Get your Mac ready for Lion
December 14, 2011
Now that Apple has released to developers the golden master of Lion (Mac OS X 10.7)—typically the final non-public version before the official release—speculation is mounting as to when the next major version of OS X will hit the street. But the golden master signifies something more important on a practical level: It’s time to start getting our Macs ready for Lion.
Also be aware that the Rosetta technology that allows PowerPC applications to run on Intel Macs is not included in Lion. That means any older PPC programs, like Quicken and AppleWorks, won’t run under Lion. Links to article with workarounds are listed in the above article
It’s unfortunate that Apple didn’t offer some rationale to the general public for eliminating Rosetta. I’ve got some old PPC programs that I use on occasion, some of which are not updatable. It would go down easier if I knew why Rosetta support was not feasible.
I cynical enough to suspect that it simply is cheaper for Apple and less of a bother for them, but certainly not for me.
Apple gave you 5 years of Rosetta compatibility to purchase new Apps.
How long should the be forced to keep old technology alive?
It appears that Lion will be fully 64-bit, since it requires an Intel 64-bit CPU.
It’s very unlikely that such old software would be 64-bit, and require major rewriting.
AppleWorks was discontinued and replaced by iWork 5 years ago. The last update for it was 8 years ago.
Quicken Essentials came out almost 2 years ago, and for most people it’s just fine. I switched to it. For others, there are a dozen other financial programs listed in the MacWorld article.
If you want to use old software, don’t upgrade your computer.
Well excuse me.
David Pogue has a nice discussion of Lion in the Technology section of the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/technology/personaltech/the-usual-apple-upgrade-big-steps-forward-a-stumble-backward-state-of-the-art.html?pagewanted=1&ref=technology