# Rosetta

18 Hacker News commenters recommended Rosetta and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Apple's translation layer lets x86 apps run on Apple silicon, and people praise how well it works. The most common caveat is that it only runs apps still compatible with modern macOS.

## Why people recommend it

- Runs older x86 software on Apple silicon (3 comments): "Most of those are gonna work using Rosetta, crossover, and the game porting toolkit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48955803)) "the ability to run the older software from a different architecture with Rosetta" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49810368)) "it will still be available for old games to use, which is a huge improvement" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434599))
- Seen as strong engineering (4 comments): "If you dont think apple silicon and rosetta rollout was a massively successful and high difficulty technical accomplishment" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48163049)) "Rosetta 1 was better engineering than people remember" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47705074)) "Rosetta worked quite well for Apple" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48361481))
- Near-native speed through translation (2 comments): "Run ARM64 Linux and install Rosetta inside it. Even on the MacBook Neo it'll be faster than your 2020 Intel Mac." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47368284)) "JIT and AoT translation like Rosetta can make it almost native" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47250124))
- Works very well (2 comments): "Rosetta works very well, but only for those apps that are still compatible with modern macOS at all" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392228)) "Rosetta worked quite well for Apple" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48361481))

## What people warn about

- Uncertain long-term support from Apple (3 comments): "It's certainly a shame if they got rid of Rosetta forever so hopefully it's still available as an optional download." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49959438)) "they're clearly uninterested in supporting it long term" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48639373)) "Yeah, that's not very reassuring." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46138001))
- Hard to uninstall or clean up (2 comments): "not being able to uninstall Developer Tools or Rosetta when you are done with it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46730858)) "The aot cache of that slowly fills up and its not easy to clean up." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46763753))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Wine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wine.md): 329 recommend
- [Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/windows-subsystem-for-linux.md): 159 recommend
- [WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wsl2.md): 115 recommend
- [Cygwin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cygwin.md): 25 recommend
- [WinApps](https://hackerapproved.com/p/winapps.md): 19 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Rosetta", https://hackerapproved.com/p/rosetta/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).