The honeymoon is over, and macOS 26 Tahoe broke the Rosetta 2 emulation layer with SQL Server 2025 RC 1 running in a Docker container. I know it was Tahoe, because it worked the day before I upgraded, and then it didn’t work the next day. I’m not alone, according to the mssql-docker GitHub repository.
It was bound to happen, especially with Apple’s recent public comments about the future of Rosetta 2.
macOS Tahoe will be the last release for Intel-based Mac computers. Those systems will continue to receive security updates for 3 years. Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 […]
Even though I work at Microsoft, and I speak to the Linux PMs daily, I don’t have any inside information on this. The company has long maintained that there is no official support for Apple silicon (containers are for Linux, and that means x86-64 Intel and AMD CPUs only).
I guess we just have to wait for ARM support. (This is my personal opinion.) Rosetta 2 was a welcome way for developers to continue hosting a local copy of SQL Server in a Linux container, and now that’s over if you’re on macOS 26 Tahoe.