No Rosetta in Lion Breaks Installers That Depend on
PPC Code
From Demetrios:
Hi Charles,
I emailed you some time ago with regards to browsers.
I was wondering if you knew of the status of Rosetta on Lion?
There is much speculation and bad logic flying around.
I have tried to add some comments in some of the discussion forums,
but something went wrong in some (e.g. AppleInsider) when I tried to
register with them.
My concerns regards what has not been considered by many.
Your pages seem to do well on Google searches, and you might discuss
the matter on one of your pages.
If you are interested, here are my concerns (hopefully without too
many typos!):
What most users should want in 10.7 Lion is support for PPC apps
which require Rosetta. There is a failure by many to understand what an
absence of Rosetta means. If you run Word for Mac 2008, which is
Universal Binary, and was only superseded in 2010, you won't be able to
install it on Lion. Why? Because Word 2008 uses PPC code in its
installer. So you'll have to buy another version of Word. If you run
Adobe's Creative Suite 2 (CS2), and have the upgrade CD to the current
CS 5, then you won't be able to install CS2 on to your new computer
which runs 10.7, to then be able to install the update to CS5 if it
does not have Rosetta. Why? Because updater CDs only work if they can
find a legitimate copy of an earlier suite. If you can't install CS2,
which is PPC, then the updater won't find an earlier version to
update.
Conversely, if you own Macromedia's Studio 8, you can currently
upgrade to Adobe's CS5. But again, Macromedia Studio 8 is PPC, so if
you've bought the upgrade to CS 5 - or 4 - you won't be able to install
it on OS Lion without Rosetta, because you won't be able to install
Macromedia Studio 8; if you own Photoshop Elements 4 - as I do - it too
can be upgraded to CS 5. However, as it is PPC, I would not be able to
install it onto a new machine running Lion if it does not have Rosetta,
so an upgrade to CS5 won't work, as the installer won't find any
product to allow its installation. So if you've bought an upgrade to CS
3, 4, or 5, all of which are Universal or Intel, to upgrade your
earlier PPC version, you won't be able to install any of them on Lion
because you won't be able to install the earlier PPC program required
for the installer to work.
There are many programs which cannot be updated, like ImageReady and
GoLive, which last appeared in CS2.
A rather fanatical group of users use Macromedia's (now Adobe's)
FreeHand (which Adobe replaced with Illustrator). This will not work on
your Mac without Rosetta (it currently works on Snow Leopard with a
file fix downloadable off Adobe's site, and works perfectly on
Windows). (The FreeHand fan group exists as FreeFreeHand.)
If Apple does not include Rosetta, then obviously Windows becomes a
viable prospect. Weigh up the costs: A new Adobe Creative Suite costs
more than buying a new Windows machine + the cost of buying an older
version of the Creative Suite which will run on the PC, but won't run
on your Mac. Or you can do what I have been doing, run Windows through
Parallels,
and slowly buy Windows versions of programs. Windows supports users of
older programs (e.g. in the Win XP mode in Win 7 Ultimate); Apple
screws the customers who have purchased Apple computers along with the
programs to run on them.
Apple newbies think that it would be okay to jettison Rosetta. Yet
many of the people who now run some PPC apps initially bought them for
their Intel machines not too long ago when PPC versions were the only
versions of the programs they needed that were available. Without
accommodating users with older programs, Apple merely confirms that it
intends on capturing market share off Windows without caring to look
after the customers it already has. Eventually the newbies who only
surf the Net simply to make Facebook updates will get stung too.
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Hi Demetrios,
I share your dismay at Rosetta being dropped as a
feature from Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. However, I think that just as
with the termination of Mac OS X Classic Mode in Leopard [Editor's
note: Classic Mode was never available at all for Intel-based Macs],
the decision will not be reversed. Those of us who prefer and/or depend
on residual PowerPC applications are going to have to find Intel Mac
native alternatives - or just keep on keeping on in OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
The Wikipedia entry
covering OS X Lion, notes the following:
Dropped features:
- Front
Row
- A Java Runtime
Environment (JRE) is no longer installed by default, but can be
installed on demand.
- Adobe
Flash Player is no longer installed by default and must be
installed manually.
- Rosetta, software which makes possible the execution of PowerPC
software on x86 hardware, is no longer available.
- Samba,
software used since Mac OS X 10.2 for capability with Windows file
sharing, has been
removed and replaced with Apple's own tools for Windows file
sharing and network directory services.*
AppleInsider notes: "Apple has already restricted Mac
App Store titles to Intel code, leaving PowerPC support abandoned along
with Motorola 68000 code."
I still miss OS X Classic Mode and continue to run it
on my old Pismo
PowerBooks, which are booting Mac OS 10.4 Tiger. I expect I will
miss Rosetta even more profoundly, but it appears that whether we like
it or not (and I have definitely mixed feelings), the future of the Mac
platform is going to be increasingly integrated with the iOS app
universe, so if we want to keep using Macs, we're going to have to grin
and bear it.
Charles
Publisher's note: If you migrate everything from your
old Mac to your new one using Migration Assistant or keep a bootable
backup of your hard drive before upgrading to OS X Lion, you
should have no problem getting back the versions of software that
depend on PPC installers. You are backing up, aren't you?
