Yep. They unceremoniously dropped the first Rosetta without warning, destroying a lot of investment into applications. Even though it could have been left in place as an option for those who were willing to use the few MB of disk space it took.
Yep. They unceremoniously dropped the first Rosetta without warning, destroying a lot of investment into applications. Even though it could have been left in place as an option for those who were willing to use the few MB of disk space it took.
They dropped the original Rosetta so fast for a few reasons:
1. To push certain major software publishers, notably Adobe and Avid (and to a lesser extent, Microsoft), to release Mac Intel-Native versions of key Applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, ProTools and MS Office, to name a few). This was immentized by the second reason, below.
2. Performance, or rather lack thereof. The biggest barrier to decent performance for Rosetta was also the one that could never be satisfactorily fixed: Endianess. PowerPC (G5, at least) and Intel CPUs had opposite byte-order representation of multi-byte operand-values. In an unfortunate side-note, the PPC G4 series of CPUs had the ability to set the endianness; but that ability was not designed into the PPC G5 series. So, the constant Thunking of every single instruction operand just sapped the life out of the rest of the Translator, and really nothing could ever be done for it. Fortunately, Intel and arm CPUs have the same Endianness; so that issue is right off the table for Rosetta 2.
So, with those two important facts, one an issue with third-party publishers of key Applications, and the other (related) issue regarding poor performance that really couldn't be fixed, Apple really had little choice but to quickly deprecate the original Rosetta,
Honestly, what would you have done? They couldn't stay with PPC, because they were stuck with its high-power-consumption (preventing a practical G5 laptop) and relatively low clock speed (as Intel caught-up), and they couldn't allow their Pro (and even non-pro) marketshare be frittered-away due to third-party publishers and non-fixable Rosetta performance. So, Rosetta, which was designed as a short-term workaround until third-party publishers released new versions of their Applications, and an "ok, but not great" solution for software that was never going to be re-released, was quickly turning into a serious Albatross around the Mac's neck.
So, they did the only thing they could reasonably do: End Rosetta-support after only 1 major revision of OS X.
However, things are very different this time around. For one thing, Rosetta 2 performance is ,
The biggest issue this time around appears to be Windows. And I personally feel confident they will at least work out a licensing deal to offer Windows 10 arm as a BTO option. Afterall, Apple is most assuredly a "PC manufacturer", and MS would quickly run-afoul of antitrust laws if they deny Apple a license to Windows 10 arm, due to MS' undeniable monopoly position with Windows.
Now, all MS has to do is work on their Windows 10 First-Runtime x86 Translator, which reportedly sucks balls, performance-wise, and doesn't (yet) support x64 (although that is planned for the end of this year).
I have no idea what GP and parent are talking about... Rosetta still works fine on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. I think this is PEBKAC, that irresistible urge many users have to update their production machines without thinking. If your rig works, and you are not affected by the bugs they fix, and you do not expect to use the new features (this is the tradeoff), then please let me give you some advice: DON'T UPGRADE. If your stuff works without being on the bleeding edge, so what? Stay the
You run into the situation where some new application only runs on a newer OS version, but that OS version _deliberately_ breaks support for older software which was working just fine.
You run into the situation where some new application only runs on a newer OS version, but that OS version _deliberately_ breaks support for older software which was working just fine.
Thanks for not beating me up for being annoyed, thanks for ignoring that. You're a pro.
The problem I see with that is "some new application." That's the problem that you don't think it is, i that it isn't a problem. Now, I wouldn't say there will never be any brand new innovation in software that rises to "killerapp." But they're going to be fewer and fewer and farther and father between. Everything has been done that can be done by now. I hate this idiom, but there is more than one way to skin a cat. UNI
Computers "thunk" endianness more than you realize. The internet is big endian, while Intel and most ARM platforms are little-endian. Flipping endianness is cheap and hardware accelerated.
Computers "thunk" endianness more than you realize. The internet is big endian, while Intel and most ARM platforms are little-endian. Flipping endianness is cheap and hardware accelerated.
Speaking as someone who has converted major Intel applications to PowerPC and thereby dealt with a mismatch of endianness...
In current Mac apps the endian mismatch between the internet and the app is largely irrelevant, it has already been addressed. The fact that the new architecture (ARM) matches the previous architecture (Intel) makes the porting process so much simpler. And if Rosetta2 works as advertised so simple in some cases that it will be automated.
So, they did the only thing they could reasonably do: End Rosetta-support after only 1 major revision of OS X.
Rosetta was an optional install on the OS install disk all the way til 10.7 and that came out in 2011, i.e 5 years after the initial 2006 release. That makes it a total of three major versions with support for it (10.4, 10.5 and 10.6) which I personally think is a quite reasonable lifespan. If I'm not mistaken it didn't even become an optional install until 10.6.
Opinions may obviously differ here, but I personally skipped 10.7, which gave me a total of 6 years of support.
