OS X Lion to Drop 'Rosetta' Support for PowerPC Applications

[imaginfinity]

Here we go again...

It's not that surprising to see Apple drop Rosetta, though I can understand the desire to free itself from having to support legacy code.

The problem is that, Apple make hardware that people like and want to keep, and the software developers writing for the Mac OS are also very committed to giving us quality products which stand the test of time. The obsolescence way of designing OS's seems to run contrary to the users' attachment due to the apparent love and care that went into the product. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that, Apple is schizo - well-cared for soft- and hardware on the one hand, ruthless discarding of legacy technologies (SCSI, Floppy Disc, PowerPC, DVD + FireWire on the MB Air) on the other.

If you want to retain the functionality of older Macs - keep them running! By now I'm running Mac OS 9.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 on a range of macs, the oldest being a couple of G3 iMacs, and I find myself using 9.2 quite often (especially, as it allows Alpha Centauri to run smoother than in Classic mode on a G5).

 

[KurtangleTN]

Shouldn't you be asking Epson why they don't support their product by updating their software to operate with current versions of operating systems? They've had five years to update their software to Intel code and haven't bothered to do so, apparently. Or they could just ensure that their current software product (I assume they have one) supports older scanners such as yours.

Companies today are struggling to survive, they can't afford to spend thousands of man hours to upgrade older drivers for a niche market when there was a perfectly fine solution in Rosetta. This is even more true with older games.

The other big concern is many PPC programs simply don't have direct replacements, either the replacement was a different piece of software or it simply isn't as good.

Remember Apple was the one that switched to Intel, not the developers. It's their duty to insure that the transition was smooth to both customers and developers, not the other way around.

 

[Winni]

At least I can testify a Power Mac G5 can last about eight years. I would challenge some PC users to claim the same.

That number does not impress me at all. When I spend the same money on a PC that people spend on a Mac, you can bet your house that the PC will easily last as long as the Mac. We have a bunch of fully working machines of that age standing around in our storage rooms. Heck, corporate/business customers expect at least five years of life from any computer system - and they expect full support for such systems through their lifespan. Now guess why nobody in the business world buys Apple. Or why Apple did not even put their own server products in their iCloud data center...

 

[gnasher729]

As for why Apple drops Core 1 chips and Rosetta: Because they can, and because it makes you buy new stuff. There is no yesterday in the world of Steve.

There is one difference, however: Anyone with say a MacBook that can't be upgraded to Lion can buy a new MacBook and gets a machine that is brand new, is faster, has more RAM, bigger hard drive, and so on and so on and so on. But anyone who relies on some software that cannot run on Lion will have to stay with Snow Leopard. And since new Macs will ship with Lion soon, these people will then actually _not_ buy new hardware.

Not criticizing but how many people can actually tolerate AppleWorks in 10.6 for more than a few hours? It really is falling apart under Rosetta.

Works fine for me. There are some rough edges, which is to be expected for eight year old software, but it has a math editor that I wouldn't want to give up.

 

[KnightWRX]

There is no practical reason to drop Rosetta, it's tiny,

Rosetta is anything but Tiny. It requires shipping all the system frameworks as fat binaries built for both Intel and PPC architecture. It requires tons of Q&A to make sure all those frameworks don't break on PowerPC, close to 5 years after Apple dropped the architecture.

There is a big practical reason to drop Rosetta : Drop all the PPC code, thus making Lion fit inside the 4GB download. Drop all the Q&A of PPC code in the frameworks, thus easing the process and requiring less ressources.

As all transitional technologies, it was bound to happen. The good thing for everyone needed PPC apps : Snow Leopard will still work after Lion ship, just like Leopard still works now and just like you can run any old software and OS out there.

And since new Macs will ship with Lion soon, these people will then actually _not_ buy new hardware.

Sure they will, if the PPC software is so irreplaceable, they'll just keep the old hardware around. However, I doubt the software is irreplaceable really, it's more that people are used to how it works and refuse to change. Let's face it, Intuit is in the wrong here for not providing a true Quicken version, just use some other budgeting software, it's a dime a dozen.

Tons of my games only work on DOS or Win 9x. I have the original floppies and CDs lying around, basically useless to me unless I install one of those old OSes (except for DOSbox, god I love DOSbox).

