Rosetta 2

[EugW]

I guess it makes sense that Apple is going the Rosetta route again, this time with version 2.

I hope it’s less buggy than applications were under the original Rosetta, but I’m not optimistic. Nonetheless, I’m still thinking this transition will be smoother than the first one.

I’m also guessing performance will be about 40-50% native, which much higher RAM usage.

I’m curious, what does “applications translated at install” mean?

Can we assume Boot Camp is toast?

 

[NT1440]

I guess it makes sense that Apple is going the Rosetta route again, this time with version 2.

I hope it’s less buggy than applications were under the original Rosetta, but I’m not optimistic. Nonetheless, I’m still thinking this transition will be smoother than the first one.

I’m also guessing performance will be about 40-50% native, which much higher RAM usage.

I’m curious, what does “applications translated at install” mean?

Can we assume Boot Camp is toast?

I think you should look at some of the usages of Rosetta, maybe watch the Platform State of The Union. There is no way there’s anything close to a 40% performance hit.

It’s clear that Apple has put a TON of effort into Rosetta 2, and I think a lot of early naysayers are going to be shocked in the coming months. Apple has taken this incredibly seriously.

 

[dpgx81]

I think you should look at some of the usages of Rosetta, maybe watch the Platform State of The Union. There is no way there’s anything close to a 40% performance hit.

It’s clear that Apple has put a TON of effort into Rosetta 2, and I think a lot of early naysayers are going to be shocked in the coming months. Apple has taken this incredibly seriously.

I also think they learned from Microsoft botching their entry to ARM. I assume there will be some hardware level enhancements to perform emulation - they did mention they've been working on this behind the scenes for years. Controlling your hardware should absolutely help.

 

[NT1440]

I also think they learned from Microsoft botching their entry to ARM. I assume there will be some hardware level enhancements to perform emulation - they did mention they've been working on this behind the scenes for years. Controlling your hardware should absolutely help.

I’m just imagining at an October event when Craig is going to drop the mic after saying “yea, it runs Windows”. Imagine if Apple has been developing a co-processor for x86 instructions sets behind the scenes.

 

[tothemoonsands]

I have an opinion somewhere in the middle. I do believe Rosetta 2 will be significantly improved & Apple is dedicating a LOT of resources to try to make this transition as smooth as possible, HOWEVER, I also believe this is a major transition that WILL have limitations and pain-points. Apple said it themselves - they believe they will continue to sell Intel Macs for years to come. They are in prime marketing hype mode right now, as they should be, but when the first ARM macs start to roll-out, we will see reports of these limitations and downsides. A great future is ahead, but there will be some rocky moments during this transition period.

 

[dpgx81]

I’m just imagining at an October event when Craig is going to drop the mic after saying “yea, it runs Windows”. Imagine if Apple has been developing a co-processor for x86 instructions sets behind the scenes.

I honestly love this move, it gives them full control again. Intel has dropped the ball for a couple of years now, and look at the A series gains generation over generation with a way smaller power and thermal envelope than what can be delivered in a laptop/desktop. That would be awesome idk how all of this works in regards to x86 licensing etc.
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I have an opinion somewhere in the middle. I do believe Rosetta 2 will be significantly improved & Apple is dedicating a LOT of resources to try to make this transition as smooth as possible, HOWEVER, I also believe this is a major transition that WILL have limitations and pain-points. Apple said it themselves - they believe they will continue to sell Intel Macs for years to come. They are in prime marketing hype mode right now, as they should be, but when the first ARM macs start to roll-out, we will see reports of these limitations and downsides. A great future is ahead, but there will be some rocky moments during this transition period.

Agreed but I will be in on the journey early. I really look forward to this, the mobile/workstation cohesiveness and compatibility is a big deal imo. They could be the first to succeed with this.

 

[NT1440]

I honestly love this move, it gives them full control again. Intel has dropped the ball for a couple of years now, and look at the A series gains generation over generation with a way smaller power and thermal envelope than what can be delivered in a laptop/desktop. That would be awesome idk how all of this works in regards to x86 licensing etc.
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Agreed but I will be in on the journey early. I really look forward to this, the mobile/workstation cohesiveness and compatibility is a big deal imo. They could be the first to succeed with this.

I mean, there’s got to be a reason they moved their headphone chips (Apple has gotten really into specialty chipsets lately eh?) from being the “W” series chip to the “H” series right?

What else starts with W ?

 

[dpgx81]

I mean, there’s got to be a reason they moved their headphone chips (Apple has gotten really into specialty chipsets lately eh?) from being the “W” series chip to the “H” series right?

What else starts with W ?

Yep agreed, even some of the stuff built into the T2 chips had me scratching my head. I really think they have had a plan here all along. I have a friend I told years ago Apple would go this route, and he kept doubting it. Our discussion today was interesting haha. I'm excited for this journey tbh, I think it will be a good thing for Apple. The interesting thing will be to see what next gen A series will be in shipping product. I'm wondering with a dev account how difficult it will be to get their current dev platform after filling the application out.

