State of Apple Silicon - half of the most popular Mac apps still need Rosetta

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 54
    I'm reached 20GB of swap memory and nothing is hot, noisy or battery draining. My 2020 Intel MBP 13" would be struggling and skipping a beat by now, instead of being buttery smooth. It's amazing how smooth everything is. Yeah, I'm not editing 4K o 8K raw video but the M1 MBP is Apple's LOW END machine. It's a game changer.
    edited February 2021 rob53asdasddocno42
  • Reply 22 of 54
    MplsPMplsP Posts: 3,911member
    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.

    S L O W.

    Completely what I expected, but with all the "no, really, they're fast" hype, I thought maybe I'd be wrong.

    Nope.  They're slow. 

    Buy an Intel Mac while you still can.

    I had the same experience before the 11.1 update, after which everything was fast and buttery smooth. It’s important to remember that anything running Rosetta is going to slow on first launch and then as fast or faster than the Intel model.

    No way I would go back to an Intel model. They run hot, are noisy and the battery life is dismal. Mine has only been barely warm  and I’ve never heard the fan (in thick protective computer case) and the battery life is just nuts, something no PC can match and all that with most apps still on Rosetta.

    Plus the wake from sleep is instant and USB4 pretty much eliminates the need for Thunderbolt for single flash drives, etc. Another benefit is that USBTB/4 manages data streams in a way that improves speed when using multiple devices.

    FAST - QUITE - COOL - CRAZY BATTERY LIFE

    Once you go Apple Silicon there is no going back!
    Yeah - I haven’t had a chance to use one yet, but every review I’ve seen talks about how fast they are. My brother in law got a M1 Mini for Christmas and loves it, so I’m not sure what gives with Darkkvader’s experience. 

    I have a 2016 MBP and waking from sleep is horribly slow since installing Big Sur. I’m probably going to upgrade to an M1 next year; hope that wakes faster. 
    Fidonet127
  • Reply 23 of 54
    lukeilukei Posts: 379member
    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.

    S L O W.

    Completely what I expected, but with all the "no, really, they're fast" hype, I thought maybe I'd be wrong.

    Nope.  They're slow. 

    Buy an Intel Mac while you still can.

    Utter nonsense 
    williamlondonfahlmanjdb8167asdasdStrangeDays
  • Reply 24 of 54
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    sflocal said:
    As a developer myself, this inaction by other developers really irks me and gives us a bad rap.  I know conversions can be a pain.  I've done a few myself over the decades.  It's inevitable that Apple a future MacOS release will require that all apps be native ARM apps so anyone not ready by that time should be jettisoned as they obviously don't care and would rather complain the be compliant.
    Does anyone remember how long the original Rosetta was around before Apple removed it from macOS? I remember the outcries of users wanting to reinstall it so they could continue on with PPC coded apps. Apple did not back down and Rosetta was nowhere to be found. The removal of Rosetta 2 after a couple of years would certainly force the hands of laggard developers. 
    edited February 2021
  • Reply 25 of 54
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.

    S L O W.

    Completely what I expected, but with all the "no, really, they're fast" hype, I thought maybe I'd be wrong.

    Nope.  They're slow. 

    Buy an Intel Mac while you still can.

    Blathering idiocy. But I like the attempted troll. I fell for it and responded. Good work!
    Fidonet127williamlondonfahlmanjdb8167asdasdStrangeDays
  • Reply 26 of 54
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 2,783member
    So to take a snapshot of how the transition from Intel to ARM is going, AppleInsider drew up a list of 100 major Mac apps.

    You know, it would really be great if you had included the list, or at least had a link to it. You mentioned a few of the apps, but t would be helpful to see the others, you know in case they are important to our own processes. 

    Fidonet127
  • Reply 27 of 54
    sbdudesbdude Posts: 255member
    DAalseth said:
    So to take a snapshot of how the transition from Intel to ARM is going, AppleInsider drew up a list of 100 major Mac apps.

    You know, it would really be great if you had included the list, or at least had a link to it. You mentioned a few of the apps, but t would be helpful to see the others, you know in case they are important to our own processes. 

    Would have been even better if this article was a list.
  • Reply 28 of 54
    jdb8167jdb8167 Posts: 626member
    MplsP said:
    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.

    S L O W.

    Completely what I expected, but with all the "no, really, they're fast" hype, I thought maybe I'd be wrong.

    Nope.  They're slow. 

    Buy an Intel Mac while you still can.

    I had the same experience before the 11.1 update, after which everything was fast and buttery smooth. It’s important to remember that anything running Rosetta is going to slow on first launch and then as fast or faster than the Intel model.

    No way I would go back to an Intel model. They run hot, are noisy and the battery life is dismal. Mine has only been barely warm  and I’ve never heard the fan (in thick protective computer case) and the battery life is just nuts, something no PC can match and all that with most apps still on Rosetta.

    Plus the wake from sleep is instant and USB4 pretty much eliminates the need for Thunderbolt for single flash drives, etc. Another benefit is that USBTB/4 manages data streams in a way that improves speed when using multiple devices.

