Apple M4 compatible Plug-ins

[multree]

excuse my ignorance (just got my first M type mac - my 2012 mac mini was finally retired) but I thought that apple silicon compatible plug-ins would install and work just fine on M1/M2/M3/M4 machines.

However, while the majority of plug-ins seem to install and work just fine, some that claim to work on apple M1/M2, ask me to install Rosetta.

I have no intention on running plug-ins via Rosetta, but am having a hard time figuring out why this is happening. Is the M4 so different from an M1 that it requires Rosetta? Or are only the installers intel only???

Companies whose plug-ins installed just fine and without a hitch:

IK Multimedia
Klevgrand
AudioThing
ToneBoosters
Kazrog
Wavesfactory

Companies who's plug-ins (or hosts) asked me to install Rosetta first:

ToneEmpire
BabyAudio
bozdigital
Tracktion (Waveform 13.2.0 also seems to need Rosetta)

[Gam456]

Check if you have the latest version

https://asaudio.tech/developer/153

https://babyaud.io/blog/baby-audio-m1-n ... 2HEeNrNRju

[multree]

yup, latest versions for OS, host and plug-ins...

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Many plugins are M1 Native. But the installers require Rosetta. It's a little silly but welcome to the world of Mac!

[waxtrax]

As a general statement, software is not concerned with the differences between the Apple Silicon generations (M1, M2, M3, M4) because they are all part of the same hardware architecture (arm64). Anything that works on M1 should work on M2, M3, and M4.

This is independent of Rosetta, which is just an emulation layer for the Intel architecture (x86-64 [or sometimes written as x64]).

As Funky said, an installer might require Rosetta because it is based on older code that hasn't been updated yet, but the installed plugin itself might run natively without Rosetta. Think of these as two different pieces of software.

[Audiority]

Ours are natively compatible with Mac Silicon

[Morty-C-137]

Many plugins are M1 Native. But the installers require Rosetta. It's a little silly but welcome to the world of Mac!

This is what I hate. It's the developers leaving porting the installers on the table. Why make the plugins native but not the installers? What is then the point if Rosetta is then still required to install the mf'ers?

"We are apple silicon native"

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Just as a counterpoint: I think developers might say, "this is what I hate about end-users! What's the big deal if the installer needs Rosetta? It doesn't hurt anything. The plugin is native. Why do they care about the installer? Just install Rosetta and it's a complete non-issue. Why should I waste time updating all my installers instead of working on the actual plugins?"

[multree]

Just as a counterpoint: I think developers might say, "this is what I hate about end-users! What's the big deal if the installer needs Rosetta? It doesn't hurt anything. The plugin is native. Why do they care about the installer? Just install Rosetta and it's a complete non-issue. Why should I waste time updating all my installers instead of working on the actual plugins?"

if it IS just the installer then the issue isn't really that big.
Still, it requires me to download and install something else, I wouldn't need if it really was native. It also requires me to ask on a forum, what the hell is up with that...

[mothra]

Many plugins are M1 Native. But the installers require Rosetta. It's a little silly but welcome to the world of Mac!

This happened quite a bit during the PPC to Intel transition too. I remember at some point, no longer being able to install my Fallout 1/2 cd's in OS X because the installer was a PPC application, even though the game itself was UB.. Most of my old Aspyr games became useless unless I broke out the Tiger/OS 9 G3 heh.

[Funky40]

Many plugins are M1 Native. But the installers require Rosetta.

Good reminder !
now that the M4s are coming in


this is btw. a (my) somehow related thread.
list all plugins that need to be deactivated on the old machine, from within the plugin, i guess, from within the old machine.
viewtopic.php?t=615785

[multree]

just talked to bozdigital and they said their installer IS a universal binary and that apple would require Rosetta for those.

[Audiority]

About installers requiring Rosetta: that might be easily unnoticed by developers because it's easy that one already had Rosetta installed and never had that popping up; furthermore, Apple is not "great" at helping devs. I found out which parameter I had to add in our installers to make them "Silicon Ready" by chance, since some Apple dev tools are poorly documented

[comfortablynick]

Is the M4 so different from an M1 that it requires Rosetta? Or are only the installers intel only???

This is an annoying issue that hopefully will get solved soon. I started with an M1 when they first came out and things are a lot better now, four years hence. As long as a plugin is M1-ready it will work on all of the AS chips. I'm running M1 and M3 Pro and everything runs the same on both.

I highly recommend this app: https://www.thinkersnacks.com/pluginfo

On a positive note, the performance of these chips is so much better that it makes the growing pains worth it.

[aMUSEd]

Many plugins are M1 Native. But the installers require Rosetta. It's a little silly but welcome to the world of Mac!

This is what I hate. It's the developers leaving porting the installers on the table. Why make the plugins native but not the installers? What is then the point if Rosetta is then still required to install the mf'ers?

"We are apple silicon native"

I don’t think they are leaving anything but just needing to cover a user base that includes some on Intel and some on AS. So the installer is a universal binary and contains both versions, but it will only install the version you need. However it looks like when MacOs detects an installer containing Intel code it still requires Rosetta to be installed even though it isn’t going to be used to run the app

I wonder if Pacifist is a way round this for people who absolutely don’t want Rosetta in their systems?