←back to thread

M4 Macs can't virtualise older macOS

(eclecticlight.co)
177 points Brajeshwar | 2 comments | 16 Nov 24 16:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | source
Show context
Terretta ◴[16 Nov 24 20:01 UTC] No.42158813[source]▶
Commenters lament that Rosetta will go away before users are ready.

In my opinion, Rosetta should be more heavily gated* to push everyone from Adobe to Steam to build for aarch64. Countless "Apple Silicon native" claiming tools require Rosetta under the hood for dependencies or even (bless their hearts) only their installer.

* Like right-click to open packages or install not-from app store, except Rosetta dialog should note that once it's installed any other old software not made for this system will run without warning. Turns out avoiding Rosetta is a great way to ensure not just apps but your CLI tools are all up to date... Alternatively, make Rosetta sandboxed with apps, and/or let it be turned off again more reasonably than the safe-mode surgery required now.

replies(5): >>42159013 #>>42159409 #>>42159901 #>>42161215 #>>42164337 #
1. talldayo ◴[16 Nov 24 22:22 UTC] No.42159901[source]▶
> to push everyone from Adobe to Steam to build for aarch64

Not happening. The other commenters are right - many developers are content letting their apps get abandoned if the choice is between Universal binary or x86. A lot of software, particularly legacy software and older games, don't even have the opportunity to build for aarch64. The moment Apple put an expiration date on Rosetta they were confronting you with the inevitability that your software would one day die. There is no convincing some people - for christsake, four generations of Apple Silicon came and went and Steam is fine leaving their client x86 only. They know all their MacOS users are playing through Game Porting Toolkit's Windows version anyways.

From where you're standing, it must feel like an 18 carrot run of bad luck. Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.

replies(1): >>42160626 #
2. kbolino ◴[16 Nov 24 23:48 UTC] No.42160626[source]▶
The Linux Steam client is also still 32-bit, so it's more like 20 years with no 64-bit support.