 

[lkrupp]

The switch to intel has been going on since 2005.

I hate to break it to some people but its probably time to upgrade.

Yep, if I'm going to have to run Windows to use any productive software (Quicken) then why not upgrade to a Windows PC and be done with it. No more worrying about whether an application will be available or supported in the logn term. Good idea. Thanks for the advice.

 

[ghostlyorb]

The switch to intel has been going on since 2005.

I hate to break it to some people but its probably time to upgrade.

Much agreed.

 

[Mac-Rumours]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8C148)

There is no practical reason to drop Rosetta, it's tiny,

Rosetta is anything but Tiny. It requires shipping all the system frameworks as fat binaries built for both Intel and PPC architecture. It requires tons of Q&A to make sure all those frameworks don't break on PowerPC, close to 5 years after Apple dropped the architecture.

There is a big practical reason to drop Rosetta : Drop all the PPC code, thus making Lion fit inside the 4GB download. Drop all the Q&A of PPC code in the frameworks, thus easing the process and requiring less ressources.

As all transitional technologies, it was bound to happen. The good thing for everyone needed PPC apps : Snow Leopard will still work after Lion ship, just like Leopard still works now and just like you can run any old software and OS out there.

And since new Macs will ship with Lion soon, these people will then actually _not_ buy new hardware.

Sure they will, if the PPC software is so irreplaceable, they'll just keep the old hardware around. However, I doubt the software is irreplaceable really, it's more that people are used to how it works and refuse to change. Let's face it, Intuit is in the wrong here for not providing a true Quicken version, just use some other budgeting software, it's a dime a dozen.

Tons of my games only work on DOS or Win 9x. I have the original floppies and CDs lying around, basically useless to me unless I install one of those old OSes (except for DOSbox, god I love DOSbox).

IIRC installing Rosetta in Snow Leopard only adds ~100MB.

It was the most elegant way to use software designed for a different processor architecture and so understandably people are pissed off it's not going to work in Lion.

I suggest emailing Apple/Jobs rather than just mouthing off here. You never know, they might listen!

 

[Truffy]

5 years may seem much to you, but in corporate IT this is not realy a long time.

Considering that in a business enviorment software is often not "of the shelf" but highly customised or even specifically programmed to suit the individual needs of a company this can result in the need of MAJOR investments. Adding to this that apple is not too kind on long term support for it's OSs (think security patches) this can be a real pain for businesses.

Personally i think this is THE major reason why Apple will not likely grow into a major player in the (PC-)businessworld. While it works great in the private sector to be all mysterious about new versions of software and hardware, this is realy a dealbreaker for IT-departments as they need to plan ahead if they have more the a few dozend systems to administer.

I don't doubt a word of what you write, and I don't have the unit numbers for Apple computers in the enterprise vs. SME vs. domestic markets, but I suspect that Apple's primary penetration and interest is in the domestic and small business markets. In that context, 5 years is a long time, and bespoke software is a lesser issue (although not necessarily a non-issue in the small enterprise space).

I work for a monolithic corporate, where the mantra that no one ever got sacked for buying IBM still seems to be received wisdom.

 

[MrGIS]

Spyder 2

The only issue I expect to have is with my monitor calibrator.. The Colorvision software for my Spyder2 requires Rosetta. I'd like to see the vendor step up and release new software, but something tells me they would rather I upgrade my device...

 

[madrag]

very sad

I know many are saying it doesn't bother them, but probably they don't pay for their software.

In other words, please consider the ones that will have to spend a lot of money to buy updates to their apps (if there are updates, for instance Freehand can't be updated and IMO there are no other vector programs out there that can compete).

I know no one forces anyone to "upgrade" to Lion, but would it be so bad to keep Rosetta so that you can use a fresher OS?

My hope is that someone will be able to emulate PPC somehow.

 

[jonnyz]

If only...

I wish Apple would still make Rosetta / a special VMware image / an emulation package for PPC available at the least in the App Store for download. Those who need it like me would be willing to pay $19 or whatever and fill our hard drive space up with it.

 

[hayesk]

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Hey Apple. how about leaving it in, but not providing operational support ( tech support ) any longer? many of us still run software that has no modern replacement, and would like to keep current while having some backward compatibility.

