Apple may be planning to remove support for Rosetta 2 on M1 Macs in certain regions with the release of macOS 11.3, according to the code discovered in the third beta version of the software update.
Code strings discovered in the third beta version of macOS 11.3, which was released to developers on Tuesday, indicate that Rosetta 2 “will be removed after installing this update.” Another string may suggest that “Rosetta is no longer available in your region. Applications required by Rosetta will no longer run.”
The strings were first spotted by MacRumors contributor Steve Moser.
Rosetta 2 is a translation layer that allows Apple Silicon Mac’s applications designed for Intel’s x86 architecture to work. It is part of a series of features designed to facilitate the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon processors, a switch that started in 2020 and is expected to last two years.
It’s not clear why Apple would remove Rosetta 2 in some regions, especially since as of February 2021, almost half of all popular MacOS applications still need the translation layer. However, the code strings in macOS 11.3 do not necessarily indicate that support is being cut in the software update.
In addition to the strings that refer to Rosetta 2, Moser also discovered code indicating that Apple could add the ability to map control buttons to the keyboard layouts, along with other minor updates.