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JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

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Re: JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

#81

Post by charcircuit »

jraph wrote: post #77
charcircuit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want computers to take on new jobs and the hardware is a limiting factor on that. And even if it can take on a job, that doesn't mean it does it as well as a newer machine.

Depends. I'm surrounded by people who just need light web browsing and emails. They don't really like computers, they want to use them only when absolutely necessary. A Mac from 2012 with a 256-512 GiB SSD and 8 GiB of RAM is plenty. Hell, last week I was on holidays without my computer, and I have borrowed such a machine. The battery has been replaced so it still has a long battery time. It was as fast as I could ho…

People like computers to work fast. They don't like when their computer sounds like a jet engine. Especially among other people whose computers don't do that. People like not having to worry too much charging their computer.

If it already does the job it needs to, does it really need a bleeding edge version of Java?

The environmental cost is less than ordering a pizza. A product that someone uses for years is not going to be an environmental issue.

Re: JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

#82

Post by derdi »

> WARNING: The macOS/x64 port is deprecated and may be removed in a future release.

OK, seems reasonable. Next sentence:

> There will be no guarantee that the port will build, much less function.

This... Is something quite different? This isn't what I think "deprecation" means. The message should say "no longer maintained" if that's what they mean. And it should include the "not guaranteed to build, much less function" part.

Re: JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

#83

Post by duskwuff »

debugnik wrote: post #78
bluedino wrote: post #67

Oh, how times have changed. Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced at May's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose, Calif., Mac OS X will come with a full implementation of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java 2, Standard Edition. It will be the only high-volume OS that does so Oracle screwed themselves lately, the licensing push basically started IT departments with exterminating Java and anything related to it.

You may have misread: Java will keep supporting ARM macOS, they're just deprecating Intel macOS. Also this is a decision taken by the JVM team, not Apple; the latter simply deprecated their Intel platform first.

With regards to the last bit, Apple hasn't shipped Java as part of the OS in ages.

Re: JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

#84

Post by Quitschquat »

syncsynchalt wrote: post #51
Quitschquat wrote: post #43

Guess it's time to upgrade from my 2014 MBP

You did well to skip the 2015-2020 era (butterfly keyboards, touchbar). With that said anything M1 or newer is going to be a delightful upgrade for you. An enormous jump in performance, battery life, and thermal performance.

I'm hoping a 2026 MBP elides the notch

Re: JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

#85

Post by jraph »

charcircuit wrote: post #81
jraph wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. I'm surrounded by people who just need light web browsing and emails. They don't really like computers, they want to use them only when absolutely necessary. A Mac from 2012 with a 256-512 GiB SSD and 8 GiB of RAM is plenty. Hell, last week I was on holidays without my computer, and I have borrowed such a machine. The battery has been replaced so it still has a long battery time. It was as fast as I could ho…

People like computers to work fast. They don't like when their computer sounds like a jet engine. Especially among other people whose computers don't do that. People like not having to worry too much charging their computer. If it already does the job it needs to, does it really need a bleeding edge version of Java? The environmental cost is less than ordering a pizza. A product that someone uses for years is not goi…

> People like computers to work fast.

People don't like to wait for their computer. The nuance is quite important.

> They don't like when their computer sounds like a jet engine. Especially among other people whose computers don't do that. People like not having to worry too much charging their computer.

But the 2012 Mac I'm talking about does all that for what it's used for: completely silent (and trust me, I'm quite sensitive to that), lasts on battery long enough, as fast as possible (of course a new machine would be faster, but it would not be meaningful for the use case).

> The environmental cost is less than ordering a pizza. A product that someone uses for years is not going to be an environmental issue.

That's completely wrong.

I'm not sure why you are pushing here.

Re: JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

#86

Post by ejj28 »

notpeter wrote: post #56
kalleboo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if there are any decently representative use share stats out there for Mac Intel vs ARM. I tried finding some a while ago and found nothing really conclusive (mostly for niches like developer tools or games - what's the long tail look like?).

