Apple @ Work: How I’m preparing my fleet for Rosetta’s removal in macOS 27

Apple @ Work is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates in a single professional grade platform all the solutions necessary to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage, and protect Apple devices at work. Over 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices work ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple. When installing macOS 27 (Golden Gate), Rosetta is automatically removed. If you manage a fleet with any legacy Intel-only software still in use, you need a plan in place before your users start experiencing issues. Here is what I’m doing, and I have some thoughts on vendors who are waiting until the last minute to deploy Apple Silicon-native tools. About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers has been an Apple IT admin since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing firewalls, switches, a mobile device management system, enterprise grade WiFi, 1000s of Macs, and 1000s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple IT managers deploy Apple devices, build networks to support them, train users, share stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for IT departments. The silent failure problem One thing I need to clarify is that macOS 27 removes it, but macOS 28 will no longer support it. For traditional apps, macOS 27 will prompt the user to reinstall it with an easy-to-follow GUI prompt. That’s actually the workable scenario, because at least the user knows something is wrong, and macOS reinstalls it. The tools I’m worried about are the ones that won’t do that. I have a handful of menu bar utilities from vendors who haven’t shipped a native Apple Silicon build yet, and in my testing this summer, they are just silently failing. There’s no error prompt. It just fails to work. That makes auditing your fleet before macOS 27 rolls out more important than it might seem at first glance. What I’m doing in my device management system My short-term fix is to automatically push a Rosetta reinstallation script to every Mac that joins my macOS 27 Dynamic Device Group. In Mosyle, the setup is really straightforward. You create a new script profile, name it something obvious like “Rosetta Install macOS 27,” and enter the following command in the script tab: softwareupdate --install-rosetta --agree-to-license Under Execution Settings, pick your preferred trigger, then assign the profile to your macOS 27 Dynamic Device Group and save. When a device appears in that group, Mosyle automatically pushes the script, and Rosetta (hopefully) gets installed before the user ever runs into a problem. It’s not a permanent fix, but it buys time while I work on the real solution: getting vendors to ship native builds. On the vendors I want to be direct about this. Apple Silicon shipped in late 2020. We are now in late 2026. Any vendor still telling customers that a native Apple Silicon build is “on the roadmap” before Rosetta stops working in macOS 28 has had five-plus years to solve this problem and has chosen not to. That is not a resource issue or a technical challenge at this point. It is a prioritization choice, and one that falls squarely on the IT teams managing their software. Even if these vendors ship Apple Silicon-native versions before macOS 28, the shipping delay makes me question their commitment to macOS. Wrap up If you haven’t audited your fleet for Rosetta-dependent software yet, do it now while there’s still time to either push a script workaround or have the harder vendor conversations before users start running into problems. Most enterprise fleets are likely doing a 90 day block on Golden Gate for final testing/QA, so now is the time to work on your final plan. The script fix in Mosyle takes about five minutes to set up. Vendor conversations will take longer, and migrating to new solutions will take a bit longer. Apple @ Work is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates in a single professional grade platform all the solutions necessary to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage, and protect Apple devices at work. Over 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices work ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.