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

PowerPC

Windows users kinda of went through this too in their own way.

When Microsoft bought out Windows Vista, most things broke. (I'm using Vista as an example, deliberately, because it was terrible)

so users had to decide what to do... But everything works out in the long run.

Now, its Apples turn to not include Rosetta and hurt legacy users who rely on PowerPC software.

While this hurts me, as the only thing preventing me from upgrading is loosing access to one app that i always use, I can, thankfully, do use Parallels anyway, so I can easily use Windows equivalent software to do the same job.

WHile this is not really the intention : eg. the whole reason why i used it on the mac was to move away from Windows.

Now, its turning it around again and taking me back... All thanks to Lion

ah well... still its much easier the dual booting Boot camp or legacy OS (Snow Leopard) just to use it.

all this hassle may be a problem now, but we will probably all look back at these Incompatibilities issues with older software in the future ant think "What was I worrying about"
 
Rodimus Prime said:
More than likely is Apple screw up. You have to remember dev cycles are years long (in the case of office) so having a road map 2-3 years out is very helpful as I pointed out above. This is Apple failing to communicated or even provide a road map that is useful
Click to expand...

So it's Apple's fault that Microsoft decided to use PPC installer for 2008 Office? All sane developer were shipping UB apps/installers in 2008.
 
NAG said:
Okay, you're rambling all over the place so I'm just going to look at the start and end of your post.



How did you get from point A to point B? Are you arguing that the only way for Apple to encourage developers to support the farthest back operating system and hardware as economically feasible for the developer is for Apple to provide a kludge for them to not have to update their software to the latest hardware?

In other words, you think developers can only maintain backwards compatibility if they never update their software to take advantage of new hardware and APIs?

I hope that isn't what you're saying because it makes no sense. By your logic we should all be using punch cards because we don't want to leave behind those users.
Click to expand...

Dropping the support is bad enough but the failure to comincated when they are doing it is a huge problem. A lot of the larger programs out there have dev cycles that are years in length so having a roadmap a few years out is a good thing.
 
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Well, I'm in no hurry to update to lion. There are various bugs anyway until the first couple of ".x" updates. Plus why update just to look for ways to disable iCloud? By the time I need Lion for newer programs I'll just dual boot.
 
vartanarsen said:
hi guys, sorry that this is off-track.
When I upgrade to Lion in July, will it read my 08 Office apps?
SL reads these apps as it is now.
I really prefer to not to have to buy Office 11.
Click to expand...

In the spirit of teaching how to fish rather than just giving you the fish here is how to find out if the App will run on Intel macs without Rosetta.

1) Navigate to the application and select it
2) File (menu) > Get Info
3) Under the General section look at the Kind
4) If Kind: is "Application (Intel)" or "Application (Universal)" you're okay

Rodimus Prime said:
Dropping the support is bad enough but the failure to comincated when they are doing it is a huge problem. A lot of the larger programs out there have dev cycles that are years in length so having a roadmap a few years out is a good thing.
Click to expand...

And they had years. Rosetta was always a kludge to provide people with applications for Intel macs on launch. Claiming ignorance that an emulation environment was going to stick around forever is naive. I can sympathize with the whole Carbon 64bit thing because Apple did a big head feint there by at first working on it only to just drop Carbon pretty much all together. Saying you need over five years to convert your application over to five year old hardware is frankly just contrarian arguing.
 
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Rodimus Prime said:
nope sorry. Office 08 requires Rosetta to install. Apple piss poor comnications with players like MS screwed you. If MS had known in 2008 that Rosetta support was going to be dropped in 2011 I would be willing to bet that it would of address that issue. Find out in 2011 well to late new version of Office is already out and making a new installer for 2008 cost to much time and money.
Click to expand...

MS Office is nice to have in an OS X version. But Apple at this point isn't going to go out of their way to work closely with MS on it. Not when Apple is pushing iWork. Love it or hate it Apple will devote more time and resources to iWork or some other project, rather than MS Office. We'll still have MS Office, but don't expect the moon and the stars from Apple when it comes to its development. This is natural, given the situation.
 
One Phrase

One Phrase:

"Planned Obsolescense"

We did this with earlier versions (OS 7, 8, 9), so this is nothing new. It bites me a bit since I'm involved in the housing industry and haven't updated computers in over five years. At least I can testify a Power Mac G5 can last about eight years. I would challenge some PC users to claim the same. I have a few Intel iMac machines but will wait a few years before an upgrade (NBD). The latest OS we have is Leopard anyway.
 
*LTD* said:
MS Office is nice to have in an OS X version. But Apple at this point isn't going to go out of their way to work closely with MS on it. Not when Apple is pushing iWork. Love it or hate it Apple will devote more time and resources to iWork or some other project, rather than MS Office. We'll still have MS Office, but don't expect the moon and the stars from Apple when it comes to its development. This is natural, given the situation.
Click to expand...

I really can't wrap my head around this. It's an installer, what work we are talking about when it looks like a no brainer to use universal installer for software released in 2008 knowing that PPC won't be supportted forever.
 
PowerPC Apps stick out like a sore thumb.

I run lots of applications.

I checked on Activity Monitor. None are running PowerPC Code.

It is time to move on.

Whatever PowerPC Code is still on the hard drive needs to be cleaned out.

Thank goodness.
 
LastLine said:
I'm intrigued - is there much PPC only software still out therE?
Click to expand...

Primarily, for me, it's old games that break, like Diablo 2 and Starcraft. Still, I support the move. Supporting old architecture is a PITA and 5 years is more than a fair time to let developers get up to date.
 