 

[KPOM]

I guess it makes sense that Apple is going the Rosetta route again, this time with version 2.

I hope it’s less buggy than applications were under the original Rosetta, but I’m not optimistic. Nonetheless, I’m still thinking this transition will be smoother than the first one.

I’m also guessing performance will be about 40-50% native, which much higher RAM usage.

I’m curious, what does “applications translated at install” mean?

Can we assume Boot Camp is toast?

I’m not a developer, but my plain-English understanding of Rosetta 1 is that it didn’t emulate a PowerPC. Instead, if an application sent the OS a PowerPC instruction, Rosetta translated it into Intel instructions. Rosetta 2 appears to identify the translations upfront so that when you open up an Intel app, it operates faster. I’m sure I’m grossly oversimplifying this.

I’d assume that there is no more Boot Camp, since Microsoft doesn’t sell Windows for ARM separately. They were touting virtualization.

 

[MichaelDT]

I think you should look at some of the usages of Rosetta, maybe watch the Platform State of The Union. There is no way there’s anything close to a 40% performance hit.

It’s clear that Apple has put a TON of effort into Rosetta 2, and I think a lot of early naysayers are going to be shocked in the coming months. Apple has taken this incredibly seriously.

Unless the way CPUs work has drastically changed no one will be shocked. There will be a pref hit because instructions do not map 1:1. Things will be a bit better than power pc since the ENDIAN format can be set to the same mode. Doesn’t matter though because Web APIs have taken over since then which is what Apple is banking on, and that’s all JIT anyways.

 

[KPOM]

I wonder if WINE apps like CrossOver will be easier to make compatible than a full-blown Windows emulation application, since they already have done the work of translating x86-32 code into x64 code. That could be a more workable solution than trying to run Windows in some form of emulation.

 

[WebHead]

Did Rosetta 1 eventually get pulled? Now that MS Office has gone the subscription route I'm assuming Rosetta 2 will be our only way to keep running Office '19.

 

[KPOM]

Did Rosetta 1 eventually get pulled? Now that MS Office has gone the subscription route I'm assuming Rosetta 2 will be our only way to keep running Office '19.

Rosetta 1 lasted 4 years, IIRC. Snow Leopard in 2009 killed it.

 

[applCore]

I think you should look at some of the usages of Rosetta, maybe watch the Platform State of The Union. There is no way there’s anything close to a 40% performance hit.

It’s clear that Apple has put a TON of effort into Rosetta 2, and I think a lot of early naysayers are going to be shocked in the coming months. Apple has taken this incredibly seriously.

LOL, but wasn't it funny that watching the keynote was like watching CNN or George Wallace? "This is amazing, wow smooth as butter...." on and on with no metrics. The WWDC was completely lacking any content this year. It was garbage and Tim Cook is a horrible CEO that has NO vision whatsoever. Hate hate hate Apple as a company. There is no future here now and their interest in what developers and engineers really need is out of touch with reality.

They should have replaced Xnu with Linux long, long ago and kept that part of the OS open instead of forcing this ecosystem on everyone where we have to try to figure out ways around their broken picket fence in order to fix their own dang problems that they REFUSE to fix.

I can't tell you how many times ADC engineers have told me to install Mojave and now Catalina on UNSUPPORTED Mac hardware either because of complete incompetence or knowing that using a hackintosh is the only option.

 

[seangrimes590]

LOL, but wasn't it funny that watching the keynote was like watching CNN or George Wallace? "This is amazing, wow smooth as butter...." on and on with no metrics. The WWDC was completely lacking any content this year. It was garbage and Tim Cook is a horrible CEO that has NO vision whatsoever. Hate hate hate Apple as a company. There is no future here now and their interest in what developers and engineers really need is out of touch with reality.

They should have replaced Xnu with Linux long, long ago and kept that part of the OS open instead of forcing this ecosystem on everyone where we have to try to figure out ways around their broken picket fence in order to fix their own dang problems that they REFUSE to fix.

I can't tell you how many times ADC engineers have told me to install Mojave and now Catalina on UNSUPPORTED Mac hardware either because of complete incompetence or knowing that using a hackintosh is the only option.

You alright there? You don't like the OS just use something else. If you're already doing that then why bother complaining about it? I don't understand why people have some love for an OS. Just use the system that works for you for your task. Personally, windows for a tablet that isn't an iPad (surface) has been great. Linux runs my server and research machines. macOS for my laptop because I don't need the same "openness" and consistent low-level access like I do on the servers but I also don't love windows for this kind of use, and BSD backend is nice. Should apple lock things down like on iOS I'll just move over to Manjaro on and XPS or Razer. Not a big deal. What's got you all worked up bud?

 

[Slix]

Rosetta 1 lasted 4 years, IIRC. Snow Leopard in 2009 killed it.

