Apple may remove Rosetta from macOS 11.3 in certain regions

A beta version of macOS 11.3 contains code that reads “Rosetta will be removed when installing this update” and “Rosetta is no longer available in this region.” It is not clear which region this concerns and whether this is actually happening.

If Rosetta is no longer present in the operating system, applications that are not yet compatible with Apple’s M1 soc will no longer work on Macs and MacBooks with that chip. The lyrics were noticed by developer Steve Moser in the third beta version of macOS 11.3, which is currently only available to developers.

It is unknown if there are actually regions in which the update removes the emulation software, nor is it clear which regions it affects. It is also not known why Apple would remove Rosetta; it may be a legal dispute. However, there are no known pending lawsuits against Apple over Rosetta. Apple has not yet responded to the report.

Apple released its first systems last year with its own M1 soc, which is based on the Arm architecture. To run software written for x86 systems, emulation software Rosetta is used.

Apple MacBook Pro with M1 socket