Tag: MacOS

It’s that time of the year again for Apple users; the new devices are being shown to the world and you might once again if you’re an Apple fanboy or fangirl be thinking about a new purchase, OR upgrading your software with the new operating systems each with the ’27’ suffix.

We’ll leave the hardware devices aside, they can be expensive and with every year that passes I have to question whether I need a new shiny device. My iPhone 14 Pro is now at least 4 years old, my MacBook Pro older still, and I’m happy with the Mac Mini 4, and iPad Pro I bought over the last couple of years – so no hardware for me. However software upgrades always have to be considered.

Some devices run out of steam and can’t take the latest software. That’s inevitable and you can’t really complain about that. Technology moves on and to get the new features of an operating system you might eventually have to upgrade your hardware. That’s technological life! With advances in technology security issues pop up to the surface and the unintended consequences of some code become apparent. That forces the need for software updates and upgrades. These should not be dismissed as not relevant to you. They might be, and you will never know that until you fall foul of an insidious bit of malware. This has become more apparent with the advent of AI, because technology companies are now using the tools that this new technology provides to find the bugs and glitches in their own software, so ignore security updates at your peril!

So why is this post targeted at Apple users? Or, more specifically Mac users, those running the MacOS operating system. It’s because support for old Intel processors in these systems is coming to an end.

Back in 2020 Apple started manufacturing their own silicon; their own processors on a chip. They created new architectures for their computers and these are described as the “M series”. The Macs have gradually moved from the former Intel processors, to the M series and now, no Mac is being made with an Intel processor. They’re all M series machines – M1 -> M6.

To achieve a smooth transition to the new architecture Apple had to provide a software emulation of the Intel chipset to enable software written for the Intel platform to run on the new Apple processors. This emulator was called Rosetta. However Rosetta is just as vulnerable as any other piece of software to malware, so Apple gave early notice that support for Rosetta would not be long-term; at some stage it declared that with the launch of MacOS 28, in autumn 2028, Rosetta would not be supported and would not run on the M series machines running MacOS 28. So a lot of old Intel based software would become end of life, and this is really what this post is all about.

Apple is not springing this upon its users, it warned us it was coming and we should now take stock and prepare for the change.

Since a date earlier this year – if you were running MacOS 26 (Tahoe) – if you ran a piece of software that relied on Rosetta you’d have received a warning that the application would not run on MacOS 28. OK that’s two years away … I can ignore that for the moment. However, from this month, if you were to install MacOS 27 (Golden Gate), that software will not run because you need to install Rosetta manually – it’s not pre-installed as part of the operating system as it has been since 2020. So installing Rosetta may be something you have to do.

This is how you do that. [Click the link]

I was going to describe how you did the install, how you identified the apps that would cease working with MacOS 28, but it’s all well-explained in the article above. If you’re a Mac user, please read it.

So what should you consider doing now?

Well, I used the information in the article to review and identify all the applications that I had installed on my Mac to see if they were described as Intel (Universal and Arm64 being OK). [I think you can ignore any that say 32-bit because they won’t work anyway, they’re left-overs and I’m not sure how to clean your system of these – I will research that though.]

I then looked to see if I was using the application, if not, I uninstalled it – it’s amazing the dross that you leave in your Applications Folder and how liberating it feels to say goodbye.

If there was an application that I thought I’d need going forward, I looked to see if I’d missed an upgrade to it that would provide Apple Silicon compatibility, and then upgraded it.

Some upgrades might involve a cost, so I looked to see if there was an alternative that I could use to provide the same functionality. I did this as well for applications where no upgrade path was provided – for applications that had stopped being supported some time before.

But for some applications, in my case Epson printer drivers and applications, the situation was not clear. I put these applications on watch. I now knew which applications I would have to resolve before I upgraded next year to MacOS 28.

That might seem a long time away but for something like printer support this is vital and I don’t want an expensive piece of hardware to suddenly not work unexpectedly.

Here’s another way of identifying the apps that might give you problems.

Click on the Apple icon (top-left hand side of the screen) and then More info … to get the System Settings screen:

Choose System Report and then scroll down to Software > Applications:

Click on the box “Kind” to sort the Applications by Kind, and you will be able to scroll down to find the Intel applications you have to consider.

All the best. Good luck.

PS. Usual advice, don’t in any case upgrade your OS until it’s got at least past the 27.1 version; they’re already working on beta-versions of 27.2.