From Apple’s developer documentation:

macOS Tahoe will be the last release for Intel-based Mac computers. Those systems will continue to receive security updates for 3 years.

Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 – as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps. Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks.

It was inevitable that this announcement would come sometime soon, and I even thought before Monday’s conference that macOS 26 Tahoe would end support for all Intel-based Macs entirely. Apple announced the transition to Intel processors in June 2005, with the first Intel Macs shipping in January 2006 — the company discontinued all PowerPC models later that year. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, from August 2009, officially dropped support for PowerPC Macs, and Apple released security updates until 2011. So, including security updates, Apple supported Intel Macs for about five years, compared to the eight years it’s promising for Intel Macs. That’s three more years of updates.

Honestly, this year seems like a great time to kill off support for even the latest Intel Macs. I just don’t think the Liquid Glass aesthetic jibes well with Macs that take a while to boot and are slow by Apple silicon standards. I hate to dig at old Apple products, but Intel Macs really do feel ancient, and anyone using one should perhaps consider buying a cheap refurbished M2 MacBook Air, which don’t go for much these days. I feel bad for people who bought an Intel Mac at the beginning of 2020, just before the transition was announced, but it’s been five years. It’s time to upgrade.

The (implied) removal of Rosetta is a bit more concerning, and I think Apple should keep it around as long as it can. I checked my M3 Max MacBook Pro today to see how many apps I have running in Rosetta (System Settings → General → Storage → Applications), and only three were listed: Reflex, an app that maps the keyboard media keys to Apple Music; PDF Squeezer, whose developer said the compression engine it uses was written for x86; and Kaleidoscope, for some reason, even though it should be a universal binary. Apple killed off 32-bit apps in macOS 10.15 Catalina, only six years ago, even though 32-bit apps were effectively dead long before then. I believe legacy app support on macOS is pretty important, and just like how Apple kept 32-bit support around for years, I think it should keep Rosetta as an option well into the future. It’s not like it needs constant maintenance.

Rosetta was always meant to be a stopgap solution to allow developers time to develop universal binaries — which was mostly handled by Xcode for native AppKit and Catalyst apps back when the transition began — but I don’t see any harm in having it around as an emulation layer to use old Mac apps. It doesn’t need to stay forever, just like 32-bit app support, but there are tons of Mac utilities developed years ago, pre-transition, that are still handy. I would hate to see them killed in just a year. I don’t remember Rosetta receiving any regular updates, and it’s not even bundled in the latest versions of macOS. It only downloads when an x86 binary is launched for the first time on an Apple silicon Mac.

It’ll be sad to see Intel Macs be gone for good. Under Intel, the Mac went from an unserious, seldom-used computing platform to one beloved by a sizable user base around the world before going downhill in the desolate 2017-to-2020 era of the Mac. (Sorry, old Mac nerds — I’m one of you, but it’s true.) It was a significant chunk of the Mac’s history — the one most people remember most vividly. As much as I’ve besmirched Intel Macs toward the end of their life, it’s a bit bittersweet to see them fade away into the sunset.