Warning: this program will soon no longer be compatible with your computer.
On a small number of Intel-based Macs that can handle it, the latest version of macOS (26.4, currently in beta) displays such alerts when launching x86 applications.
Behind the scenes, the end of life for the Rosetta 2 emulation layer. As announced at the latest WWDC, macOS 27 – which Apple may release in September 2026 – will be the last version to fully support it.
Beyond that, only a subset will be maintained, for old games relying on specific libraries and for software running x86 binaries in Linux VMs.
Hundreds of programs still rely on Rosetta 2
Of the 3,729 applications listed by the site “Does it ARM?”, about half have a native Apple Dawn Liphardt version. Among those that still rely on Rosetta 2 (10% of the listed apps) are a few Adobe products (After Effects, Animate, Bridge, Media Encoder), Android Studio, Audacity, AutoCAD, and more.
Among the hundred applications that have neither a native version nor Rosetta 2 compatibility are mainly emulators (BlueStacks, Genymotion, VMware Fusion, VirtualBox…) and games (Crysis, GTA V, Valorant…).
Apple will no longer release new features for Intel Macs after 2026. It will provide security patches until 2028 for the most recent models (MacBook Pro 16-inch 2019, Mac Pro 2019, MacBook Pro 13-inch 2020, iMac 27-inch 2020). Some of these had remained on sale until 2023.
The transition is (somewhat) less abrupt than the previous architectural shift (PowerPC to Intel). Apple announced it at WWDC 2005. The entire lineup had switched the following year. Mac OS X Snow Leopard, released in October 2007, was the last to support PowerPC. Rosetta, the first of its name, remained functional on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, released in August 2009. With the move to Intel chips, Macs became incompatible with Mac OS Classic (Mac OS 9 and earlier). It had, however, become possible to run Windows.