There may be licensing issues. Does Apple own the tech in Rosetta, or were they licensing it from a third party?

It could simply be a cost-saving move.

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

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I would love to see previous OS operation via virtual PC. Run Snow Leopard within Lion to get access to obsolete apps. Run classic within leopard within Lion, etc.

 

[madrag]

You do realize that Freehand has been dropped the minute Adobe bought Macromedia years ago!!

Of course I do realise that. So did everyone that heard apple when they switched to Intel, and it didn't prevent them from making PPC apps did it?

Mind you that Freehand does work in OS X 10.6 and there are still thousands of active freehand users. There is a lawsuit happening already to "force" adobe to take care of us Freehand users: http://www.freefreehand.org/ffh_newsletter13.html

 

[bob_hearn]

Not criticizing but how many people can actually tolerate AppleWorks in 10.6 for more than a few hours? It really is falling apart under Rosetta.

Well I still use it every day... but then, I'm one of the original authors. Agreed, Apple/Claris pretty much stopped maintaining it looooong before it was officially dropped, and it is certainly showing its age. Trust me, it was really cool in 1992!

But I still can't replicate some key spreadsheets in Numbers, and I won't use MS software.

For the Lion migration, I plan on using SheepShaver. Haven't set it up yet.

 

[KnightWRX]

IIRC installing Rosetta in Snow Leopard only adds ~100MB.

Yes it does. But that's because the system ships all the PPC framework code whether you install the Rosetta application itself or not. So you recall correctly, but it doesn't apply to my point at all.

 

[PepeArizona]

Still too early to drop Rosetta

I write scientific papers using Microsoft Word. At this time the only way to do this professionally on a Mac is to use Office 2004 /Endnote / MathType. This requires Rosetta.

The reason that one has to stick with Office 2004 is that MathType relies on VBA, which was dropped in Office 2008 but reintroduced in 2011. Unfortunately, the folks at Design Science, who instigated the user revolt that led to the return of VBA, have been very slow in releasing a compatible version. They indicated that they would have MathType 6.7 for the Mac long ago, but we are still waiting, and their website even ignores the existence of Office 2011, while considering Office 2008 the last version.

Thus if, as expected, Apple releases Lion before Design Science releases Mathtype 6.7 Mac, we will have to use older Macs or PCs for a very basic task.

I find this amazing.

 

[Amdahl]

There may be licensing issues. Does Apple own the tech in Rosetta, or were they licensing it from a third party?

It could simply be a cost-saving move.

Rosetta is actually QuickTransit, from Transitive. It was bought by IBM. IBM uses it to let POWER servers run x86 Linux apps on AIX without modifications.

Nobody knows the deal Apple cut with Transitive, whom nobody had heard of before Apple, so it might not cost them anything at all, going forward.

 

[potatis]

The only PPC app I use is D-subtitler, which extracts subtitles from DVD's to an .srt file. Is there any Intel substitute?

 

[AidenShaw]

s;nobody;almost no Apple fans;g

Nobody knows the deal Apple cut with Transitive, whom nobody had heard of before Apple, so it might not cost them anything at all, going forward.

I visited Transitive's headquarters several times before Apple fans heard about them on the Apple fansites.

I've been at Amdahl too....

 

[KnightWRX]

I write scientific papers using Microsoft Word.

Wait what ? You're using Unix to write scientific papers and you're using the worst tool of the industry to do it with ? Look into TeX and LaTeX. Save yourself from being the laughing stock on the scientific community.

 

[SuperVehicle001]

Wait what ? You're using Unix to write scientific papers and you're using the worst tool of the industry to do it with ? Look into TeX and LaTeX. Save yourself from being the laughing stock on the scientific community.

I have a co-worker with a PhD in computer science and I have never heard of him using TeX or LaTeX to write his papers.

 

[revelated]

This is a deal breaker for one key reason:

VLC still, at least for now, requires Rosetta. I rely almost exclusively on VLC to properly play WMV files, which are going to dominate for the foreseeable future.

 

[kjjnk]

This is a deal breaker for one key reason:

VLC still, at least for now, requires Rosetta. I rely almost exclusively on VLC to properly play WMV files, which are going to dominate for the foreseeable future.

Uhh, no it doesn't.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

Besides the fact that you can just use Flip4Mac to play WMV files.