Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Snow Leopard Security Update Kills PowerPC Apps Using Rosetta
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yeah, you have to move on. When a moved to Win7 x64 a bunch of my apps from the late 80's and early 90's stopped working.
Actually, they didn't "stop working" - I have to run them in "XP Mode" on my Win7 x64 Core i7 system.
</point>
Seriously, Apple could learn quite a bit from Microsoft in the areas of quality control and legacy support.
I doubt they'd just break Rosetta in SL without any notice or explanation (though quite frankly, most users wouldn't care if they did.)
I'm quite sure, however, that those who need it will have it back in working order soon.
Actually, I'm quite sure Microsoft's backwards compatibility is what causes a large portion of Windows bugs and security flaws.
Given the events of the past few quarters, They probably don't feel they need to. And apparently, neither do most of their customers.
But yes, Windows is indeed the first thing that comes to mind when I think "legacy", LOL
The question is, upgrade to what? Please tell how I am supposed to upgrade ImageReady CS2?
There really is only three options to replace ImageReady CS2:
- Fireworks: too expensive, way too complex for my workflow and the new versions runs processes in the background that's borderline DRM on your system. They also install way too much other software that almost takes control of your system. It took me nearly two hours to undo all the crap that the latest Fireworks trial did to my system.
- Photoshop: way too expensive and the new versions also runs processes in the background that's borderline DRM on your system.
- Pixelmator: the price is really great, it's a real light-weight program compared to the other two and even the keyboard shortcuts I'm used to are the same. But I just tried their trial again and there's too many details that add up to "I can't use this", such as a dark interface, text too small in the interface, not displaying slices when using other tools, etc. Not to mention it just plain crashes when opening some PSD files. It may yet become a really good alternative, but as of february 2012, it's not a valid option.
Unless there's a fourth option I've never heard of, there is no sensible upgrade path.
Actually, most enterprises leave automatic update enabled and use WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) to redirect client machines to internal update servers. That lets IT test updates, and move them to the WSUS servers after running their own test suites. Once the updates are on the WSUS servers, automatic update will pull them to the clients.
PowerPC people complaining?
Or people with recent Apple hardware, but who are expecting the apps that they own to still run.
On Windows 7 x86 - assuming that apps don't do direct hardware access (know our friends Peek and Poke?). On Win7 x64, these apps won't run - you'll need a Win95 or later 32-bit application or XP mode.
No kidding ....
Not that this in ANY way excuses Apple for releasing poorly QA tested patches that break things. But I've run into so many people out there trying to use a software product FAR past its "useful life". People need to come to terms with the fact that software isn't intended to use indefinitely. In general, developers code for whatever the current hardware is on the market.
Sure, you can stubbornly try to stick with an obsolete product, but sooner or later, that requires sticking with obsolete hardware too. Just like an old car that you keeping driving and driving -- it's going to become unreliable and break down on you at some very inconvenient times. Technically, you could keep fixing it for quite a while, but the cost of the parts will go up dramatically as they get tougher to find, and it'll simply stop making any financial sense to maintain it.
I've seen this with guys still using ancient PCs running MS-DOS with Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect -- but it's a more common problem with the Mac community. I guess Mac users have been conditioned to expect their systems to have much longer useful lives than cheap Windows PC clones have, so sometimes they just don't know "when to say when"?
Not that this in ANY way excuses Apple for releasing poorly QA tested patches that break things. But I've run into so many people out there trying to use a software product FAR past its "useful life". People need to come to terms with the fact that software isn't intended to use indefinitely. In general, developers code for whatever the current hardware is on the market.
Sure, you can stubbornly try to stick with an obsolete product, but sooner or later, that requires sticking with obsolete hardware too. Just like an old car that you keeping driving and driving -- it's going to become unreliable and break down on you at some very inconvenient times. Technically, you could keep fixing it for quite a while, but the cost of the parts will go up dramatically as they get tougher to find, and it'll simply stop making any financial sense to maintain it.
I've seen this with guys still using ancient PCs running MS-DOS with Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect -- but it's a more common problem with the Mac community. I guess Mac users have been conditioned to expect their systems to have much longer useful lives than cheap Windows PC clones have, so sometimes they just don't know "when to say when"?
Wow! Thank you for letting me know about this! I think I may have just barely dodged a bullet here!
Yesterday I was Software Update sent me two things to download and install, one was this 2012-001 security update, and the other was another thing I forget the name of... a really small 3 MB file. I only installed that 3 MB file because at the time I just wanted to play a game through bootcamp and figured I'd do the security update later.