    FAST - QUITE - COOL - CRAZY BATTERY LIFE

    Once you go Apple Silicon there is no going back!
    Yeah - I haven’t had a chance to use one yet, but every review I’ve seen talks about how fast they are. My brother in law got a M1 Mini for Christmas and loves it, so I’m not sure what gives with Darkkvader’s experience. 

    I have a 2016 MBP and waking from sleep is horribly slow since installing Big Sur. I’m probably going to upgrade to an M1 next year; hope that wakes faster. 
    I don’t think you need to go much beyond an attempt at trolling. Anyone who has used an M1 will confirm they are wildly faster than their Intel counterparts. No credible source has said otherwise. 
    asdasd
  • Reply 29 of 54
    lkrupp said:
    sflocal said:
    As a developer myself, this inaction by other developers really irks me and gives us a bad rap.  I know conversions can be a pain.  I've done a few myself over the decades.  It's inevitable that Apple a future MacOS release will require that all apps be native ARM apps so anyone not ready by that time should be jettisoned as they obviously don't care and would rather complain the be compliant.
    Does anyone remember how long the original Rosetta was around before Apple removed it from macOS? I remember the outcries of users wanting to reinstall it so they could continue on with PPC coded apps. Apple did not back down and Rosetta was nowhere to be found. The removal of Rosetta 2 after a couple of years would certainly force the hands of laggard developers. 
    It was in 10.4, 10.5, optional install in 10.6 and then removed altogether. So basically 2-3 years. I'm guessing they'll make it optional after the transition is complete. So it will likely be be gone by Fall of 2023.
  • Reply 30 of 54
    lkrupp said:
    sflocal said:
    As a developer myself, this inaction by other developers really irks me and gives us a bad rap.  I know conversions can be a pain.  I've done a few myself over the decades.  It's inevitable that Apple a future MacOS release will require that all apps be native ARM apps so anyone not ready by that time should be jettisoned as they obviously don't care and would rather complain the be compliant.
    Does anyone remember how long the original Rosetta was around before Apple removed it from macOS? I remember the outcries of users wanting to reinstall it so they could continue on with PPC coded apps. Apple did not back down and Rosetta was nowhere to be found. The removal of Rosetta 2 after a couple of years would certainly force the hands of laggard developers. 
    It was in 10.4, 10.5, optional install in 10.6 and then removed altogether. So basically 2-3 years. I'm guessing they'll make it optional after the transition is complete. So it will likely be be gone by Fall of 2023.
    It’s already optional. If you don’t run x86 apps Rosetta 2 is never installed. 
    asdasd
  • Reply 31 of 54
    rob53rob53 Posts: 3,241member
    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.

    S L O W.

    Completely what I expected, but with all the "no, really, they're fast" hype, I thought maybe I'd be wrong.

    Nope.  They're slow. 

    Buy an Intel Mac while you still can.

    I hate quoting people who double space their comments. I bought an M1 MBA with 512GB SSD so got the 8 GPU cores. My main Mac is a late 2015 iMac with Radeon graphics card and its a bit faster with multicore tests than my M1, however, the M1 is a ton faster writing and reading to the SSD. I'm considering downsizing to the M1 MBA for everything while waiting for a reasonably priced Thunderbolt monitor. I'll give my iMac to a grandkid for remote learning since it's still good for that. As for putting any more money into Intel Macs, not me, I'm done. Yes, Intel Macs will be supported for several years but my $1200 M1 MBA is as lot faster for the things I do than my old iMac, which cost ~$4K. I'm telling family and friends to wait for the M1-series iMacs before upgrading their current computers. These new iMacs will blow the socks off the latest Intel iMac without requiring maximum AC in your office and a dedicated 15A circuit. (little sarcasm at end but people who are using the new M1-based Macs know how quiet and cool they are)
    Fidonet127commentzilladewmeasdasd
  • Reply 32 of 54
    If syncing notes is more CPU-bound than I/O-bound then the developer has chosen poorly.

    The kind of code used for that is something that’s more likely to translate readily anyway.

    I use OpenSCAD on my Mac Mini and it’s absolutely going to be more CPU-intensive, and it runs at least as fast (subjectively) as on Intel even with the translation likely making it suboptimal, and as much as it’s open-source and written in C, perhaps C++, I have no incentive at this time to worry about it.
  • Reply 33 of 54
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,299member
    So basically the older the app the larger the code and the more likely it is to have legacy code, plugins, 3rd party libraries or other obtuse code blocks the longer it will take to get to native.

