Gizmo on iMac M4?

[Daniel Solinger]

Hello everybody

Until recently I was using the LED Saab 340 on an iMac M1 and the Gizmo plugin needed for activation and the various checklists etc worked just fine. 

I have now updated to a iMac M4 machine and all of a sudden the Gizmo plugin does not show up anymore when loading the aircraft. I have tried a complete reinstall of the plane but with no result. 

Does anybody now what the problem here could be?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Daniel

[Pils]

Have to change to using Rosetta

[diamonddriller]

Support for Rosetta 2 is apparently ceasing (with some exceptions) in MacOS in 2027.    I am now surprised that a large number (including many newer and terrific products) from the store have still not been converted to work natively in Mac silicon.  As Macs have been using ARM based chips since late 2020 (5 years!), every piece of software that is now produced is for ARM based Macs, although some will still be universal, and will work on Intel Macs.  Office stuff, photo-editing, music production, etc. - all work in Mac silicon, including vast numbers of little utilities.  

As far as X-Plane is concerned, virtually every developer of aircraft has its fleet working natively on silicon Macs.   I love my X-Aviation aircraft, but I really don't want to rely on Rosetta (and keep having to change the X-Plane program to work in Rosetta) when I want to fly all those Gizmo reliant aircraft.

I'm not too sure how much has to be altered - I guess all the mac.xpl programs have to be changed, but I have no idea how much Gizmo was integrated into the systems.  Maybe the sales don't justify the effort.....

[PedroA]

I also have this issue on Mac M4.  I have Rosetta installed and checked in the ‘get info’ window of the x plane 12 application.  Have submitted ticket.

[Michele Longhi]

Same here on Apple Silicon (is anyone still flying X-Plane on Intel Macs in 2025?).

What I find strange is that the Gizmo developer (Ben Russell) already offers a native Apple Silicon build. So the solution literally exists right now.

For clarity: the plugin costs 14 dollars on the developer’s website. I’d pay it, and I probably will — even just for testing — if it actually makes this thing work. But that’s not the point. This is a matter of principle: if a native build exists, the distributor should be shipping the native build. Full stop.

Rosetta isn’t free, at all. It costs FPS, not lightly. We’re not talking about a spreadsheet — this is a real-time simulator.

Running the entire sim under Rosetta in 2025 to support a single plugin doesn’t look like a technical limitation. It looks like lack of interest in supporting Apple Silicon customers properly.

I’ve opened a ticket as well. Still waiting.

[Pils]

On 9/18/2025 at 7:56 PM, diamonddriller said:

I want to fly all those Gizmo reliant aircraft

Apple Silicon support will come when an addon is updated to remove the use of Gizmo completely. Not any other way. (And if it's never updated, it'll never have support.)

[Pils]

43 minutes ago, Michele Longhi said:

I’ve opened a ticket as well. Still waiting.

I refer you to the above.

[Pils]

44 minutes ago, Michele Longhi said:

I’d pay it, and I probably will — even just for testing — if it actually makes this thing work.

You are free to, however it won't be supported by X-Aviation.

44 minutes ago, Michele Longhi said:

if a native build exists, the distributor should be shipping the native build

Maybe there's no license/agreement to do so, we don't know, you can't just assume there's nothing other than technical reasons at play. Regardless, X-Aviation have decided that removing Gizmo completely is a better long term solution. I don't see this changing.

[Michele Longhi]

Sure. Even Ben Russell himself states that X-Aviation will eventually move away from Gizmo.

What I’m trying to understand is this sentence:

“And if it’s never updated, it’ll never have support.”

What does that practically mean?

Is the current position simply:

“If we update it someday, fine. If we don’t, then Mac customers will never have native support.”

Because that reads less like a technical limitation, and more like a policy choice.

I’m just trying to get clarity.

If the current stance is “no native Apple Silicon support until Gizmo is removed, even though a native build exists”, then at least that needs to be clearly communicated to customers.

[Michele Longhi]

Update for anyone stuck like me:

I bought Gizmo64 LTS and replaced the plugin. The aircraft now works natively on Apple Silicon.

Now just for the comedy value:

Challenger 650: 124$

Native Gizmo64 LTS: 13.60$

So the final “working” setup costs the price of a glass of decent red — yet the official recommendation is still “run the entire sim under Rosetta.”

That’s the absurd part. The fix is tiny, the performance cost is not. This isn’t about technology — this is about caring for all customers.

I’ll leave it here.

Cheers

[Pils]

1 hour ago, Michele Longhi said:

 

 

Sure. Even Ben Russell himself states that X-Aviation will eventually move away from Gizmo.

What I’m trying to understand is this sentence:

“And if it’s never updated, it’ll never have support.”

What does that practically mean?

Is the current position simply:

“If we update it someday, fine. If we don’t, then Mac customers will never have native support.”

Because that reads less like a technical limitation, and more like a policy choice.

I’m just trying to get clarity.

If the current stance is “no native Apple Silicon support until Gizmo is removed, even though a native build exists”, then at least that needs to be clearly communicated to customers.

That is my understanding of the situation, yes. But I don't speak for X-Aviation.