[caseyohara]

The M1 chip and Rosetta 2 were introduced in 2020. macOS 28 will be released in 2027. 7 years seems like plenty of time for software vendors to make the necessary updates. If Apple never discontinues Rosetta support, vendors will never update their software to run natively on Apple chips.

[linguae]

This is also consistent with Apple’s previous behavior with backwards compatibility, where Apple would provide a few years of support for the previous platform but will strongly nudge developers and users to move on. The Classic environment in Mac OS X that enabled classic Mac OS apps to run didn’t survive the Intel switch and was unavailable in Leopard even for PowerPC Macs, and the original Rosetta for PowerPC Mac OS X applications was not included starting with Lion, the release after Snow Leopard.

[delusional]

Honestly, for apple this is above and beyond. They've killed support with less fanfare and compatibility support than what we see here.

[out_of_protocol]

Windows 95 was released... well, in 1995. In 2025 you can run apps targeting W95 just fine (and many 16-bit apps with some effort)

[slavapestov]

> In 2025 you can run apps targeting W95 just fine (and many 16-bit apps with some effort)

FWIW, Windows running on a 64-bit host no longer runs 16-bit binaries.

[K7PJP]

This isn't a new or unique move; Apple has never prioritized backwards compatibility.

If you're a Mac user, you expect this sort of thing. If running neglected software is critical to you, you run Windows or you keep your old Macs around.

[delusional]

There's a lot of Win95 software that you can't run too. Microsoft puts a lot of work into their extensive backlog of working software. It's not just "good engineering" it's honest to god fresh development.

[Klonoar]

Just because Microsoft does one thing doesn't mean Apple has to do the same.

[reddalo]

That's not a good thing for other reasons; e.g. there are a lot of inconsistencies in modern Windows, like pieces of Windows 3.1 still in Windows 11.

[stalfosknight]

That's not necessarily a good thing.

[watermelon0]

The main problem is not native software, but virtualization, since ARM64 hardware is still quite uncommon for Windows/Linux, and we need Rosetta for decent performance when running AMD64 in virtual machines.

[spacechild1]

There is lots of existing software (audio plugins, games, etc.) that will never see an update. All of that software will be lost. Most new software has ARM or universal binaries. If some vendors refuse to update their software, it's their problem. Windows still supports 32-bit applications, yet almost all new software is 64-bit.