June 2026 Steam Survey says 23% Intel Homebrew 30d says 27% Intel My gut says 20-25% is a reasonable ballpark. Apple generally provides 6-8 years of OS support for hardware. My 6.5 year old 2019 Macbook Pro works fine with macOS 26; macOS 27 will drop support in September 2026; macOS 28 will drop Rosetta Intel support. macOS 26 get updates thru September 2028 at which point all Intel mac hardware will be >8 years old…

I would argue that Steam and Homebrew users are relatively niche portions of the userbase, and that they would be more likely to own newer systems.

Neither statistic comes from a sample group that's more representative of the average user, who is mostly browsing the web and using a handful of undemanding applications, and is therefore less motivated to upgrade for performance reasons.

Re: JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

#87

Post by kstrauser »

ejj28 wrote: post #86
notpeter wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

June 2026 Steam Survey says 23% Intel Homebrew 30d says 27% Intel My gut says 20-25% is a reasonable ballpark. Apple generally provides 6-8 years of OS support for hardware. My 6.5 year old 2019 Macbook Pro works fine with macOS 26; macOS 27 will drop support in September 2026; macOS 28 will drop Rosetta Intel support. macOS 26 get updates thru September 2028 at which point all Intel mac hardware will be >8 years old…

I would argue that Steam and Homebrew users are relatively niche portions of the userbase, and that they would be more likely to own newer systems. Neither statistic comes from a sample group that's more representative of the average user, who is mostly browsing the web and using a handful of undemanding applications, and is therefore less motivated to upgrade for performance reasons.

Maybe for Steam, but my gut instinct is that Homebrew would be the opposite: it would be disproportionately popular among devs who pride themselves on keeping hardware for many years longer than most people. "Yeah, this 2015 MBP isn't great for gaming anymore, but it's fine for running vim!" is absolutely the kind of thing I hear frequently.

Re: JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

#88

Post by saghm »

ejj28 wrote: post #86
notpeter wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

June 2026 Steam Survey says 23% Intel Homebrew 30d says 27% Intel My gut says 20-25% is a reasonable ballpark. Apple generally provides 6-8 years of OS support for hardware. My 6.5 year old 2019 Macbook Pro works fine with macOS 26; macOS 27 will drop support in September 2026; macOS 28 will drop Rosetta Intel support. macOS 26 get updates thru September 2028 at which point all Intel mac hardware will be >8 years old…

I would argue that Steam and Homebrew users are relatively niche portions of the userbase, and that they would be more likely to own newer systems. Neither statistic comes from a sample group that's more representative of the average user, who is mostly browsing the web and using a handful of undemanding applications, and is therefore less motivated to upgrade for performance reasons.

I'm not convinced either of those are substantially more niche than people who need to install the JDK

Re: JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

#89

Post by dd8601fn »

hparadiz wrote: post #76
questionableans wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Apple got a lot of devs who would otherwise be Linux users on board circa 2005 due to solid-feeling laptop hardware with drivers and power management that just worked. That pattern became self-propagating as startups scaled up, bought a lot of Macs and hired Mac IT people. But Linux has gotten better in that time period, too. I wouldn’t say it’s quite as refined out of the box. But Linux is ahead in the a…

LLMs have completely changed how I run Linux. I just got a brand new Lenovo and getting the fingerprint sensor PAM configuration going for sudo was a breeze. I was having issues with my wifi not switching APs properly on my mesh and debugging and implementing a stable permanent fix took the same amount of time as what would previously have been just the start of me googling to the problem. And now that it's done the…

100%, a lot of those kinds of bad linux user experience things are becoming trivial with the help of a bot.

But also the unified memory on macs is compelling for somewhat related reasons.

If it weren’t for the supply chain nightmares on top of nightmares, we’d be experiencing a nice little moment.

Re: JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal

#90

Post by jen20 »

jherskovic wrote: post #12
lekevicius wrote: post #2

Totally makes sense, macOS Golden Gate will no longer run x64 apps.

This keeps getting posted and is not true. Rosetta is still present and working. It throws a deprecation warning notice but otherwise runs fine. It's macOS 28 that will no longer run x86_64 apps, although games are exempt. Rosetta is basically going game only at that point. They haven't announced how long it will keep working in this capacity.

My guess (without much to substantiate it) is that it will also keep support for running x86_64 programs in virtual machines via `container` too.
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