Why macOS27 won't be supporting Intel anymore

The official statement from Apple (emailed to developers 10 days ago) is that macOS 27 is the “final release to support Rosetta”, so the title is a bit off.

They also say:

> Please note that Rosetta functionality for older, unmaintained gaming titles that rely on Intel-based frameworks will continue to be supported.

I interpret that to mean just enough of Rosetta and Intel frameworks will continue to be around, at least for macOS 28. Not specified which ones, or whether it stays any longer than that.

I’m pretty curious of what that will look like exactly, because there’s a fair amount of system frameworks/libraries needed to get to a bare minimum “hello world” AppKit app. Add on top any number of other frameworks that might be used by “older, unmaintained” games that Apple sees fit to keep supporting. Does this ensure OpenGL is kept on life support? Will they consider Wine important enough to support, perhaps even after they drop native Intel games?

Wait, so.. how are we supposed to test Intel builds of our macOS apps from now on?

I get it that macOS has to evolve, but that doesn't mean all apps have to drop Intel support at the same time.

On hardware-level apps like my Lunar app I have plenty #if arch(arm64) because some features like reading the brightness nits or reading ambient light is different or completely missing based on the architecture. I need to test the UI differences based on what features are available.

I don't see it viable to stay on macOS 26 for this, especially if we're going to see breaking changes again with the display and window server subsystem like we did with Tahoe. M5 support for Gamma table changes is still broken after so many months [0]

[0] https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/819331#819331021

I hope they keep around the underpinnings for Rosetta 2 (without the macOS parts) just to keep supporting Intel virtualization for things like Docker. Heck then anyone who really needs to run some old Intel app can run a virtualized older version of macOS.

But I wonder if they're eager to drop support for the Intel TSO memory model from their CPUs.

Related? "Apple will phase out Rosetta 2 in macOS 28" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45692116 24-oct-2025 335 comments

I'm curious what options that leaves for docker. I assume the pattern of building/running linux/amd64 containers on MacOS is pretty widespread.

Edit: "Apple says that it will continue to support older, unmaintained gaming titles with Rosetta along with software running Intel binaries in Linux VMs beyond macOS 27 . There could also be future security fixes." - https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/16/macos-tahoe-26-4-rosett...

No Apple citation shown for that, though seems plausible.

I bet it must feel good for the macOS engineers to remove the intel support. Probably much easier to do development for the OS as well

Whatever. We have public utility OS, all the hardware vendors should be forced to provide open-source working drivers after they stop supporting their hardware.

If they are afraid of IP leak, well, they can continue support.

My desktop I built in 2012 is still working running ubuntu, even after Intel & MS decided that it is EOL with the release of windows 11.

Wow and darn I guess last support update to fully depreciate intel MacBooks. Used prices already are cratered.

They are great heavily supported Linux machines though. They work out of the box gorgeously with numerous distros and being usbc is nice. For $100-200 for a mint condition model, it isn’t so bad.

Anonymous mirror: https://xcancel.com/Lina_Hoshino/status/2046112493320458649

This seems less about why it won't be supporting Intel and more about why Rosetta 2 will be going away, which seems mostly related to cleaning up code that is no longer necessary once Intel is not supported.

Focusing is about saying no.

— Steve Jobs

https://youtu.be/H8eP99neOVs (WWDC '97)

This is something Microsoft will never learn, it's not in their DNA.

Maybe Microsoft will finally update the Minecraft launcher to support Apple Silicon. Last I looked they tried to close the bug report, someone reopened it, then there was a system migration and I lost track of it.

It’s almost like they did the work to get the actual game running on Apple Silicon, but installed Rosetta in the process, then just forgot about the launcher.

I always refused to install Rosetta on my Mac, so I could get a big warning if I was about to install something that wouldn’t work in the not too distant future.

Bad headline. This tweet attempts to explain why Rosetta 2 will no longer work. Which is because the OS no longer supports the Intel platform. That does not explain why the OS does not support the Intel platform.

I am missing something ? If I read the link in xcancel.com correctly, it says what I would look at as "intel emulation" will be removed in the next release.

So, it looks to me application vendors who depends upon this emulation was given proper notice of this removal. So I think you should complain to the vendors instead of Apple.

Most times I tend to criticize Apple, but this time seems Apple just moving on to avoid "bloat" and "cruft" from being carried forward in future releases.

OpenBSD does things like this all the time and they get praised for it, which I agree with. Apple did the same with this and some people are upset :)

executive decision