"for years to come" (Score:5, Interesting)
translation: you have 2 years
Re: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"for years to come" (Score:2, Insightful)
Yep. They unceremoniously dropped the first Rosetta without warning, destroying a lot of investment into applications. Even though it could have been left in place as an option for those who were willing to use the few MB of disk space it took.
They dropped the original Rosetta so fast for a few reasons:
1. To push certain major software publishers, notably Adobe and Avid (and to a lesser extent, Microsoft), to release Mac Intel-Native versions of key Applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, ProTools and MS Office, to name a few). This was immentized by the second reason, below.
2. Performance, or rather lack thereof. The biggest barrier to decent performance for Rosetta was also the one that could never be satisfactorily fixed: Endianess. PowerPC (G5, at least) and Intel CPUs had opposite byte-order representation of multi-byte operand-values. In an unfortunate side-note, the PPC G4 series of CPUs had the ability to set the endianness; but that ability was not designed into the PPC G5 series. So, the constant Thunking of every single instruction operand just sapped the life out of the rest of the Translator, and really nothing could ever be done for it. Fortunately, Intel and arm CPUs have the same Endianness; so that issue is right off the table for Rosetta 2.
So, with those two important facts, one an issue with third-party publishers of key Applications, and the other (related) issue regarding poor performance that really couldn't be fixed, Apple really had little choice but to quickly deprecate the original Rosetta,
Honestly, what would you have done? They couldn't stay with PPC, because they were stuck with its high-power-consumption (preventing a practical G5 laptop) and relatively low clock speed (as Intel caught-up), and they couldn't allow their Pro (and even non-pro) marketshare be frittered-away due to third-party publishers and non-fixable Rosetta performance. So, Rosetta, which was designed as a short-term workaround until third-party publishers released new versions of their Applications, and an "ok, but not great" solution for software that was never going to be re-released, was quickly turning into a serious Albatross around the Mac's neck.
So, they did the only thing they could reasonably do: End Rosetta-support after only 1 major revision of OS X.
However, things are very different this time around. For one thing, Rosetta 2 performance is ,
The biggest issue this time around appears to be Windows. And I personally feel confident they will at least work out a licensing deal to offer Windows 10 arm as a BTO option. Afterall, Apple is most assuredly a "PC manufacturer", and MS would quickly run-afoul of antitrust laws if they deny Apple a license to Windows 10 arm, due to MS' undeniable monopoly position with Windows.
Now, all MS has to do is work on their Windows 10 First-Runtime x86 Translator, which reportedly sucks balls, performance-wise, and doesn't (yet) support x64 (although that is planned for the end of this year).
Re: (Score:2)
I have no idea what GP and parent are talking about... Rosetta still works fine on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. I think this is PEBKAC, that irresistible urge many users have to update their production machines without thinking. If your rig works, and you are not affected by the bugs they fix, and you do not expect to use the new features (this is the tradeoff), then please let me give you some advice: DON'T UPGRADE. If your stuff works without being on the bleeding edge, so what? Stay the
Re:"for years to come" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You run into the situation where some new application only runs on a newer OS version, but that OS version _deliberately_ breaks support for older software which was working just fine.
Thanks for not beating me up for being annoyed, thanks for ignoring that. You're a pro.
The problem I see with that is "some new application." That's the problem that you don't think it is, i that it isn't a problem. Now, I wouldn't say there will never be any brand new innovation in software that rises to "killerapp." But they're going to be fewer and fewer and farther and father between. Everything has been done that can be done by now. I hate this idiom, but there is more than one way to skin a cat. UNI
Re: (Score:3)
Computers "thunk" endianness more than you realize. The internet is big endian, while Intel and most ARM platforms are little-endian. Flipping endianness is cheap and hardware accelerated.
Maintaining endianness makes life much simpler (Score:2)
Computers "thunk" endianness more than you realize. The internet is big endian, while Intel and most ARM platforms are little-endian. Flipping endianness is cheap and hardware accelerated.
Speaking as someone who has converted major Intel applications to PowerPC and thereby dealt with a mismatch of endianness ...
In current Mac apps the endian mismatch between the internet and the app is largely irrelevant, it has already been addressed. The fact that the new architecture (ARM) matches the previous architecture (Intel) makes the porting process so much simpler. And if Rosetta2 works as advertised so simple in some cases that it will be automated.
If you are switching architectures you are
Re: (Score:2)
So, they did the only thing they could reasonably do: End Rosetta-support after only 1 major revision of OS X.
Rosetta was an optional install on the OS install disk all the way til 10.7 and that came out in 2011, i.e 5 years after the initial 2006 release. That makes it a total of three major versions with support for it (10.4, 10.5 and 10.6) which I personally think is a quite reasonable lifespan. If I'm not mistaken it didn't even become an optional install until 10.6.
Opinions may obviously differ here, but I personally skipped 10.7, which gave me a total of 6 years of support.