Printer driver that's PPC-only

I have a Dell 3100cn networked color laser printer that I really like, despite the Dell badge. Unfortunately the driver is PPC-only and Dell has not updated it. This is the only concern I still have regarding losing Rosetta.

Does anyone have advice or suggestions for keeping a printer alive in Lion when its drivers are PPC-only? I'm wondering if there's some kind of generic Universal driver I can use; the printer is pretty basic, after all.
 
I think it's absolutely okay to drop PPC support with Lion. It's been a long enough transition and every old architecture has to go sometime.
 
*LTD* said:
MS Office is nice to have in an OS X version. But Apple at this point isn't going to go out of their way to work closely with MS on it. Not when Apple is pushing iWork. Love it or hate it Apple will devote more time and resources to iWork or some other project, rather than MS Office. We'll still have MS Office, but don't expect the moon and the stars from Apple when it comes to its development. This is natural, given the situation.
Click to expand...

Sorry but MS Office for Mac is a joke compared to Office for Windows. Honestly the only thing worse than Office for Mac is Office 2007 for Windows. Lucky for me my work still uses Office XP (2002 w/ Outlook 2003) because everyone I know who has a newer PC for work hates the revamped Windows Office.
 
Rodimus Prime said:
More than likely is Apple screw up. You have to remember dev cycles are years long (in the case of office) so having a road map 2-3 years out is very helpful as I pointed out above. This is Apple failing to communicated or even provide a road map that is useful
Click to expand...

Regardless of who's "screw up" it is, there could be a lot of angry Office 2008 users who don't like the ribbon and just assumed they could keep using it in Lion because it is Intel. I certainly didn't know until now that the installer was PowerPC.

Tech198 said:
Windows users kinda of went through this too in their own way.

When Microsoft bought out Windows Vista, most things broke. (I'm using Vista as an example, deliberately, because it was terrible)
Click to expand...


I'm sure Apple doesn't want Lion to be their "Vista." Anyway, Microsoft made it a point that anything that was Vista-certified would run under Windows 7. Perhaps a "certification" program would help here. Hopefully Apple at least provides an "upgrade advisor" the way Microsoft did with Windows 7 that will go through your system and identify hardware or software that won't work.
 
Last edited:
amethystjw said:
I have a Dell 3100cn networked color laser printer that I really like, despite the Dell badge. Unfortunately the driver is PPC-only and Dell has not updated it. This is the only concern I still have regarding losing Rosetta.

Does anyone have advice or suggestions for keeping a printer alive in Lion when its drivers are PPC-only? I'm wondering if there's some kind of generic Universal driver I can use; the printer is pretty basic, after all.
Click to expand...

Not an expert with printers and Macs, but it might be possible with some generic postscript driver (which the 3100cn has support for).
 
Another alternative to Quicken on Rosetta

The author forgot to mention another alternative: put on a hair shirt, sleep on a straw mat on the floor, whip yourself regularly, and eat nothing but porridge, water, bread and dates. The experience is virtually indistinguishable from using the versions of Quicken that run on Rosetta.

There is an application called Moneydance that can import Quicken files better than Quicken can, and has file format that is not prone to corruption. Unless you like to draw pretty pictures about your money, this is a much more capable and more stable solution than any version of Quicken for the Mac. It is a quick, easy, and reliable upgrade from Quicken.
 
Rodimus Prime said:
Older software does not work. I think this was a bad idea. They could remove the ability to compile new software using Rosetta but there is going to be a lot of stuff that just stops working. I believe Office 2008 can not even install with out Rosetta as the installer is PPC the program itself does not need it but the installer does.

I think it was a bad idea for Apple do drop a bomb shell like that. Honestly Apple should of give at least 2 years noticed so companies and enterprise which tend to move slower have noticed but then again this is why Apple sucks in the enterprise market.
Click to expand...

Consider this your two-year warning. We'll see you in 2013....
 
NAG said:
In the spirit of teaching how to fish rather than just giving you the fish here is how to find out if the App will run on Intel macs without Rosetta.

1) Navigate to the application and select it
2) File (menu) > Get Info
3) Under the General section look at the Kind
4) If Kind: is "Application (Intel)" or "Application (Universal)" you're okay
Click to expand...

I'm going to lose Simcity 4 and Neverwinter Nights. Boo.
Warcraft 3, Nestopia, and SNES9X are OK though. Yay.

Rodimus Prime said:
Older software does not work. I think this was a bad idea. They could remove the ability to compile new software using Rosetta but there is going to be a lot of stuff that just stops working. I believe Office 2008 can not even install with out Rosetta as the installer is PPC the program itself does not need it but the installer does.

I think it was a bad idea for Apple do drop a bomb shell like that. Honestly Apple should of give at least 2 years noticed so companies and enterprise which tend to move slower have noticed but then again this is why Apple sucks in the enterprise market.
Click to expand...
Didn't we go through something similar with the OS 9 -> OS X transition?
 
Grrrr

This is really annoying as I have no need to upgrade Photoshop from CS1 (nor could I without buying the full latest version) and Adobe has no reason to patch it to Intel so I'm stuck.
 
The strange thing is that majority of Apples business now uses ARM, with is a version PowerPC.

Like many others in this thread: I have Apple Codecs to FinalCutPro that uses Rosetta. I will not be happy if Apple has not solved this with next version of OSX.

BTW.
I predict that an ARM version of OSX will be avalible within 2 years. In only 4 months there are ARM chips that are fast enough for 80-90% of the users.

The quod core ARM is faster then for example first gen MacBook air intel processor. The different is energy and price. Intel Chip + chipset motherboard costs about 400 dollar and draws peak 40 watt. A quod core ARM has the same functionality costs 25 dollar and draws 2.5 watt peak.
 
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