Mac Apps Are No Longer Required to Support Intel

Ever since the advent of Apple silicon six years ago, the writing has been on the wall for Intel Macs. However, it wasn’t until last year that Apple made it official: By the end of 2027, Intel Macs and Intel macOS apps will both be a thing of the past.

That’s starting on the hardware side this year with macOS 27 Golden Gate closing the book on the Intel generation of Macs. Last year’s macOS 26 Tahoe release had already shrunk the list of supported Intel Macs to only four 2019 and early 2020 models, and it will be the last update even those models will receive — including the pricey Intel Mac Pro. Apple has promised two more years of security updates, but after that, users of these machines will be on their own.

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Meanwhile, next year’s macOS 28 release is already slated to kill off support for Intel apps. From that point on, it will be Apple silicon or bust.

That’s probably not an issue for most folks, as the majority of Mac apps distributed today are “Universal,” meaning they can be run on both Apple silicon and Intel platforms — and macOS 26.4 or later will let you know if you have any apps that won’t. However, it seems that Apple is now letting developers opt out of this backward Intel compatibility.

Yesterday, Apple published a news post reminding developers of the transition, while simultaneously sending out an email to registered developers to advise them that they can now remove Intel support from their Mac App Store apps:

Although developers distributing apps directly to end users can bundle them however they like — and it’s not uncommon to see Intel and Apple silicon versions as separate downloads — until now all apps distributed on the Mac App Store had to be universal binaries that could run on both Intel and Apple silicon. The only exceptions to that rule are older versions that haven’t been updated since before the Apple silicon rules came into force.

However, today’s changes flip that script, allowing developers to choose to drop Intel support entirely from the mix. Of course, it’s still up to individual developers to do this, and those who have a large base of customers still running Intel can continue to offer universal versions. In fact, it’s unlikely that Apple will stop supporting universal apps on the Mac App Store even after macOS 28 kicks them to the curb next year, as it will still be necessary to offer backward compatibility for folks running Intel Macs on older versions of macOS.

Apple introduced Rosetta 2 in macOS Big Sur in 2020 as a translation layer to help ease folks into the Apple silicon era. It earned the “2” moniker because it’s the second time Apple has been down this road. The original Rosetta was introduced in 2006 as part of Mac OS X Tiger to bridge the transition from PowerPC to Intel. It remained a core part of Mac OS X Leopard, moving to an optional install in Snow Leopard before being dropped entirely in 2011 when Mac OS X 10.7 Lion came out. However, Apple’s software releases were more spread out in those days, so while Rosetta was only available across three versions of Mac OS X, those spanned five years.

By contrast, the Rosetta 2 framework will have survived for seven years by the time the dust settles. It remains in macOS 27, but will be mostly removed next year in macOS 28. Apple has promised only to “keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles that rely on Intel-based frameworks,” but it expects every other app to be updated for Apple silicon.