I just purchased the base M1 air for my gf who had her 2013 air die on her yesterday. She’s pretty beat up about it and figured it’d make for a nice slightly early Xmas gift. Now I’m wondering how it handles things like MS office? Normally I buy my software online and on sale. Can I just buy office for MacOS, download the app and it will install? Do you have to do something through Rosetta? Never used Rosetta and just want to try and get it setup for her. Can you download any app for MacOS and install it like normal?
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So how does the M1 air handle downloads/installs?
- Thread starter FlyingTexan
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Yes, and that's the point to have Rosetta.
For the first time you launching an app through Rosetta, a notice will pop up to tell you that you need Rosetta to run Intel-based Apps, and you just click OK. That's all you need to do. After that you don't have to do anything.
Pretty much. The Rosetta layer is pretty much transparent to the user. The first time your M1 machine encounters macOS x86 code it will pop up to let you know it needs to download Rosetta components. Takes a few seconds for it to do that and to install it in the background. Other than that initial install, there really isn't any outward indication that Rosetta is being used.
My friend got an M1 Pro and installed Photoshop Elements 2020 via a CD he got for Christmas last year. The install went fast and flawlessly and the program runs smoothly and without errors.
I work as a prof and simply reinstalled via the uni (Office 365) and it was slow but OK on the whole.
I run the Intel variants with Rosetta2 and it's very fast. The Apple-variants will soon roll out.
I don’t know what she did/didn’t have on her old machine or how up-to-date it is. I usually just purchase it off eBay. Thought I might set it up for her as part of the surprise.
Office 365 license is not platform-specific. It is user-specific. You can use the same username/password to install it on Mac, Windows, IOS, Android, ... and it will install the correct version for each device.
Office 365 runs fine. The beta versions of Word and Outlook are now even showing as having 'universal' compatibility, but I never had a problem running them via Rosetta.
The only hiccup I had was during installation. Everything was moving along just fine and then the progress bar just stopped at around 80%. I used Force Quit to get out of the installer and found that the programs were fully installed in Launchpad despite the installer glitch.
The only hiccup I had was during installation. Everything was moving along just fine and then the progress bar just stopped at around 80%. I used Force Quit to get out of the installer and found that the programs were fully installed in Launchpad despite the installer glitch.
Some Apps have been updated and run native on Silicon - for example all of Apple's applications. Most Intel macOS apps run fine under rosetta, for example Photoshop and Microsoft Office ( if you buy a office 365 Licence outside the Mac App Store you can run the native Beta version which runs fine ). There are a small number of Intel Apps that don't run on Silicon yet even under Rosetta - I have one that I am waiting for the developer to update, a screen capturing program called Screenflow. So I would check what apps she relies on to make sure they will work until they are updated. Check out the site isapplesiliconready