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Will M1 (Max / Pro) Mac’s become worse than iPads?
- Thread starter UBS28
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Pure conjecture tbh. I highly doubt Apple will drop rosetta 2 anytime soon, certainly not until x86 apps become irrelevant for the most part. Aside that, Rosetta 2 has nothing to do with iPad apps.
What is your main concern?
What is your main concern?
The point is, the iPads always have been great from a hardware perspective, but held back by software. And the same might happen to Mac’s when Rosetta 2 is dropped .
But the difference with iPads is, they have alot more ARM software available (despite it being lacking).
I don’t agree with iPads being held back. I use mine fully, using complete software in a professional environment
Rosetta 2 being dropped at any point doesn’t change anything in respect the mac, unless your software won’t support a mac after the change.
Who knows what devs choose to get on bosrd- I suspect most though.
Almost everything I run on daily basis is already ARM native. And macOS is an open platform, so you can develop whatever you want on it. Frankly, I think Rosetta will be around for years. But around 2025, when Intel Macs are practically off from the market, Rosetta can also be retired without much problem.
When people say "iPad is held back by software," they usually mean that it doesn't have a traditional file system and it can't side load apps. There is no reason Apple would implement those changes on macOS (although if they do, then you have my blessing to fully panic).
Agreed. Though really what they mean is they don’t use the iPad or know what it’s capable of.
This is no longer an issue. Most of my toolchains and dev libraries/frameworks/packages have been ported to M1. Most of my professional apps (Visual Studio Code, Capture One Pro, a portion of the Adobe suite, Microsoft Office) do support M1 now.
Mac is very unlike the iPad in that... one can just write software directly on the Mac, and/or use open-source software that can be recompiled.
So even if Rosetta 2 is dropped tomorrow, it's not an issue for me at all.
This brings up an interesting question at least for me.
Is there any place where apps are listed and categorized by, in this case, ARM compatibility?
I would also like to see a list of apps that are multi-core vs single-core.
Is there any place where apps are listed and categorized by, in this case, ARM compatibility?
I would also like to see a list of apps that are multi-core vs single-core.
You don't have to. Whether an app is ARM or Intel, it should just work with any M1 Mac right now. Whenever Rosetta 2 is dropped, we'll be at a point where 99.99% of apps on the market are already only on M1.
Apple won't drop Rosetta 2 for years because there are still Intel Macs on the market, and Apple still has to keep compatibility with Intel for 4 more years at least. Note that they just introduced an Intel Mac Pro like... end of 2019 and started selling it in 2020. They won't drop support any time soon.
So I don't see this as an issue at all. We are trying to nitpick where no nitpicking is necessary.
I don't care about how it works on my M1 as long as it works, thats not my reason.
I am just curious and I like to know the details. This is a total sidebar to the original discussion.
First of, Apple will drop Rosetta only when the market has moved on significantly.
Secondly, it's a multi-year transition, one year has passed and - speaking for myself obviously - most pro-apps on the Mac are already M1 compatible.
Out of all the apps that still run Intel, the ones that are left have promised M1 support in the future.
Only thing that might not be supported at some point is legacy software that's not being developed anymore.
But support for these might break at any time regardless (ie. OSX update breaking em).
I had the same question and stumbled across this handy page: isapplesiliconready.com
At least for native M1 compatibility, this page is quite extensive. Unfortunately, it gives no clues about multi-core optimiziation though.
If Apple drops Rosetta 2, we'll probably run into a situation where you can run the latest macOS that included Rosetta in a VM.
A similar situation happened where Lion dropped Rosetta 1, but you could run Snow Leopard in a VM that included Rosetta 1.
A similar situation happened where Lion dropped Rosetta 1, but you could run Snow Leopard in a VM that included Rosetta 1.
The assumption that Apple will drop Rosetta 2 at some point comes from the history of Rosetta. When Apple first moved from PowerPC to Intel, they licensed Rosetta (it was called something else) and eventually the company that Apple licensed the software from was sold to IBM. I'd imagine that continuing licensing Rosetta from IBM past the original contract would have been expensive and probably much more than they originally paid so Apple dropped support.
The difference with Rosetta 2 is that it was developed in house by Apple. There are no licensing costs involved as far as I know (there could be patent royalties but I haven't heard of any.) That means the history of Rosetta 1 is not really relevant. Apple could decide to deprecate Rosetta 2 but they would only do it as a way to force software to be updated to Apple silicon. That doesn't seem like a very likely scenario to me. If 5 years or so after the last Intel Mac is sold, some software isn't updated, then the software is likely abandoned. It wouldn't really be helpful to Apple to deprecate supported software like Crossover for no reason.
The difference with Rosetta 2 is that it was developed in house by Apple. There are no licensing costs involved as far as I know (there could be patent royalties but I haven't heard of any.) That means the history of Rosetta 1 is not really relevant. Apple could decide to deprecate Rosetta 2 but they would only do it as a way to force software to be updated to Apple silicon. That doesn't seem like a very likely scenario to me. If 5 years or so after the last Intel Mac is sold, some software isn't updated, then the software is likely abandoned. It wouldn't really be helpful to Apple to deprecate supported software like Crossover for no reason.
I think you can still dualboot as well, so you could have both macOS versions actually installed (not virtualized), in case that makes a difference.
Absolutely! Having to run it in a VM should only affect future machines years from now.