Then I read this post... opened up my applications folder and tried to run iMovie HD which I've had on my computers since 2006. I open up the application, and I'm given a Software Update prompt telling me I need to install Rosetta to continue. Software Update downloaded and installed Rosetta for me, and iMovie HD opened just fine.
So... I hope that information is useful to someone out there. I'm still probably not installing this Security Update though.
Yesterday I was Software Update sent me two things to download and install, one was this 2012-001 security update, and the other was another thing I forget the name of... a really small 3 MB file. I only installed that 3 MB file because at the time I just wanted to play a game through bootcamp and figured I'd do the security update later.
Then I read this post... opened up my applications folder and tried to run iMovie HD which I've had on my computers since 2006. I open up the application, and I'm given a Software Update prompt telling me I need to install Rosetta to continue. Software Update downloaded and installed Rosetta for me, and iMovie HD opened just fine.
So... I hope that information is useful to someone out there. I'm still probably not installing this Security Update though.
I have 5 different programs I use i my classroom that have never been updated and probably never will be. There are no other alternatives so I keep my SL partition to be able to run them. Even if there were alternatives the best I would be able to do would be to pirate them since there is no funding right now to update software in my school.
Yes, bad QA is bad QA.
Who says?
Should my espresso maker stop working tomorrow because its Linux OS is 4 years old?
Should my car fail to start tomorrow because the software in its pre-millennial fuel-injection/turbocharger control computer has "expired"?
I agree with the idea that one has to deal with an "expiration date" when moving software to a new OS/hardware.
That's not the case here, though. Most see this as an unfortunate error due to lax QA at Apple. I agree.
I don't agree with the people who are attacking those affected, and saying that it's their fault and they should have migrated earlier.
For "new" software, yes. No one should expect to always be able to run "new" software on old systems (old hardware or old OS).
As far as dropping support, though, newer hardware is usually more than capable of running older software - even if some emulation is required it can still be faster than under the native hardware.
_____________________
But, basically, I find the "blame the victim" attitude on this thread rather unfortunate - but unfortunately all too typical of the new "all IOS all the time" Apple and its Itoy drones.
Well, he started on a Bondi Blue iMac in 1998, which was running AppleWorks 5, he later upgraded to AppleWorks 6...so he amassed a plethora of legal files and all of his logs for his clients were created in AppleWorks format. He has to have access to these files everyday, so the inability to run AppleWorks (a PowerPC application) would really be horrible. He got this new intel iMac (a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo) in 2007 due to the browser and Internet problems using his old Classic-running iMac, which had been using IE 5 to browse the web....so he needed a new 'capable' machine. Everything has been fine so far, but I had to tell him that he could not upgrade to Lion because it discontinued PowerPC app support...now this morning I had to warn him not to install this security update....I think Apple just really doesn't want people running PowerPC apps for some reason, or they are too damn lazy to support them anymore, which is a shame.
----------
Yeah, and that was Apple's fault. AppleWorks had nothing wrong with it, it was a perfect suite. There is no reason Apple should not support it. Pages is a page layout app, not a word processing app like that function in AppleWorks is.
You must also realize when you have 10,000+ AppleWorks files on your machine, it's not that easy to convert them all to another App (like pages) and risk formatting errors or losing information. Just not worth it...
Quicken (full, not "Essentials"), Eudora, and AppleWorks. All have a few custom databases and activities or scripts that have no direct upgrade path.
The time to rebuild a smoothly running business process flow and retrain employees on a different app are not insignificant. Add up how much several days worth of your lawyers or dentists billable hours + consultant time would come to. You might have to sell your car to be able to afford this "upgrade".
I think that is possibly the new tagline of the Mac software division.
Apple has really lost it completely with desktop software. Think about what we've had in the last year.
- Lion, unimpressive - mostly added a few unnecessary 'features', nothing really amazing that shouts out 'WOW'.
- Final Cut X - the less said abou this, the better.
- Broken Lion update
- Failure to perform a 30 second update to PHP, thus leaving every single mac vulnerable
- Snow leopard killing Rosetta apps.
I think its clear where Apples priorities lie, and its not with the mac.
Piss poor work Apple, sort yourselves out fast.
Snow Leopard can run PPC apps on an Intel CPU Mac via a translation plug-in called Rosetta.
Why is Apple killing Rosetta in Snow Leopard? Many aren't going to Lion because of Rosetta and legacy apps.