MacOS 27 Ends Intel Mac Support, Rosetta Translation Layer Next

Intel Mac owners have known this day was coming since Apple announced its chip transition in 2020, but macOS 27 makes it official: the M-series era is now the only era that matters for full software support.

Apple confirmed at WWDC 2025 that macOS 26 Tahoe is the last major release for Intel hardware. Four machines land at the end of the line: the 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro (four Thunderbolt 3 ports), the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, the 2020 27-inch iMac, and the 2019 Mac Pro. These are not obscure machines. The 2020 iMac was sold less than five years ago.

The three-year security update promise softens the cut slightly. Apple has made similar commitments before, and they tend to hold, so Intel users are not being abandoned immediately. But security patches and feature updates are different things, and anyone running professional software that tracks macOS capabilities will feel the gap widen quickly.

Rosetta’s Exit Timeline

The more consequential detail is what Apple said about Rosetta. macOS 27 will be the last release to include the full translation layer, meaning developers have roughly one more year of cover before Intel app compatibility becomes their problem entirely. Apple carved out a narrow exception for older gaming titles that rely on Intel-based frameworks, but that carve-out is narrow by design.

The M1 cutoff for macOS 27 compatibility is not confirmed yet, though Apple’s pattern suggests all M1 and later chips will qualify. That would put the oldest eligible Mac at a 2020 Mac mini or MacBook Air, machines that are still well within a typical upgrade cycle.

Apple’s silicon transition ran faster than almost anyone predicted in 2020. Retiring Intel support at the OS level five years after the first M1 shipped is, by historical standards, a relatively short runway, though not an unreasonable one given how completely the lineup turned over.