4 ms·

I usually agree with Apple but I don't agree with this. Rosetta 28 is basically magic, why would they take away one of their own strongest features? If they wan

by poemxo 1y ago

I usually agree with Apple but I don't agree with this. Rosetta 28 is basically magic, why would they take away one of their own strongest features? If they want big name apps to compile to Apple Silicon, why can't they exert pressure through their codesigning process instead?

drob518 1y ago
The “big name apps” have already moved to Apple Silicon. Rosetta helped them with that process a few years ago. We’re down to the long tail apps now. At some point, Rosetta is only helping a couple people and it won’t make sense to support it. I just looked, and right now on my M1 Air, I have exactly one x86 app running, and I was honestly surprised to find that one (Safari plug-in). Everything else is running ARM. My workload is office, general productivity, and Java software development. I’m sure that if you allow your Mac to report back app usage to Apple, they know if you’re using Rosetta or not, and if so, which apps require it. I suspect that’s why they’re telegraphing that they are about ready to pull the plug.
- prewett 1y ago
  How do you check if you're running any x86 apps?
  - thijsvandien 1y ago
    There's this Silicon app that scans your disk for them: https://github.com/DigiDNA/Silicon https://github.com/DigiDNA/Silicon.
  - timsneath 1y ago
    In macOS 26, you can see every Rosetta app that has recently run on your machine by going to System Information and then Software / Rosetta Software. It includes the "Fallback Reason" (e.g. if you manually forced the app under Rosetta or if it was an Intel-only binary).
    - alwillis 1y ago
      FWIW, I have zero Rosetta apps on my M1 laptop and I've been a Mac user since the earliest days. I'm super aware of the issues involved--I oversaw the transition from PPC to Intel at a university back in the day, using OG Rosetta. Even then, we had users who would only stop using their PPC apps when you took them from their cold, dead hands.
  - brycewray 1y ago
    1. From the Apple menu, click "About This Mac." 2. In the resulting window, click the "More Info..." button. This will open the System Settings window. 3. Scroll to the bottom of that window and click "System Report." 4. In the left side of the resulting window, under "Software," click "Applications." This will provide a list of installed applications. One of the columns for sorting is "Kind"; all apps that are x86 will be listed with the kind, "Intel."
    - latexr 1y ago
      You can replace steps 1–3 with “Open /System/Applications/Utilities/System Information.app”.
      - 1718627440 1y ago
        Does the MacOS shell not split at spaces, or how does that work without quotation?
        latexr 1y ago
        That’s not a shell command (otherwise “open” would be lowercase), it’s just an instruction.
        1718627440 1y ago
        Can you explain where you type that for non macOS users?
        scottmf 1y ago
        No it's an instruction for humans
        1718627440 1y ago
        Funny, that didn't occur to me at all. :-/ Maybe that's because I'm used to the FHS and I expected a path starting with /System to be either a path that is interpreted by some command or a description of an UI flow, not a path in the file system. So the thing you would type in the shell is just '/System/Applications/Utilities/System Information.app'? Does the Finder support starting programs by typing the path in the pathbar, like MS Explorer on Windows?
  - drob518 1y ago
    To see what’s running, 1. Go into Activity Monitor 2. From the CPU or memory tab, look at the “Kind” column. It’ll either say “Apple” or “Intel.” If the Kind column isn’t visible, right-click on the column labels and select Kind.
nomel 1y ago
How much die area does it use that could be used for performance? How much engineering time does it use? Does it make sense to keep it around, causing ~30% more power usage/less performance? There are many acceptable opposing answers, depending on the perspective of backwards compatibility, cost, and performance. My naive assumption is that, by the time 2027 comes around, they might have some sort of slow software emulation that is parity to, say, M1 Rosetta performance.
- free_bip 1y ago
  Rosetta is a software translation layer, not a hardware translation layer. It doesn't take any die space.
  - nomel 1y ago
    Hardware acceleration [1]: > One of the key reasons why Rosetta 2 provides such a high level of translation efficiency is the support of x86-64 memory ordering in the M1 SoC. The SoC also has dedicated instructions for computing x86 flags. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)
    - electroly 1y ago
      While true, we're not talking about the chips losing TSO; Apple plans to keep Rosetta 2 for games and it has to remain fast because, well, it's video games. It also seems like they plan to keep their container tool[1]. This means they can't get rid of TSO at the silicon level and I have not heard this discussed as a possibility. We're only discussing the loss of the software support here. The answer to "How much die area does it use that could be used for performance?" is zero--they have chosen to do a partial phase-out that doesn't permit them to save the die space. They'd need to kill all remaining Rosetta 2 usage in order to cull the die space, and they seem to be going out of their way not to do this. [1] https://github.com/apple/container https://github.com/apple/container -- uses Rosetta translation for x64 images.
      - 1y ago

