Mac OS X Lion: Drops PowerPC Emulation, Adds QuickTime Pro Features, Much More

[Daveoc64]

Helping out some family friends today with their computer made me realise something about support for Office on Windows. They're using Office 2000 on Windows Vista and it works fine for their needs. A newer version simply isn't necessary.

It made me realise how these older versions can still be used on Windows.

The following versions of Microsoft Office for Windows will work on Windows 7 (although officially only 2003 and newer are recommended):

Office 97 (1996)
Office 2000 (1999)
Office XP (2001)
Office 2003 (2003)
Office 2007 (2007)
Office 2010 (2010)

Compare that with Office on the Mac:

Office 2004 (2004) - requires Rosetta to run, so will not work on Lion
Office 2008 (2008) - requires Rosetta for installer, so will not install on Lion (although it might run if installed pre-upgrade)
Office 2011 (2010) - should work on Lion

 

[Kristenn]

Legacy code can be good when it comes to compatibility but it still goes to show that Windows 7 is basically Windows NT/2000 with make up and new features and a bunch of code from Windows 95.

Surely is an example of Windows' problems =/

Just like Mac OS 9 was System 1 with a bunch of makeup.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Legacy code can be good when it comes to compatibility but it still goes to show that Windows 7 is basically Windows NT/2000 with make up and new features and a bunch of code from Windows 95.

Surely is an example of Windows' problems =/

Just like Mac OS 9 was System 1 with a bunch of makeup.

That's like saying because the current Linux distributions can run code that is 12+ years old they are 'basically' just Linux from 12 years ago.

What he was trying to say is that Apple arbitrarily throws out the elements of the operating system that would allow them to run older software whereas Windows has made a real effort to allow older software to continue to run within various constraints (changing various compatibility settings). OSX still contains Cocoa support, so is Lion basically just 10.0 with a bunch of makeup? Must be by your definition. They just took off SOME of their makeup and added more then? It's a ridiculous comparison.

Windows isn't Windows without its Legacy code anymore than OSX is OSX without its legacy code. The difference is OSX is killing its own legacy along the way while Windows is trying to preserve as much software as possible. Try running No One Lives Forever on a Mac running Snow Loepard today. It won't work. Try running it on Windows. It WILL work. You can say you support wiping out the past and all the great software that came with it in favor of saving some hard drive space, but some of wish we could play our older Mac games without having to keep an older Mac around (which will eventually fail) to do it.

In this case Rosetta isn't hurting a thing in Snow Leopard by being there. It isn't even downloaded and installed on new installs by default, but it's there if you NEED it. Steve has decided you no longer need to run Office 2004. Pony up some cash to Microsoft if you want to run Office in Lion even if you hardly ever use it these days or just for labels or whatever. Thanks Steve Jobs. Thanks for being a stubborn irritating mule.

 

[AidenShaw]

There's the hardware side of compatibility too...

The difference is OSX is killing its own legacy along the way while Windows is trying to preserve as much software as possible.

I started my spare laptop to type this - a Dell that I got with a Yonah processor in early 2006.

It runs Windows 7 x64 just fine.

You won't be able to run Lion on a MacBook purchased at the same time - but Windows.Next should be OK according to current scuttlebutt.

 

[foobarbaz]

I started my spare laptop to type this - a Dell that I got with a Yonah processor in early 2006.

It runs Windows 7 x64 just fine.

You might want to get your story straight: Yonah (Core 1) didn't come with 64 bit instructions, so running x64 on it amounts to a miracle.

 

[invalidname]

I promise you just because Quicktime Pro isn't included in this release, it will be able to be installed in either final release, or with Final Cut Studio. There are certain things that need to be done for professionals that require Quicktime Pro.

QuickTime Pro actually only affected the old QuickTime Player application. Any other application, including the Pro apps, can call into any part of QuickTime (including the editing and fullscreeen APIs) without a QTP key.

