New alternative to Rosetta with Lion? Blizzards Statement

Glumpfner · Mar 27, 2011

Hi there,

since I read that Apple will drop Rosetta for Lion I was worried about some of my older games.

After someone asking what will happen to Starcraft and Diablo 2 on the official Blizzard Forums, an employee stated:

Due to multiple NDA's from Apple and from us, at the moment, nothing can be confirmed, 'specially since 10.7 is not officially released. Until Apple has publicly set in stone this, nothing can be said.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2228176840

Either the NDA says not to talk about Rosetta being dropped, but that is already public, or maybe this could hint to some alternative to keep supporting PPC Apps.

I really do hope there will be a way to run PPC apps since many of my old favorite games that I take out now and then won't be able to run on Lion, and I really do not want to have a multi boot system with Lion and Snow Leopard - that would feel like I am a windows user, with dual boot XP/7 to assure I can run everything.

johannnn · Mar 27, 2011

It doesn't matter that it is public or not, it is still under NDA. Blizzards statement does not in any way hint of a new alternative. I guess it is time to move to Starcraft 2...

Glumpfner · Mar 27, 2011

Well they could have simply confirmed that StarCraft and Diablo 2 will need Rosetta to run, or said that they will bring out an update to make it Intel compatibel. Instead they're being secretive about it.
Confirming either of those does not violate the NDA, but keeping it a secret simply creates rumors for an alternative.

I can understand that Apple thinks that no one will need to run old PPC apps in the year 2011.
However many older but yet still very very active games like Diablo 2, Starcraft, Age of Empires 2 would no longer work on Lion.
That's the main difference with Apps and Games. While Apps like Photoshop and Dreamweaver keep coming out with a new updated version each year, games stay in the state they have been released, apart from small patches which fix in game bugs.
And unlike Photoshop were you simply switch over to the new release, with games it's not the same since every game has it's own history, story, community, gameplay and nostalgic touch to it.

When Microsoft killed DOS, the community created the DOSBox, which allows you to play and run all old DOS programs on XP, Vista and 7.
If Apple really does kill it, I hope there will be a community created alternative.

I still don't understand why Apple would kill it, it's not that Rosetta is full of security holes or has a poor performance or lets the Mac crash, like Java does.

I simply think Apple didn't think of all the old games when killing Rosetta.

johannnn · Mar 27, 2011

Starcraft is nostalgic for me too, hey I'm a huge SlayerS_`Boxer` fan. But most PPC games have Windows versions too, so I wouldn't be surprised if they decided that I would need Bootcamp if I wanted to run ancient games (or use some third party software like CrossOver). Don't forget that not too long time ago OS X had support for Mac OS 9 applications too.

Glumpfner · Mar 27, 2011

The thought of Crossover or Wine... ouch!
Also Bootcamp or Parallels... meh.

I do wonder though, why they would kill it, since it doesn't seem to be an app that hurts the system.

johannnn · Mar 27, 2011

Glumpfner said:
I do wonder though, why they would kill it, since it doesn't seem to be an app that hurts the system.

Macs and OS X would not be what it is today if Apple would keep all the relics like Mac OS9 support, rosetta, floppy drive etc.

ivnj · Mar 27, 2011

Or get another computer for just the old games. Old power ppc on ebay should be cheap and could probably share the same monitor with a switchbox or if it has 2 inputs.

Cougarcat · Mar 30, 2011

poobear said:
Macs and OS X would not be what it is today if Apple would keep all the relics like Mac OS9 support, rosetta, floppy drive etc.

Rosetta is a small, optional extension, which is only there if you need it. It's not the same as floppy drives (hardware) or OS 9 support (which was a big emulator app.

McGiord · Mar 30, 2011

I get my vintage Mac gaming via mini vMac and SheepShaver.
Time will come when you will enjoy many of those either online or in an iOS device.

Nermal · Mar 30, 2011

The latest from Blizzard:

Due to advances in Mac operating systems, StarCraft, StarCraft: Broodwar, Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction will not run on 10.7.
While these titles will not be able to run natively in 10.7, they should still be able to operate under Boot Camp. And of course, we will still support these titles running in 10.6 and below natively.

At this time, we expect Warcraft III to run natively in Mac OS X 10.7.

It therefore looks like SC1 and D2 won't be usable in 10.7, with no Intel-native versions incoming. It also seems that there isn't an "alternative Rosetta".

SmileyDude · Mar 30, 2011

Cougarcat said:
Rosetta is a small, optional extension, which is only there if you need it. It's not the same as floppy drives (hardware) or OS 9 support (which was a big emulator app.

Rosetta is a complete copy of all of the system libraries built for PowerPC along with the emulator itself. Supporting Rosetta in Snow Leopard, but not PowerPC machines meant that Rosetta required the frameworks for Snow Leopard to be build for PowerPC but never actually run on a real PowerPC machine. Not exactly an ideal situation.