by poemxo 1y ago

drob518 1y ago

The “big name apps” have already moved to Apple Silicon. Rosetta helped them with that process a few years ago. We’re down to the long tail apps now. At some point, Rosetta is only helping a couple people and it won’t make sense to support it. I just looked, and right now on my M1 Air, I have exactly one x86 app running, and I was honestly surprised to find that one (Safari plug-in). Everything else is running ARM. My workload is office, general productivity, and Java software development. I’m sure that if you allow your Mac to report back app usage to Apple, they know if you’re using Rosetta or not, and if so, which apps require it. I suspect that’s why they’re telegraphing that they are about ready to pull the plug.

prewett 1y ago
How do you check if you're running any x86 apps?
- thijsvandien 1y ago
  There's this Silicon app that scans your disk for them: https://github.com/DigiDNA/Silicon https://github.com/DigiDNA/Silicon.
- timsneath 1y ago
  In macOS 26, you can see every Rosetta app that has recently run on your machine by going to System Information and then Software / Rosetta Software. It includes the "Fallback Reason" (e.g. if you manually forced the app under Rosetta or if it was an Intel-only binary).
  - alwillis 1y ago
    FWIW, I have zero Rosetta apps on my M1 laptop and I've been a Mac user since the earliest days. I'm super aware of the issues involved--I oversaw the transition from PPC to Intel at a university back in the day, using OG Rosetta. Even then, we had users who would only stop using their PPC apps when you took them from their cold, dead hands.
- brycewray 1y ago
  1. From the Apple menu, click "About This Mac." 2. In the resulting window, click the "More Info..." button. This will open the System Settings window. 3. Scroll to the bottom of that window and click "System Report." 4. In the left side of the resulting window, under "Software," click "Applications." This will provide a list of installed applications. One of the columns for sorting is "Kind"; all apps that are x86 will be listed with the kind, "Intel."
  - latexr 1y ago
    You can replace steps 1–3 with “Open /System/Applications/Utilities/System Information.app”.
    - 1718627440 1y ago
      Does the MacOS shell not split at spaces, or how does that work without quotation?
      - latexr 1y ago
        That’s not a shell command (otherwise “open” would be lowercase), it’s just an instruction.
        1718627440 1y ago
        Can you explain where you type that for non macOS users?
        scottmf 1y ago
        No it's an instruction for humans
        1718627440 1y ago
        Funny, that didn't occur to me at all. :-/ Maybe that's because I'm used to the FHS and I expected a path starting with /System to be either a path that is interpreted by some command or a description of an UI flow, not a path in the file system. So the thing you would type in the shell is just '/System/Applications/Utilities/System Information.app'? Does the Finder support starting programs by typing the path in the pathbar, like MS Explorer on Windows?
- drob518 1y ago
  To see what’s running, 1. Go into Activity Monitor 2. From the CPU or memory tab, look at the “Kind” column. It’ll either say “Apple” or “Intel.” If the Kind column isn’t visible, right-click on the column labels and select Kind.

nomel 1y ago

How much die area does it use that could be used for performance? How much engineering time does it use? Does it make sense to keep it around, causing ~30% more power usage/less performance? There are many acceptable opposing answers, depending on the perspective of backwards compatibility, cost, and performance. My naive assumption is that, by the time 2027 comes around, they might have some sort of slow software emulation that is parity to, say, M1 Rosetta performance.

free_bip 1y ago
Rosetta is a software translation layer, not a hardware translation layer. It doesn't take any die space.
- nomel 1y ago
  Hardware acceleration [1]: > One of the key reasons why Rosetta 2 provides such a high level of translation efficiency is the support of x86-64 memory ordering in the M1 SoC. The SoC also has dedicated instructions for computing x86 flags. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)
  - electroly 1y ago
    While true, we're not talking about the chips losing TSO; Apple plans to keep Rosetta 2 for games and it has to remain fast because, well, it's video games. It also seems like they plan to keep their container tool[1]. This means they can't get rid of TSO at the silicon level and I have not heard this discussed as a possibility. We're only discussing the loss of the software support here. The answer to "How much die area does it use that could be used for performance?" is zero--they have chosen to do a partial phase-out that doesn't permit them to save the die space. They'd need to kill all remaining Rosetta 2 usage in order to cull the die space, and they seem to be going out of their way not to do this. [1] https://github.com/apple/container https://github.com/apple/container -- uses Rosetta translation for x64 images.
    - 1y ago