Also, the old C-based QuickTime API that QuickTime Pro interacted with is on a clear path to deprecation. It's 32-bit only, so it can't be called from 64-bit applications. 64-bit apps need to either use QTKit or AV Foundation, the latter of which comes from iOS to OSX in Lion. The QuickTime Player X that came out with Snow Leopard (and which doesn't say anything about QuickTime Pro) uses QTKit.

Pro was just a way to get QuickTime to pay for itself until iTunes and the iDevices came around. It confused the marketing message and it's good to see it finally going away.

--Chris

 

[KnightWRX]

but it still goes to show that Windows 7 is basically Windows NT/2000

You say that as if it was some great secret. Windows 7 is NT. Yes, that old OS from 1993 written by Dave Cutler of VMS fame.

But then again, by that same token, OS X is just NeXTSTEP, an old OS from 1988 written by Steve Jobs' defunct company. At the code level, the Cocoa framework is mostly NeXTSTEP and even has an opensource compatible framework in the form of GNUStep.

Killing off PPC has nothing to do with legacy code at all. Code can be recompiled to a new architecture verbatim if you're not doing weird stuff that requires precise endianess or instructions.

with make up and new features and a bunch of code from Windows 95.

What code from Windows 95 ? You mean Win32 code that is shared amongst both NT and the older Win32 platforms based on DOS ? That never was Windows 95's (and ultimately Windows 98's and Me's) problem and that's mostly userspace level. Kernel level, NT has no code from the older releases of Windows that were simply graphical extensions to DOS (yes, even Windows ME ran on top of DOS for it's basic services).

Your argument is the same as claiming an Alpha version of a Win32 application doesn't run on Windows so Windows is abandonning their legacy code. Apple is not doing anything Microsoft hasn't done already. I still have a Windows NT 4.0 original CD with the Alpha, MIPS and PPC binaries on it. If I would have bought any Win32 software compiled for those architectures, it wouldn't run on Windows XP, let alone Windows 7. Microsoft killed support for those architectures a long time ago, even though "legacy code" still works on Windows.

That's because Windows is still source compatible to any Win32 application written back in the days and their ABI is stable enough to still run them. OS X is the same.

The difference is Microsoft simply dropped architectures that were very unpopular, Apple had to switch to a new architecture completely. No consumers had Alpha machines running Windows NT 4.0 with a large software library and so no one really felt left behind when Microsoft finally dropped Alpha support (which I think was the last of the major architectures to drop from Windows NT).

 

[hvfsl]

I currently have Office V.x, Dreamweaver and Adobe CS1 which are all PPC apps. Now I am trustee for a local charity so I guess I could get them with the charity discount, but even so I am looking at spending more than £700. I guess my compliant is more aimed at Adobe's pricing for people that don't want to use their software for business use, but unless things change or unless Final Cut Studio 4 requires Lion (which I also use a lot), I can't see myself upgrading any time soon.

 

[AidenShaw]

I guess my compliant is more aimed at ....

So, Apple pulls a documented, supported interface from a new release of Apple OSX without any notice or warning, which breaks Adobe software that you bought around 2004 - and you blame Adobe? You haven't been an Adobe customer for 7 years.

Apple is the company that you should blame, not Adobe. Apple made a promise to support PPC apps in 2005 - and now without notice that support seems to be disappearing. (And, unless I've missed something - there still has been no notice - just reports that the 10.7 Alpha doesn't have Rosetta.)

How can it be Adobe's fault?

 

[holmesf]

A very under reported feature of the recent 10.7 builds is that they support OpenCL version 1.1, and the OpenCL drivers are generally better. For example, features that the recent AMD GPUs support but do not support in the 10.6 drivers are supported in 10.7.

 

[KnightWRX]

So, Apple pulls a documented, supported interface from a new release of Apple OSX without any notice or warning

Wait what ? Either that statement doesn't mean what you think it means or we're not having this discussion right now, close to 6 months ahead of Lion's launch.

 

[Dranix]

So, Apple pulls a documented, supported interface from a new release of Apple OSX without any notice or warning,

Got that wrong - Rosetta was deprecated in 10.6, in 10.7 it will be removed. Normal way of working at Apple.

 

[AidenShaw]

Wait what ? Either that statement doesn't mean what you think it means or we're not having this discussion right now, close to 6 months ahead of Lion's launch.

Got that wrong - Rosetta was deprecated in 10.6, in 10.7 it will be removed. Normal way of working at Apple.

Please post links to the 10.6 documentation or other Apple announcements that said that Rosetta would be removed from the next release of Apple OSX.

If Apple made that statement, I'll quickly apologize for being wrong.

Note that the topic post says:

- PowerPC (Rosetta) emulation is no longer offered. That means if you have any PowerPC applications they won't be able to run in Mac OS X Lion. You can determine if you are still running PowerPC applications by going into Applications -> Utilities -> System Profiler -> Applications and viewing "By Kind". This will show you which applications you have that are running under PowerPC. Rosetta had already become an optional install in Snow Leopard, and it appears Apple will be removing support for it entirely in Lion.

This implies that people testing the Alpha were surprised by the removal of Rosetta - not that this was a previously announced roadmap from Apple.

And none of the "you should have known because..." crap, though. A clear statement that all PPC support would end at a certain definite time. (And "next major release" is a "definite time", even though the calendar date of the next major release is not specified.) And the fact that Rosetta became an optional component in 10.6 is not relevant without a clear statement that it would be removed in the next release.

 

[KnightWRX]

Please post links to the 10.6 documentation or other Apple announcements that said that Rosetta would be removed from the next release of Apple OSX.

Here :

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1104601/

Again, 6 months ahead of the launch is plenty of warning. I made no claims as to 10.6, only that this preview of 10.7 seems to constitute all the warning you'll get and it is pretty much an advance notice in and of itself.

 

[Dranix]

I have currently no link to a statement, but alone the fact that it was demoted to optional install is a dead giveaway.

 

[AidenShaw]

I have currently no link to a statement, but alone the fact that it was demoted to optional install is a dead giveaway.

Apple owes more than that to its partners.

Windows and Linux are famously configurable by the user - the fact that some component is not in some "default" installation profile is not a "dead giveaway" that it will be yanked from a future version without explicit notice.

 

[cmaier]

Apple owes more than that to its partners.

Windows and Linux are famously configurable by the user - the fact that some component is not in some "default" installation profile is not a "dead giveaway" that it will be yanked from a future version without explicit notice.

Of course OS X isn't Windows or Linux, and Apple has, in the past, used "optionalization" of components as a signaling function.

 

[AidenShaw]

Of course OS X isn't Windows or Linux, and Apple has, in the past, used "optionalization" of components as a signaling function.

Which, of course, has been a big factor in its "marginalization" as a platform.

If you don't tell your partners what's coming, don't expect them to support you.

Again, 6 months ahead of the launch is plenty of warning.

If you're a product manager at Adobe, dealing with 18 to 24 month product cycles - "6 months" is a "surprise".

And what about the poor sod a few posts back running CS1, who has to choose between staying with a version of Apple OSX that has Rosetta, and upgrading to Lion and replacing a bunch of software that Lion will kill? (And, by implication, not buying any new Apples that might not run a version of Apple OSX that doesn't come pre-installed with a version of Apple OSX that supports Rosetta

 

[cmaier]

Which, of course, has been a big factor in its "marginalization" as a platform.

If you don't tell your partners what's coming, don't expect them to support you.

I don't disagree. Apple has shown, repeatedly, that it doesn't care about partners (or IT, or anyone else that demands predictability). Of course, its partners know this, so they know how to read the tea leaves.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Here :

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1104601/

Again, 6 months ahead of the launch is plenty of warning. I made no claims as to 10.6, only that this preview of 10.7 seems to constitute all the warning you'll get and it is pretty much an advance notice in and of itself.

for an IT guy you know full out and well 6 months is not considered enough time. 2 years is the min. 5 years is what should of been stated.