What would be a better solution is for Apple to allow MacOS X to run on a virtual machine as long as the VM software is running on top of MacOS X. They already allow for MacOS X Server to run in a VM. Allowing Snow Leopard to run in a VM would allow for them to move on from the PowerPC era completely while also providing a way for users to run PPC apps on Lion and beyond.

SmileyDude · Mar 30, 2011

Nermal said:
The latest from Blizzard:

It therefore looks like SC1 and D2 won't be usable in 10.7, with no Intel-native versions incoming. It also seems that there isn't an "alternative Rosetta".

Do SC1 and D2 work flawlessly under Windows 7 these days? I thought there were some issues with D2 at least with some video cards. It appears that D2 is starting to come to it's end of life for running in the latest versions of OS X and Windows without some kind of virtualization.

I know Blizzard can't pour endless resources into old games -- but at least it would be nice to get an update to D2 to make it a native Intel app. We don't have D3 yet to hold us over.

Joshuarocks · Mar 31, 2011

Problem solved!

Install Snow Leopard or Leopard on VMWARE or Parallells and that alone will allow you to run the beloved PPC games and apps you currently have.. Or another idea is to dedicate a drive or large partition to Snow Leopard(depends on your mac), and the main drive for Lion..

Simple as that.

roadbloc · Mar 31, 2011

Joshuarocks said:
Install Snow Leopard or Leopard on VMWARE or Parallells and that alone will allow you to run the beloved PPC games and apps you currently have.. Or another idea is to dedicate a drive or large partition to Snow Leopard(depends on your mac), and the main drive for Lion..

Simple as that.

What a great idea for a new feature in Lion. If Apple implement such a thing I think they should call it Snow Leopard Mode.

ehwood · May 30, 2011

Joshuarocks said:
Install Snow Leopard or Leopard on VMWARE or Parallells and that alone will allow you to run the beloved PPC games and apps you currently have.. Or another idea is to dedicate a drive or large partition to Snow Leopard(depends on your mac), and the main drive for Lion..

Simple as that.

That stinks. Apple stinks at keeping their own hardware and software useful, as their interest is always in deprecating their older systems in order to drives sales of the newer ones, and they really don't seem to care much about keeping older software running. It wouldn't kill them to provide backwards compatibility the way Microsoft does down the Windows line, but they just don't do it. And alternatives are very thin on this platform!

If the open source community can go from scratch to having Windows apps running on Linux and Unix systems, including Mac OS X, then Apple can write up compatibility layers for older software. Why did they drop Classic with Leopard, and now Rosetta with Lion? They created these marvelous little compatibility measures because people would have told them to kiss off had they not provided them at the time, but we see that just as soon as it's convenient for them to dump these things again, they do, and they apparently don't even open up the sources for these things, so that others might build modern equivalents from them at their own expense and keep that old software running today.

Apple is too busy with iDevices now to care about the Macintosh the way they ought to, simple as that. The fact that they've turned it into an overblown PC attests to this, as they're doing a lot less hardware R&D on the Mac that way, simply buying bits and bobs from Intel and others instead, and even with OS X, they just took BSD and started customising it. They're not innovating on the PC platform the way they once did. They're more interested in selling eye candy, seems to me, but then that's nothing new for Apple.

ehwood · May 30, 2011

SmileyDude said:
Do SC1 and D2 work flawlessly under Windows 7 these days? I thought there were some issues with D2 at least with some video cards. It appears that D2 is starting to come to it's end of life for running in the latest versions of OS X and Windows without some kind of virtualization.

I know Blizzard can't pour endless resources into old games -- but at least it would be nice to get an update to D2 to make it a native Intel app. We don't have D3 yet to hold us over.

Your best bet for an Intel-native Diablo 2 at this point is probably to use Wineskin for the Windows version. Actually, that's likely to be the best way to keep the original Starcraft running on Lion as well. Oh, and Warcraft III, and Neverwinter Nights, and......

Cougarcat · May 30, 2011

ehwood said:
Actually, that's likely to be the best way to keep the original Starcraft running on Lion as well. Oh, and Warcraft III, and Neverwinter Nights, and......

Just FYI, WC3 is universal.

ehwood · May 30, 2011

Glumpfner said:
The thought of Crossover or Wine... ouch!
Also Bootcamp or Parallels... meh.

I do wonder though, why they would kill it, since it doesn't seem to be an app that hurts the system.

What's wrong with wine? It actually runs a lot of games decently. I recommend Wineskin with the "WineCXG" engine installed. It runs Oblivion on Snow Leopard pretty nicely, not to mention sundry Blizzard titles.

ehwood · May 30, 2011

Cougarcat said:
Just FYI, WC3 is universal.

Ah yes, I suppose it is.

I did have to install the Windows version in order to play in Russian, though

Same for Starcraft in German. Blizz is kind of funny about their EU language offerings on Mac for some reason.

Farthen · May 30, 2011

ehwood said:
It wouldn't kill them to provide backwards compatibility the way Microsoft does down the Windows line, but they just don't do it. And alternatives are very thin on this platform!

