Yesterday, Apple dropped its initial developer beta of macOS Tahoe 26.4, and this update brings one important feature. To bring you up to speed, Apple started transitioning its Mac lineup from Intel processors to its own Apple silicon in November 2020, and back then, Apple introduced Rosetta 2, which is a translator technology that allows Macs with Apple silicon to run Intel-compiled apps until those apps get optimized to run Apple Silicon natively.
At last year’s WWDC, however, Apple officially confirmed that macOS Tahoe would be the last major release to support Intel-based Macs and Rosetta 2. In other words, this year’s upcoming release of macOS 27 will drop support for Intel-based Macs and Rosetta.
In this beta of macOS Tahoe 26.4, when a user launches an app that uses Rosetta 2, they’ll be prompted with an alert that will indicate that they will not be able to run the app when Rosetta 2 reaches end-of-life. We’ve seen this before when Apple announced it would drop support for applications that ran on the original Rosetta, and later for 32-bit applications.
Currently, select Intel-based Macs with the T2 security chip are compatible with the current release of macOS Tahoe, including:
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports)
- MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019)
- iMac (2020)
- Mac Pro (2019)
However, macOS 27 will drop support for any Intel-based Macs. So just a heads up, if you’re using any applications that run on Rosetta 2, update them to the version that’s native to Apple Silicon if the app is still supported; otherwise, you’ll need to have an older Mac with macOS 26 or below if you need to continue using an app that won’t see support.
