Transitive Technologies Power Rosetta - MacRumors
Skip to Content

Transitive Technologies Power Rosetta

News.com confirms that Transitive Technologies is, in fact, the technology behind Apple's Rosetta PowerPC Emulator for their upcoming Intel-based Macintoshes.

Jobs reportedly confirmed Transitive's role in a New York Times interview, but in general, Apple has been very quiet about their Transitive's role in Rosetta. Of note, Jobs' keynote speech on Monday gave no mention to the startup.

It appears Transitive's technology can provide 60-80 percent performance of native software based on real world experience with SGI. Some analysts, however, have doubts about the performance promises.

First mention of Transitive came in July 2003. The most accurate and earliest rumor about Transitive's use by Apple came as a Page 2 news item in February 2005:

...there is evidence that Apple has had special internal seeds of Tiger which support [Transitive's technology] for the x86 platform. Beyond allowing Tiger to run on x86, perhaps more significantly is the potential to also allow existing Mac OS X applications to be run on the x86 (PC) platform without recompilation.

Apple, of course, is not offering Mac OS X for the PC, but instead offering Intel-based Macs.

Popular Stories

AirPods Max 2 Feature

Apple Announces AirPods Max 2 With H2 Chip and More

Monday March 16, 2026 6:12 am PDT by
Apple today unveiled AirPods Max 2, with key upgrades including the H2 chip, increased active noise cancellation, improved sound quality, and features such as Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Voice Isolation, and Live Translation. The new AirPods Max have the same overall design as the previous generation, with most of the new features coming from the upgrade to the H2 chip:- Adaptive ...
iPhone 18 Pro Deep Red Feature

iPhone 18 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 12 New Features

Wednesday March 18, 2026 7:39 am PDT by
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are not expected to launch for another six months or so, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. It was initially reported that the iPhone 18 Pro models would have fully under-screen Face ID, with only a front camera visible in the top-left corner of the screen. However, the latest rumors indicate that only one Face ID component...
Apple Logo Sketch Feature

Apple Unveiled a Surprise New Product Today

Monday March 16, 2026 10:50 am PDT by
Surprise! Apple today unveiled the AirPods Max 2, despite no rumors suggesting that a new version of Apple's over-ear headphones were imminent. Key upgrades compared to the previous AirPods Max include Apple's H2 chip, increased active noise cancellation, improved sound quality, and features such as Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Voice Isolation, and Live Translation. AirPods Max ...