 

[KnightWRX]

If you're a product manager at Adobe, dealing with 18 to 24 month product cycles - "6 months" is a "surprise".

Sure it is, but it is still "warning or notice". You claimed there wasn't "any notice or warning". This is patently false, here we are, 6 months in advance and we just got a heads up.

You can argue that the notice/warning is inadequate and yes with Apple, it usually is. But in 2011, if you're still relying on PPC for your actively supported OS X releases, you failed to read between lines sometimes in the last 5 years.

And what about the poor sod a few posts back running CS1, who has to choose between staying with a version of Apple OSX that has Rosetta, and upgrading to Lion and replacing a bunch of software that Lion will kill?

Well, seeing how Creative Suite anything older than 4 is not even supported by Adobe, I think that poor sod has much more to worry about than having to run it on older Apple code :

http://www.adobe.com/support/programs/policies/supported.html

for an IT guy you know full out and well 6 months is not considered enough time. 2 years is the min. 5 years is what should of been stated.

We're not discussing IT here, we're discussing consumer level stuff. You know my stance on Apple practices as far as IT goes.

I don't disagree. Apple has shown, repeatedly, that it doesn't care about partners (or IT, or anyone else that demands predictability). Of course, its partners know this, so they know how to read the tea leaves.

Partners ? Stretch that developers in general. It seems Apple doesn't believe it needs to cater to its developer base at all. They think them giving us a SDK is plenty and we should be thankful for even that.

 

[AidenShaw]

I don't disagree. Apple has shown, repeatedly, that it doesn't care about partners (or IT, or anyone else that demands predictability). Of course, its partners know this, so they know how to read the tea leaves.

Adobe must not fit your definition of "partner" - since Adobe users keep getting blind-sided by Apple's "tea leaves".

And what reading of "tea leaves" would have interpreted Apple's descriptions of "Carbon 64 next year" to mean that "we're dropping Carbon 64 - recode everything in Chocolate"?

 

[AidenShaw]

Sure it is, but it is still "warning or notice". You claimed there wasn't "any notice or warning". This is patently false, here we are, 6 months in advance and we just got a heads up.

Do you really, honestly believe that?

To me (and *please* correct me if I'm wrong), this story can be summarized as "some 10.7 Alpha users have broken their NDAs to tell us that Rosetta and all PPC support has been ripped out of Lion".

Have there been any statements from Cupertino about the status of Rosetta?

Regardless of the timing, this is not a "notice or warning" - for software developers it's an OMG.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

We're not discussing IT here, we're discussing consumer level stuff. You know my stance on Apple practices as far as IT goes.

And yet again this is an issue because Apple needs to provide real warning to its devs so the consumers are protected. 6 months is not enough time. Lets see MS 2008 is screwed by this unless it is already installed. No way to move it over to a new computer. I saw no reason to jump to 2010 and my laptop is still running on 2007 (Windows 7 here).

MS sure as hell would not kept a the Rosetta install if they knew it would of been killed off in as early as it was. Apple should of given more warning and hell should of said 5-6 years back when they first announced Rosetta giving a real time table.

MS provides real time tables for when support is going to be dropped. Worse case they extend support but those tables are provided the day the OS is released. Hard to argue with very known time table and makes it easy for developers to know the future.
Apple just screwed over a lot of people here.

 

[KnightWRX]

Do you really, honestly believe that?

To me (and *please* correct me if I'm wrong), this story can be summarized as "some 10.7 Alpha users have broken their NDAs to tell us that Rosetta and all PPC support has been ripped out of Lion". Have there been any statements from Cupertino about the status of Rosetta?

Regardless of the timing, this is not a "notice or warning" - for software developers it's an OMG.

It's as good as you're gonna get from Cupertino. Don't you know this by now ? Again, you can argue that it is insufficient all you want, but it's still a "notice or warning". A very inadequate one if you've had your head in the sand since Apple announced they were going Intel, but still a "notice or warning".

Lets face it, anyone that believed Rosetta would have a long and happy life was living a delusion.