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0 pointsbenoau9mo ago0 comments

Don't worry, they plan to gut Rosetta 2 so it will only support Mac games from the Intel era, that should help shrink that number!

> Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 – as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps. Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/abou...

0 comments

cosmic_cheese9mo ago

Their compatibility layers being intended as exclusively transitional can be frustrating, but on the other hand it’s also why near every Mac app now has a proper aarch64 build. If it were known that Rosetta were going to remain part of the OS forever, many apps would’ve never been ported and would’ve been at an effectively permanent 30-60% performance penalty and disproportionate drags on battery life.

On the other side of the fence in Windows land, adoption of features much more trivial than an architecture change are absolutely glacial because devs know they can lean on back compatibility in perpetuity.

Apple’s approach is perhaps too aggressive but Microsoft’s is far too lax. I don’t think it’s realistic to dump a binary and expect it to work forever with no maintenance.

zamadatix9mo ago

Even if Windows wanted to push hard to get off x86 they still lack ARM hardware worth moving to in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if the 13" M1 MacBook alone shipped more units than all Windows 8/8.1/10/11 ARM devices combined. The 32 bit -> 64 bit app migration for x86 was also much slower on Windows but, again, there wasn't any real performance gain to be had until your app needed more than 4 GB of RAM in a single process, so no real pressure there either.

The moment Windows actually has non-x86 hardware which people actually want to buy I bet native app support comes pretty quick.

sofixa9mo ago

> The moment Windows actually has non-x86 hardware which people actually want to buy I bet native app support comes pretty quick.

Snapdragon X laptops are here already, and reviews are generally positive (of course, use and workload dependent, nobody should get one to game, but for web browsing and long battery life it's perfect).

zamadatix9mo ago

Qualcomm's exclusivity deal with Microsoft started 9 years ago, but if you've got the numbers to say people are actually buying the latest Snapdragon option more often for web browsing than x86 laptops I'd be willing to believe something has finally changed. Otherwise there is always some special stat advertised about how "this time it really is better", yet it's never what people actually want.

Looking at the M1, there was no "if", "but", "for certain", etc wording. It was just better all around, even comparing gaming performance vs older MacBooks. Even running Windows ARM in a VM was better than buying a Windows laptop (x86 or ARM) in terms of both performance and battery. Based on your description, I don't think the Snapdragon X laptops are the same story?

rarepostinlurkr9mo ago

I don't follow how Rosetta 2 supporting Mac games from the x86 era is going to "shrink" that number.

macOS x86 games + macOS arm64 games == same number of games. Whats the loss angle here?

djxfade9mo ago

I think what they meant to say was that Rosetta 2 is going away in the future, leaving only native AARCH64 binaries compatible

benoauOP9mo ago

All the other x86 games that can run on Mac through Rosetta.

hn-acct9mo ago

If amateurs can use game porting and achieve decent results then I think the actual devs can achieve excellent results.

My guess is that Mac users simply don’t buy games for their macs

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

cosmic_cheese9mo ago

Apple’s approach is perhaps too aggressive but Microsoft’s is far too lax. I don’t think it’s realistic to dump a binary and expect it to work forever with no maintenance.

zamadatix9mo ago

The moment Windows actually has non-x86 hardware which people actually want to buy I bet native app support comes pretty quick.

sofixa9mo ago

> The moment Windows actually has non-x86 hardware which people actually want to buy I bet native app support comes pretty quick.

zamadatix9mo ago

rarepostinlurkr9mo ago

I don't follow how Rosetta 2 supporting Mac games from the x86 era is going to "shrink" that number.

macOS x86 games + macOS arm64 games == same number of games. Whats the loss angle here?

djxfade9mo ago

I think what they meant to say was that Rosetta 2 is going away in the future, leaving only native AARCH64 binaries compatible

benoauOP9mo ago

All the other x86 games that can run on Mac through Rosetta.

hn-acct9mo ago

If amateurs can use game porting and achieve decent results then I think the actual devs can achieve excellent results.

My guess is that Mac users simply don’t buy games for their macs

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse