months ago

Keep an Intel Mac around or drop support.

They followed the same path when moving from PPC to Intel.

mleo• 3 months ago

And 32-bit to 64-bit.

icelusxl• 3 months ago

Virtualize macOS 26 for testing purposes: https://eclecticlight.co/2025/01/21/what-can-you-do-with-vir...

GeekyBear2• 3 months ago

Wait, so.. how are we supposed to test Intel builds of our macOS apps from now on?

In a older version of the OS running in a virtual machine?

FireBeyond• 3 months ago

That's not going to solve the issue.

You are trying to emulate x86 to test those builds.

Rosetta doesn't emulate x86 hardware, but translates x86 instructions into ARM. The only thing your solution would get you is verification that the Intel build can work on Apple Silicon with Rosetta.

mghackerlady2• 3 months ago

IIRC Apple supported 10.5 extra long because of it being the last PowerPC MacOS. I wouldn't be surprised if they do something similar here. Keep an intel mac around, and you should be fine

alsetmusic• 3 months ago

like my Lunar app

Oh hey! Thanks for making this. I've been running this app for a while now, between one and two years. Very much something that I rely on and appreciate.

BrandonSmith• 3 months ago

Continue to upgrade to the latest macOS on your host system, use something that leverages Apple's Virtualized.framework to run any version of macOS you want.

For instance, consider https://tart.run/

All the Android / iOS devs on my team use Tart locally when we need to test mixed environments.

Then we use Tart's sister Cirrus CLI to run our builds on our server.

tyingq2• 3 months ago

I'm curious what options that leaves for docker. I assume the pattern of building/running linux/amd64 containers on MacOS is pretty widespread.

Edit: "Apple says that it will continue to support older, unmaintained gaming titles with Rosetta along with software running Intel binaries in Linux VMs beyond macOS 27 . There could also be future security fixes." - https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/16/macos-tahoe-26-4-rosett...

No Apple citation shown for that, though seems plausible.

akreal• 3 months ago

AFAIK all ways of running docker on MacOS rely on a amd64 virtual machine with Linux kernel in it.

tyingq2• 3 months ago

docker --platform linux/arm64 depends on amd64 ?

mrpippy4• 3 months ago

See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...

whatever1• 3 months ago

Whatever. We have public utility OS, all the hardware vendors should be forced to provide open-source working drivers after they stop supporting their hardware.

If they are afraid of IP leak, well, they can continue support.

My desktop I built in 2012 is still working running ubuntu, even after Intel & MS decided that it is EOL with the release of windows 11.

rootsudo• 3 months ago

Wow and darn I guess last support update to fully depreciate intel MacBooks. Used prices already are cratered.

They are great heavily supported Linux machines though. They work out of the box gorgeously with numerous distros and being usbc is nice. For $100-200 for a mint condition model, it isn’t so bad.

compounding_it• 3 months ago

They are great heavily supported Linux machines though.

Since the release of Touch Bar based Macs (which contain apple silicon) this has not been the case. The Macs that are well supported by linux and work very well were abandoned long time ago.

bombcar5• 3 months ago

He explicitly said Intel Macs - which are great Linux machines if you can accept the performance.

Would the M* be much better? Obviously, but that's not (yet) in the cards.

opan2• 3 months ago

Touch Bar predates Apple Silicon and most AS models do not have a Touch Bar.

tym0• 3 months ago

Not sure why this is so down voted. I have a touch bar era Intel Mac, I regularly check the state of Linux on it and they are still somewhat poorly supported. Some drivers are out of tree, audio and sleep doesn't necessarily work, etc...

nntwozz• 3 months ago

Focusing is about saying no.

— Steve Jobs

https://youtu.be/H8eP99neOVs (WWDC '97)

This is something Microsoft will never learn, it's not in their DNA.

al_borland3• 3 months ago

Maybe Microsoft will finally update the Minecraft launcher to support Apple Silicon. Last I looked they tried to close the bug report, someone reopened it, then there was a system migration and I lost track of it.

It’s almost like they did the work to get the actual game running on Apple Silicon, but installed Rosetta in the process, then just forgot about the launcher.

I always refused to install Rosetta on my Mac, so I could get a big warning if I was about to install something that wouldn’t work in the not too distant future.

tonyedgecombe• 3 months ago

Hopefully Sonos will finally get around to it as well.

bombcar5• 3 months ago

Do people even use the Microsoft launcher on Mac? Everyone I know (which may say more about me than the market) uses a third-party launcher.

al_borland3• 3 months ago

I use a 3rd party launcher only because the Microsoft one doesn’t support Apple Silicon.

The 3rd party launchers seem to exist mostly for modding. I don’t care about this. I play very infrequently, usually just with my nephews at the point, so I would rather have the simplicity of the 1st party launcher vs trusting a 3rd party and having a bunch of extra bloat I’m never going to use.

All of this is besides the point that Microsoft should have a functional launcher for a game they are charging people money for, that they claim supports Apple Silicon. If 3rd party launchers exist, it’s clearly not a technical issue that can’t be overcome. They just haven’t done it. That’s pretty pathetic considering how big Minecraft is.

jmclnx• 3 months ago

I am missing something ? If I read the link in xcancel.com correctly, it says what I would look at as "intel emulation" will be removed in the next release.

So, it looks to me application vendors who depends upon this emulation was given proper notice of this removal. So I think you should complain to the vendors instead of Apple.

Most times I tend to criticize Apple, but this time seems Apple just moving on to avoid "bloat" and "cruft" from being carried forward in future releases.

OpenBSD does things like this all the time and they get praised for it, which I agree with. Apple did the same with this and some people are upset :)

troad3• 3 months ago

Anonymous mirror: https://xcancel.com/Lina_Hoshino/status/2046112493320458649

fennecfoxy• 3 months ago

Because they've invested billions into making their own chips? And those chips have pretty damn good performance/power draw/cooling etc. I think the answer is pretty straightforward.

angerman2• 3 months ago

Time to share my little side project... https://hyper-linux.app which I hope will continue to be able to rely on the remnants of rosetta.

thegagne• 3 months ago

This looks great, and possibly useful, but I'm curious, what was the main problem you were trying to solve, or what does this enable for you?

angerman2• 3 months ago

docker is too heavy handed for me. And I’m a long term fan of wine. The primary usecase is Darwin -> Linux cross compilation.

It does supposed xeyes and similar via XQuartz; I gave up trying to make xmms work though. That would have been some fun.

tengbretson• 3 months ago

I just want Linux on my T2 mbp.

jimrandomh• 3 months ago

This sort of thing makes the lack of a downgrade process a real problem. If you rely on something that uses Rosetta, you aren't likely to find out until after you've upgraded, at which point it's too late, you're stuck with it and lose that app. Which means that if you _don't know_ whether you're relying on Rosetta (which most people won't), upgrading is a risky proposition, which people will want to avoid.

macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore

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