    can apps be easily part native?
  • Reply 34 of 54
    jdb8167 said:
    lkrupp said:
    sflocal said:
    As a developer myself, this inaction by other developers really irks me and gives us a bad rap.  I know conversions can be a pain.  I've done a few myself over the decades.  It's inevitable that Apple a future MacOS release will require that all apps be native ARM apps so anyone not ready by that time should be jettisoned as they obviously don't care and would rather complain the be compliant.
    Does anyone remember how long the original Rosetta was around before Apple removed it from macOS? I remember the outcries of users wanting to reinstall it so they could continue on with PPC coded apps. Apple did not back down and Rosetta was nowhere to be found. The removal of Rosetta 2 after a couple of years would certainly force the hands of laggard developers. 
    It was in 10.4, 10.5, optional install in 10.6 and then removed altogether. So basically 2-3 years. I'm guessing they'll make it optional after the transition is complete. So it will likely be be gone by Fall of 2023.
    It’s already optional. If you don’t run x86 apps Rosetta 2 is never installed. 
    That's not quite the same thing. Once Rosetta became optional no PPC app would run unless you went back and manually ran the installer from the DVD. For Rosetta 2 that would mean clicking on a x86 would do nothing, unless you protectively installed it manually BEFORE attempting to launch a x86 app.
  • Reply 35 of 54

    rob53 said:
    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.

    S L O W.

    Completely what I expected, but with all the "no, really, they're fast" hype, I thought maybe I'd be wrong.

    Nope.  They're slow. 

    Buy an Intel Mac while you still can.

    I hate quoting people who double space their comments. I bought an M1 MBA with 512GB SSD so got the 8 GPU cores. My main Mac is a late 2015 iMac with Radeon graphics card and its a bit faster with multicore tests than my M1, however, the M1 is a ton faster writing and reading to the SSD. I'm considering downsizing to the M1 MBA for everything while waiting for a reasonably priced Thunderbolt monitor. I'll give my iMac to a grandkid for remote learning since it's still good for that. As for putting any more money into Intel Macs, not me, I'm done. Yes, Intel Macs will be supported for several years but my $1200 M1 MBA is as lot faster for the things I do than my old iMac, which cost ~$4K. I'm telling family and friends to wait for the M1-series iMacs before upgrading their current computers. These new iMacs will blow the socks off the latest Intel iMac without requiring maximum AC in your office and a dedicated 15A circuit. (little sarcasm at end but people who are using the new M1-based Macs know how quiet and cool they are)
    Exactly. The M1 is dead silent, barely warm at peak and the battery like to quote Steve Jobs is "insane". There is no equivalent PC laptop price/performance wise.
    danox
  • Reply 36 of 54
    Intel transition: WWDC 2005 Steve explained why they had been evangelizing xcode so much. Mathematica’s demo showed he was right. Adobe had still been using other tools and spent an embarrassingly long time retooling Photoshop. From the looks of their FAQ page they are in much better shape this time. 
  • Reply 37 of 54
    neilmneilm Posts: 985member
    darkvader said:
    I touched a M1 Mac today for the first time.
    S L O W.
    Completely what I expected, but with all the "no, really, they're fast" hype, I thought maybe I'd be wrong.
    Nope.  They're slow.  
    Buy an Intel Mac while you still can.
    And did the Nazis win WW II in your alternate universe?
  • Reply 38 of 54
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,328member
    mattinoz said:
    So basically the older the app the larger the code and the more likely it is to have legacy code, plugins, 3rd party libraries or other obtuse code blocks the longer it will take to get to native.

    can apps be easily part native?
    Good question. I assume what you’re asking is whether portions of your app, e.g., specific libraries, can be rebuilt for M1 and still interop with Intel components. 

    My gut feel is that Apple would have to provide an interop layer to facilitate mixed applications if the native libraries are accessed in-process from x86 code and not through some sort of far-model calling mechanism. The legacy code (x86) would have to provide a way to tell the compiler, linker, and runtime that the x86 code is calling into Apple Silicon code so Rosetta 2 knows how to hook everything up at runtime. 

    Interop layers tend to involve thunking, proxy-stub pairs, attributed code (method level flags), and similar constructs that allow the compiler and linker to transform methods and memory references between two different runtime models. I’m sure Apple could do this in addition to the all or nothing approach that I assume is used by Rosetta 2 but it’s probably not something that they’d want to invest in for the long term. 

    My own experience with fine grained interop on other platforms is that it is never a good choice for performance, but even more so, it tends to involve a substantial time and effort investment by developers to learn a very specialized technical skill that has a very short half-life. It also complicates the build process and becomes a drag and anchor holding you back. 

    I would not be inclined to want to support a mixed application and would rather devote my time to moving my app over to the new architecture completely, even if doing so involves freezing development on the old app and keeping it around as a separate legacy-only version. In fact, Apple provides a better solution with universal apps, but mixed apps ... I wouldn’t want to go there even if it’s possible. 
    mattinoz
  • Reply 39 of 54
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    Goed to know: the most complete photo editor, and one of the oldest Mac applications, is also M1 compatible: Graphic Converter, from Lemke. 
    Yup, we've talked about this before.

    https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/12/31/some-mac-software-has-made-it-all-the-way-from-68k-to-m1---heres-why
  • Reply 40 of 54
    danoxdanox Posts: 2,799member
    lkrupp said:
    "The best and most committed Mac developers are seeing the future potential of Apple Silicon and are excited by it.”

    As for the rest... drag your feet until you absolutely have to.
    Adobe, Quark, and Autodesk will drag until the end they did the last time and do so again, thank you Affinity and Omni.
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