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Quick M1 questions

jent

jent

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 31, 2010
908
688
I'm sure this has been asked and answered in many threads, but I thought I'd ask succinctly here.

Is there a slew of Mac accessories that are expected to lose compatibility with the transition to ARM? I'm thinking things like (older) printers and scanners… would anything that needs a driver basically need a new one written specifically for ARM, or does Rosetta 2 translate code as deep as a hardware driver? Are there certain applications or plug-ins that are somehow too complex or strangely coded to be served by Rosetta 2?

Also, with everyone mentioning the strong processor gains from the M1, and the overall performance boost based on the integrated system-on-a-chip, have people done hardware tests of the new Macs and the lower-end 2020 Intel Mac models they are replacing, specifically testing the x86_64 executables on both machines? I know the arm64 code on a new Apple Silicon Mac will blow away its Intel CPU Mac counterpart, but do the new M1 Macs running Rosetta 2 on x86_64 code tend to run those applications faster than the early 2020 Intel Macs running it natively? If so, I'd be blown away, since that isn't even factoring in the benefit of native Universal 2 / arm64 code.

Thanks!
 
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Rosetta 2 does not translate the deep bits of driver code.

There are going to be a hell of a lot of audio and video folks staying on Intel Macs running Mojave for years.

For Joe Business Executive running MS Office, a web browser, and a video conferencing app, moving to an M1 MacBook will be relatively painless.

Ultimately, every current Mac user needs to look at what they use, both hardware and software, make lists of A.) need to have, B.) nice to have, and C.) don't need to have. Then they need to do their own due diligence with each manufacturer and figure out the current status and decide on their own if enough A & B outweigh C.

It's the folks with legacy hardware peripherals who will stick with what the Intel Macs they have (and working) until they reach a critical mass of newer devices and device driver software that will function on M1-powered Macs.

My guess is that some of these people will have a substantial period of overlap between Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs.
 
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Howdy jent,

Unfortunately you would need to contact the manufacture of the accessories you are referring to, in order to get an answer that is anything but speculation. With that said, Rosetta 2 will NOT translate drivers, so if there is not a native Big Sur M1 driver for the accessory, it won't work. The good news is, that many accessories have drivers that are already included in macOS, so it is possible that many will work immediately.

Good luck!

Rich S.
 
WebHead said:
Based one the original Rosetta experience, how long is Rosetta 2 likely to be around?
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That’s not an easy comparison, because a) OS X had only been the dominant Mac OS for ~4 years (macs shipped with both OS9 and OSX installed as bootable until the Jaguar era circa 2002) so there was a lot less legacy software to maintain support for, and b) Apple licensed Rosetta 1’s emulation tech from another company, meaning that it cost them a non-trivial amount every year they offered it.

Rosetta 1 was around from 2006 to 2011, so it got a good 5 years of support. Since Rosetta 2 is fully Apple’s tech (as far as I know) and there are almost 15 years of software written for x86 macOS, I’m guessing it’ll be around for at least 7 (especially since they’re still selling x86 Macs today).
 
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ahurst said:
Since Rosetta 2 is fully Apple’s tech (as far as I know) and there are almost 15 years of software written for x86 macOS, I’m guessing it’ll be around for at least 7 (especially since they’re still selling x86 Macs today).
Click to expand...

Thanks. Those like me who prefer to buy than rent software will be hoping the stand-alone Adobe Creative Suite will be supported for a while yet!
 
Bob_DM said:
I believe you can’t run the stand alone creative suite. Alternatively you can start Affinity’s suite.
Click to expand...

Thanks. And Pixelmator too!

Incidentally, why is CS an exception?
 
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Bob_DM said:
Last stand alone CS was CS 6 as I remember, no official support for windows 10 or MacOS High Sierra and later …
Click to expand...

Aha, is it still theoretically possible to use though? Or have they actively stopped it from working?
 
WebHead said:
Aha, is it still theoretically possible to use though? Or have they actively stopped it from working?
Click to expand...
If CS6 is 32 bit (I guess it is) it's not possible to run on 64 bit systems (high Sierra was the last operating system with support for 32 bit apps.

Edit: CS6 for Mac is 64 bits, only way to know if you can run it on newer systems is trying …

Edit2: Tested on Mac mini M1, Monterey 12.2 not possible to install.
 
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Bob_DM said:
If CS6 is 32 bit (I guess it is) it's not possible to run on 64 bit systems (high Sierra was the last operating system with support for 32 bit apps.

Edit: CS6 for Mac is 64 bits, only way to know if you can run it on newer systems is trying …

Edit2: Tested on Mac mini M1, Monterey 12.2 not possible to install.
Click to expand...

Double drat, but thanks very much for checking!
 
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