Rosetta 1 was done away with when Lion came out in 2011. Rosetta was an optional install on Snow Leopard.

Having used Rosetta on earlier Intel Macs with some PowerPC games and apps, it worked quite well for what I used it for (nothing super intensive, so take with that what you will). I expect Rosetta 2 will deliver quite well. Obviously they chose to show off a few apps and they looked good, but I would imagine that if a fairly intensive game runs well, as well as simpler things, Rosetta 2 will work for most apps that exist right now, until the developers can update to native code.

 

[vaugha]

Love it. Apple is no longer going to be at the mercy of intel which has been since the last transition. The best part is they will use the arm macs to make the best macs they have made far outpacing the competition. All other competitors will be at the mercy of intel and qualcomm. I have been giving serious look at buying windows laptops in recent months but w/ this announcement, I will be buying the 3rd/4th gen arm macs in 2023 or 2024 after they're ironed out the major kinks and quirks.

W/ any transition I don't expect it to be perfect, so in 3 years time in 2023 we should have fairly apple-intended macs. No other company on the planet Earth other than apple can pull this off as well as apple imo. Oh jeez, macs are going to be even more expensive than already are.

 

[WebHead]

Rosetta 1 lasted 4 years, IIRC. Snow Leopard in 2009 killed it.

Thanks. I guess if Rosetta 2 meets a similar fate the choice will be Office 365 or iWork (or not upgrading!)

 

[haralds]

It sounds very much like Rosetta is using code translation. Apple has some advantages in that:
- A lot of the code base is written in Objective-C or Swift creating specific code patterns that can be optimized
- All system calls and especially the UX call native frameworks preserving responsiveness

 

[MichaelDT]

It sounds very much like Rosetta is using code translation. Apple has some advantages in that:
- A lot of the code base is written in Objective-C or Swift creating specific code patterns that can be optimized
- All system calls and especially the UX call native frameworks preserving responsiveness

Yea syscalls will certainly function this way. Those are the simple recompile apps. What I worry about is cross platform apps that share C/C++ back ends across platforms. How willing will devs be to fix any idiosyncratic behaviors introduced by ARM and also these apps will suffer the most from rosetta.

 

[blindpcguy]

im just excited to see where all this goes with rosetta 2 and the arm transition i think it could be a whole new era for mac. and im also hoping with the whole IOS app compatability thing mac gaming gets a huge boost too as its been lacking other then apple arcade the last several years

 

[applCore]

You alright there? You don't like the OS just use something else. If you're already doing that then why bother complaining about it? I don't understand why people have some love for an OS. Just use the system that works for you for your task. Personally, windows for a tablet that isn't an iPad (surface) has been great. Linux runs my server and research machines. macOS for my laptop because I don't need the same "openness" and consistent low-level access like I do on the servers but I also don't love windows for this kind of use, and BSD backend is nice. Should apple lock things down like on iOS I'll just move over to Manjaro on and XPS or Razer. Not a big deal. What's got you all worked up bud?

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment in the ecosystem - an ecosystem that I can no longer tolerate or stomach, but that I cannot escape and in which I have no say to have a superior core operating system and consistent interface. Windows is garbage, and I can't run the macOS software on Linux - so yeah, super, super, super worked up here and there's no one that can console me nor convince me that your options are tenable.

 

[kdekorte]

I wonder how bad it will be to run VMWare/VirtualBox (x86) on top of Rosetta 2 and then run Windows inside that VM? It will be something to try.

 

[MichaelDT]

I wonder how bad it will be to run VMWare/VirtualBox (x86) on top of Rosetta 2 and then run Windows inside that VM? It will be something to try.

That is not supported https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_silicon/about_the_rosetta_translation_environment

 

[MichaelDT]

LOL, but wasn't it funny that watching the keynote was like watching CNN or George Wallace? "This is amazing, wow smooth as butter...." on and on with no metrics. The WWDC was completely lacking any content this year. It was garbage and Tim Cook is a horrible CEO that has NO vision whatsoever. Hate hate hate Apple as a company. There is no future here now and their interest in what developers and engineers really need is out of touch with reality.

They should have replaced Xnu with Linux long, long ago and kept that part of the OS open instead of forcing this ecosystem on everyone where we have to try to figure out ways around their broken picket fence in order to fix their own dang problems that they REFUSE to fix.

I can't tell you how many times ADC engineers have told me to install Mojave and now Catalina on UNSUPPORTED Mac hardware either because of complete incompetence or knowing that using a hackintosh is the only option.

What’s wrong with XNU? It’s a great kernel TBH. Linux is sort of trash that got adopted because it’s all gpl, Google and Canonical have done work to fix it but there is no reason for Apple to switch from a full POSIX compliant system to a less compliant system. Mach-O is probably the only drawback but a clever person can hack the ELF loader from FreeBSD into a Recompiled XNU kernel if they so wanted.