Important Update on Igor Pro® for macOS

Dear Valued Igor Pro Users,

After much deliberation, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue development of Igor Pro on macOS. Version 9.05 will be the final release to support macOS. Starting with the release of version 10, which is scheduled to enter beta testing soon, Igor Pro will only be available for Windows operating systems.

This decision was not made lightly. As many of you know, Igor Pro was originally developed for the Macintosh, and we have always been committed to supporting our loyal Mac customers. Apple’s move to proprietary ARM processors has made it economically unviable for us to continue on the Mac platform. Porting to ARM would have been time-consuming and costly, slowing down bug fixes and improvements to Igor Pro. Code libraries with many years of optimization for x86 would have needed to be replaced by libraries that would have impacted performance. Additionally, as we have learned from previous porting experiences, other issues will undoubtedly arise. As a small company, our resources are best spent ensuring that Igor Pro remains a robust and high-quality product for the majority of our users—the vast majority of whom now use the Windows version.

What this means for Mac users:

• The current macOS version of Igor Pro 9.05 will continue to function on existing systems, but no further updates or bug fixes will be released.

• We will continue to offer customer support for Igor Pro 9 macOS users for the foreseeable future.

• If you need to continue using Igor Pro, running it on Windows via Boot Camp (on Intel Macs) or virtualization solutions like Parallels, may be an option. At the time of this writing, virtually all features in Igor Pro seem to work on these computers. However, we expect that issues will arise in future OS versions. In addition, Apple is likely to discontinue Rosetta 2 support at some uncertain point in time, as they did when moving from PowerPC to x86.

We sincerely appreciate the support of our Mac users over the years, and we understand that this news may be disappointing. We will keep looking for solutions that may allow us to return Igor Pro to the Mac platform in future versions, if it is economically viable. If you are unable or do not wish to move your projects to Windows computers, your existing Igor Pro 9 license will remain valid.  As has always been WaveMetrics’s policy, customers will still be able to purchase and/or renew Igor Pro 9 licenses until Igor Pro 10 is released.  Purchasers of Igor Pro 10 may request license keys for older versions (i.e. Mac compatible versions) after its release.

Any license purchased after January 1, 2025 will be eligible for a free upgrade to Version 10.  Thank you for being a part of the Igor Pro community.

Best regards,

Mark Flaming
President
Sutter Instrument / WaveMetrics