As a result, Apple has already had the trademark for the term "Rosetta" for sometime, but this new activity and new application surrounding the name is notable given the increasing rumors that Apple is planning on transitioning from Intel to ARM processors in the near future. Apple officially dropped Rosetta support in Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) in 2011.
The trademark could simply be ongoing protection of a long existing trademark for Apple, but given the recent rumors, the new activity raises the possibility that Apple may decide to recycle the "Rosetta" name for a new emulation layer to transition from Intel to ARM. The trademark was filed under the following category:
A computers computer network And the computer software in which development of the computer programmes on a global communication network and the download for translating and performing are possible, computer software for computings performed by a cross platform, computer software, Electronic machines [apparatus and their parts]
Apple has been widely rumored to transition from Intel to ARM processors in the coming year, but there has be no rumors about how Apple would handle the transition with regard to emulation. Apple currently lists "Rosetta" without the "Apple" prefix in their list of active trademarks.
Friday January 17, 2025 2:42 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 19 is still around six months away from being announced, but a new leak has allegedly revealed a completely redesigned Camera app.
Based on footage it obtained, YouTube channel Front Page Tech shared a video showing what the new Camera app will apparently look like, with the key change being translucent menus for camera controls. Overall, the design of these menus looks similar to...
Sunday January 19, 2025 6:58 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple on late Saturday removed TikTok from the App Store in the U.S., and it has now explained why it was required to take this action.
Last year, the U.S. passed a law that required Chinese company ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok due to potential national security risks, or else the platform would be banned. That law went into effect today, and companies like Apple and Google...
Thursday January 16, 2025 6:45 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple today adjusted estimated trade-in values for select iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch models in the U.S., according to its website.
Some values increased, while others decreased. The changes were not too significant, with most values rising or dropping by $5 to $50.
We have outlined some examples below:
Device
New Value
Old Value
iPhone 15 Pro Max
Up to $630
U ...
Thursday January 16, 2025 12:39 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided the third beta of iOS 18.3 to developers today, and while the betas have so far been light on new features, the third beta makes some major changes to Notification Summaries and also tweaks a few other features.
Notification Summary Changes
Apple made multiple changes to Notification Summaries in response to complaints about inaccurate summaries of news headlines.
For...
Saturday January 18, 2025 10:28 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 19 will not drop support for any iPhone models, according to French website iPhoneSoft.fr.
The report cited a source who said iOS 19 will be compatible with any iPhone that can run iOS 18, which would mean the following models:
iPhone 16
iPhone 16 Plus
iPhone 16 Pro
iPhone 16 Pro Max
iPhone 15
iPhone 15 Plus
iPhone 15 Pro
iPhone 15 Pro Max
iPhone 14
iPhon...
Monday January 20, 2025 9:01 am PST by Joe Rossignol
A new iPhone SE is widely rumored to launch this year, and the device has potentially been confirmed today by known leaker Evan Blass.
In a private social media post, Blass shared an image of what appears to be source code mentioning an iPhone SE (4th Gen), which casts doubt on the alternative "iPhone 16E" name rumored for the device. However, the name in the source code could be a...
Sunday January 19, 2025 8:11 am PST by Joe Rossignol
After a four-year wait, a new AirTag is finally expected to launch in 2025. Below, we recap rumored upgrades for the accessory.
A few months ago, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple was aiming to release the AirTag 2 around the middle of 2025. While he did not offer a more specific timeframe, that means the AirTag 2 could be announced by the end of June.
The original AirTag was announced...
Friday January 17, 2025 3:38 pm PST by Juli Clover
For the last several months, we've been hearing rumors about a redesigned version of the iPhone 17 that Apple might call the iPhone 17 "Air," or something along those lines. It's going to replace the iPhone 17 Plus as Apple's fourth iPhone option, and it will be offered alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max.
We know the iPhone 17 Air is going to be super slim, but...
But for anyone that's familiar with the concept of the Rosetta Stone, this could be very well the re-used "new" name for Safari's offline translation software as well. (I know what Apple's Rosetta was, just saying.)
That gives me some hope, because I was becoming increasingly worried that Apple was going to rely entirely on developers re-compiling code and not provide an emulation layer.
Obviously the key question here is going to be performance. How fast will binary translation/emulation be and just as importantly how fast are Apple's ARM chips going to be relative to modern Intel Core/AMD Ryzen.
The original Rosetta's performance was acceptable (quite impressive actually on a technical level), particularly for Apple's notebook lineup, but this was due in large part to just how far behind the PowerPC chips used in Apple's notebooks were compared to x86 at the time. Even the original Core Duos used in the first generation MacBooks absolutely destroyed not only the PowerPC G4s used in Apple's iBook/Powerbooks, but even a lot of PowerPC G5 based Macs.
I highly doubt Apple is going to have quite that large of a performance margin this time around so it will be interesting to see just what they can achieve.
...OTOH, if you put an SSD in an old (circa 2010) Mac with a pre Sandy Bridge Core Ix chip (or even Core 2 Duo) it is surprisingly usable today, so perhaps, for casual users this won't matter as much...
Can't say I'm excited. Please let this just be an additional ISA to be used where it makes sense, and not a whole scale transition (unlikely I know, but I can dream right.)
Oh no. Here we go again. I remember that this was how you had to run Power PC apps on Intel machines. That was living hell. What a kluge. If Apple is going to make us do the same for new ARM computers, I am going to be done with it and get a PC.
