Apple this week announced Rosetta 2 technology for the M1, the most powerful chip Apple has ever created and the first chip designed specifically for the Mac.
With Big Sur and M1, Mac users can run a greater range of apps than ever before. All of Apple’s Mac software is now Universal and runs natively on M1 systems. Existing Mac apps that have not been updated to Universal will run seamlessly with Apple’s Rosetta 2 technology. With the power of Metal and M1, developers will see some of their most graphically demanding apps perform even better under Rosetta 2 than they did running natively on Intel-based Macs with integrated graphics.
Apps built for Intel’s x86 architecture will need to be run through Apple’s translation layer Rosetta 2 in order to function on Apple Silicon Macs, and this process can take some time.
Microsoft this week indicated that when launching any of its Mac apps for the first time on Apple Silicon Macs, the apps will bounce in the dock for approximately 20 seconds while the Rosetta 2 translation process is completed, with all subsequent launches being fast. This applies to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and OneDrive.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s developer doc, “About the Rosetta Translation Environment,” states: “To the user, Rosetta is mostly transparent. If an executable contains only Intel instructions, macOS automatically launches Rosetta and begins the translation process. When translation finishes, the system launches the translated executable in place of the original. However, the translation process takes time, so users might perceive that translated apps launch or run more slowly at times.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]