Rosetta

doingitanyway

I have Norton for more than one device. I just added it to my newer computer. It is installed, but said the following when I attempted to open it.

To open Norton you have to install Rosetta

Can anyone advise on any possible drawbacks of installing Rosetta?

Thank you.

Neil_Jones

Mac?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) - "When a user attempts to launch an x86-64-only application for the first time, macOS prompts them to install Rosetta 2 if it is not already available."

doingitanyway

Thank you. Yes it is a Mac. I'm wondering if there are any drawbacks to installing Rosetta software?

IvanOpinion

Someone asked me a similar question a while back - I had never heard of this. When we looked into it, we found that Rosetta was made by Apple and was safe - it is needed to basically run code written for one processor on another processor. If he had have been using a Windows PC I would have suggested that he just use the built in Windows Defender but this was on a MAC. I might be wrong but I think the download was nearly 1Gb in size.

I have seen some concerns that it may slow a MAC down a bit

doingitanyway

Thank you @IvanOpinion that is very helpful. I don't have photos, movies or anything that uses much Gb so it shouldn't slow my Mac down too much?

TadleyBaggie

I assume the Mac is using the M1 chip? 

On a M1 Mac, the first time you try to run an application that was compiled for Intel it will as if you want to install Rosetta 2, as the M1 chip cannot execute the Intel application directly and needs the Rosetta translation layer installed. It won't slow anything else down, but execution of the Intel application will require additional execution steps. 

Bigger question, why on earth are you using Norton on a Mac?

Sandtree

As above why Norton on a Mac? 

It in theory could slow other things down if you are maxing out the CPU because Rosetta has to do the translation however in the real world where you aren't rendering 4k video etc then you will more likely see the impact in increased battery drain if you've bought a laptop rather than a desktop.

onomatopoeia99

TadleyBaggie said:

Bigger question, why on earth are you using Norton on a Mac?

Don't need "on a mac" in that question, so you can make it a smaller question.

Rosetta 2 seems very good, our Mac software does some very arcane things with the Intel x64 processor instruction set and it handles them all without error on the M1 Macs.

Sandtree

onomatopoeia99 said:
Rosetta 2 seems very good, our Mac software does some very arcane things with the Intel x64 processor instruction set and it handles them all without error on the M1 Macs.

The only thing I have issues with is that Teams under Rosetta 2 is a major battery drain... still get 9 hours solid working out of the laptop battery with a good 20-30% left at the end of the day but turn Teams off and use a native equivalent app and more like 50% battery left.

Teams Universal app is currently in Beta, did give it a go and it had some bugs and camera became sepia tone for some reason