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Rosetta
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Rosetta (software)





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  Caption PowerPC application (Microsoft Word for Mac 2004) running on OS X for Intel
  Developer Apple Inc
  Operating System Mac OS X
  Genre PowerPC Binary Translation
  Website http://wwwapplecom/rosetta


Rosetta is a lightweight Dynamic Translator for Mac OS X distributed by Apple . It enables applications compiled for the PowerPC family of processors to run on Apple systems that use Intel Processor s. Rosetta is based on Transitive Corporation 's QuickTransit technology1, and it is a key part of Apple's strategy for the Transition Of Their Macintosh Line from PowerPC to Intel processors as it enables pre-existing Mac OS X software to run on the new platform without modification. The name is generally thought to be a reference to the Rosetta Stone , whose discovery made it possible to comprehend and translate Egyptian Hieroglyph s.

Rosetta has no GUI , leading Apple to describe Rosetta as "the most amazing software you'll never see". 2


COMPATIBILITY


Rosetta is part of the Mac OS X for Intel operating system. It translates G3 , G4 and AltiVec instructions; however, it does not translate G5 instructions. Therefore applications that rely on G5 specific instruction sets must be modified by their developers to work on Intel-based Macs.

According to Apple, applications with heavy user interaction but low computational needs (such as version to work on Intel-based Macs.