It would kill them. Windows has the problems it has mainly due to Microsoft keeping up the backwards compatibility as long as they do. Dropping support for something has always been one of Apple's strengths. If you want to play old games or run old software then don't upgrade. Or find other ways to circumvent the problem.

thejadedmonkey · May 30, 2011

Microsoft will make sure that Blizzard game continue to work.

Here's a snippet from a lengthy blog post from a few years back, I recommend you read the whole thing, but here's the relevant part to this thread.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

...The testers on the Windows team were going through various popular applications, testing them to make sure they worked OK, but SimCity kept crashing. They reported this to the Windows developers, who disassembled SimCity, stepped through it in a debugger, found the bug, and added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if it did, ran the memory allocator in a special mode in which you could still use memory after freeing it.

This was not an unusual case. The Windows testing team is huge and one of their most important responsibilities is guaranteeing that everyone can safely upgrade their operating system, no matter what applications they have installed, and those applications will continue to run, even if those applications do bad things or use undocumented functions or rely on buggy behavior that happens to be buggy in Windows n but is no longer buggy in Windows n+1. In fact if you poke around in the AppCompatibility section of your registry you'll see a whole list of applications that Windows treats specially, emulating various old bugs and quirky behaviors so they'll continue to work...

baryon · May 30, 2011

If I can play Nintendo and Commodore games on OS X with an emulator, I'm sure there's a way to run Power PC apps with an emulator. If it's not Rosetta, someone else will write a program to do the same thing.

But why doesn't Blizzard just port their games? I mean it's been a loooong time since Macs are on Intel processors... why don't they update their stuff? Everyone else has already ported everything...

BLACKFRIDAY · May 30, 2011

To be honest, I think its time we move ahead Rosetta.

But I know the IT industry is way rigid and rough to adjust with changes. They are human at homes and inhuman at their offices. They are just very weird in adapting to new technologies and getting rid of the waste.

I would welcome Rosetta but all the people who have been smart in the recent times have upgraded their apps and moved ahead. You just can't be struck in the past after all.

roadbloc · May 30, 2011

BLACKFRIDAY said:
To be honest, I think its time we move ahead Rosetta.

But I know the IT industry is way rigid and rough to adjust with changes. They are human at homes and inhuman at their offices. They are just very weird in adapting to new technologies and getting rid of the waste.

I would welcome Rosetta but all the people who have been smart in the recent times have upgraded their apps and moved ahead. You just can't be struck in the past after all.

I couldn't disagree more. People who blame it an 'lazy' developers clearly do not get it. Especially when it comes to games, however other apps do apply in this as well; why should the developer bother updating a four year old app that has sold well and is popular, but isn't a big money earner anymore? No obligation.

Apple are doing nothing but restricting consumers here. Which is a shame. It isn't as if rosetta is a massive bloated pain-in-the-arse thing either. It's unnoticeable and hardly takes up any disk space or system resources. I think it's daft Apple just don't bundle it in the OS and don't even mention it as a feature.

Furrybeagle · May 30, 2011

ehwood said:
That stinks. Apple stinks at keeping their own hardware and software useful, as their interest is always in deprecating their older systems in order to drives sales of the newer ones, and they really don't seem to care much about keeping older software running.

What? My PowerBook G3 still runs 10.4.11, the same OS that was shipping on every Mac up until late 2007. That computer is 11 years old. In fact, I still occasionally see people running Tiger on their early Intel Macs, so its clearly still a useful operating system. Try installing Vista or 7 on a PC notebook from 2000.

ehwood said:
If the open source community can go from scratch to having Windows apps running on Linux and Unix systems, including Mac OS X, then Apple can write up compatibility layers for older software. Why did they drop Classic with Leopard, and now Rosetta with Lion?

Wine has been in development for nearly 2 decades, and while it is impressive software, it is still buggy as hell. The extra development resources required to keep Rosetta and Classic integrated with the latest versions of OS X is kind of ridiculous considering how little it is actually used. Besides, its not like you have absolutely no way to run old 68k or PPC software just use Basilisk II or SheepShaver.

ehwood said:
They created these marvelous little compatibility measures because people would have told them to kiss off had they not provided them at the time, but we see that just as soon as it's convenient for them to dump these things again, they do, and they apparently don't even open up the sources for these things, so that others might build modern equivalents from them at their own expense and keep that old software running today.

I imagine Rosetta and Classic are tightly integrated with the system. Releasing the source code might just not be possible.

ehwood said:
Apple is too busy with iDevices now to care about the Macintosh the way they ought to, simple as that. The fact that they've turned it into an overblown PC attests to this, as they're doing a lot less hardware R&D on the Mac that way, simply buying bits and bobs from Intel and others instead, and even with OS X, they just took BSD and started customising it.

How is this any different from what they did before? Instead of buying x86 chips from Intel and using the BIOS or EFI, they bought PPC chips from Motorola and IBM and used Open Firmware. A G4 or G5 Mac really isnt that different from a PC the way something like a Macintosh SE is.

New alternative to Rosetta with Lion? Blizzards Statement

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