If not, you should be, and Time Machine is only a
partial (albeit very helpful) solution. You should keep a bootable
backup available, which you can create with SuperDuper, which I've been using at LEM
headquarters since 2004, or Carbon
Copy Cloner 3. Your bootable backup drive should have at least as
much capacity as your boot drive or partition, and the general
recommendation for Time Machine is a drive at least twice as large as
all the drives on your Mac. If you buy a large enough drive, you can
create two partitions - one to clone your boot drive and the other for
Time Machine. dk
Apple Now Charging for Xcode
From Guilherme:
Hello Charles,
I've been an occasional reader of LEM, but it's the first time I
write to any of the LEM staff.
Like a significant amount of LEM readers (and writers), my first
impression of the Mac App Store was skeptical, and to be fair, I've
never downloaded anything there, even if it's free.
However, I just noticed something awful when I tried to download
Xcode 4 using my free
Apple Developer account: It was only available to paying iOS/Mac
developers or via the App Store. Then, much to my dismay, I went to the
App Store and found out that Apple is now charging $4.99 for it.
To me, one of the greatest boons to recent iOS and Mac popularity
was the fact that anyone with a Mac could freely download and tinker
with Apple's "official" development tools. That's how I learned Carbon
and Objective-C and made some hobby personal projects, and I guess
that's how many ingenious developers got their feet wet with iOS
programming and made the platform a rampant success.
The $4.99 fee might not seem much, given how great and useful the
tools are, but it's one more big step in the "walled garden" direction.
And my guess is that it's gonna be one more severe blow to open source
development, as the business model Apple is trying to push is clearly
incompatible with it.
And also, while many people might come with the argument that
Microsoft charges "over a thousand dollars" for its Visual
Studio development suite (which isn't exactly true, because
Microsoft gives really big discounts for high-volume purchasing), it
offers the Visual Studio
Express versions for free, which have a limited set of tools, but
are pretty capable of producing full-fledged Windows applications,
including commercial ones.
Sorry about my rant, but it seems to me that it is a too important
issue to be overlooked. And also sorry in advance for any eventual
grammar/spelling mistakes, as I'm from Brazil, and English is not my
first language.
Keep up the good job,
Guilherme
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Hello Guilherme,
Your English is excellent. Much better than my
(nonexistent) Portuguese.
I agree with your observations. While there remain
some free (often partially crippled) versions of Mac software available
on the Mac App Store, and I appreciate that it has been a tremendous
boon to some software developers, the whole concept rubs me the wrong
way, and I haven't been in any rush to take advantage of it. I will
continue to acquire software from the home sites of third-party
developers if they continue to offer it there. (In many instances they
don't.)
This is just another example of the brickwork
surrounding Apple's walled garden being built higher and higher, and
we're going to have to accommodate ourselves to the new reality or
switch to another platform. Windows still does not appeal to me,
although it is now a "freer" (in some respects) environment in terms of
software than the Mac. Irony. Linux desktop is another alternative for
those of us more philosophically sympathetic to the open source
concept. Then there is Google's online-only Chrome OS cloud terminal
revolution about to be sprung by fall at the latest.
Charles
Desktop Lifecycle in the Corporation
From Robert,
Dear Mr. Moore:
In a large organization, on a department basis, it may make a lot of
sense to do periodic whole-system replacements of desktop systems. On
the other hand, if the organization's most mission-critical desktop
tasks are all mediated by a networked database or vendor-provided
database, most of the "heavy lifting" is on the server side. Software
compatibility issues aside, the desktops are then just thick clients.
My computers at work this century have included a Pentium II and a
Pentium III - and that's about it.
I'll note here this approach does require a commitment to thrift on
the part of the Information Technology staff and a willingness to
invest in hardware on the infrastructure side (routers, switches,
cabling, servers, and so on). It's also fortunate if the organization
has one or two departments that do, in fact, need relatively frequent
system replacements across the board, as that gives you a rich
selection of hand-me-down and spare systems and components.
The "trickle them down and use them until they break" approach does
have a couple of downsides. One is the bugbear of software
compatibility, which for most desktop system users is really a case of
file format readability. The other downside is that systems that are
two or three generations behind their successors might have peripheral
or even network compatibility issues. For example, my emergency backup
laptop system is a Brother GeoBook. The
incoming/outgoing ports available are a serial port, a 33.6 kbps modem,
and a parallel port for printers. In addition there's a 3.5" 1.44 MB
floppy disk slot. If I generated a nice big Word 5.0 compatible
document on this system, it'd be interesting trying to get the
information from the floppy into a flash drive. Come to think of it,
even most of my local library's free use computers don't have floppy
drives anymore.
Robert
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Hi Robert,
Thank you for the commentary from a perspective not so
frequently heard from on Low End Mac.
Interesting that you should mention the floppy drive.
As you know, floppies have been pretty much absent from the
conversation in the Mac orbit for more than 10 years now. I actually
have several still-working Macs with floppy drives, but I can't recall
the last time I actually accessed a floppy.
I would guess that I could access the contents of a
floppy on my old Umax S900 Mac
clone tower, which has a floppy drive, and then transfer it using the
Finder as an intermediary to a flash drive using the PCI USB adapter in
one of the S900's expansion slots. The old tower also has a FireWire
PCI card.
My daughter also has an old S900 that she uses as a
server. It has a 350 MHz G3 processor installed (mine has a 200 MHz
PowerPC 604e CPU).
It occurs to me, that corporate IT departments might
find the forthcoming Google Chrome OS,
which is essentially a terminal support system, appealing.
Charles
Pismo Resurrection
From Alex:
Hi there,
Was just reading your recent comment on Low End Mac about a dead Pismo.
Mine died completely a few years ago, and after trying a few other
things I traced the problem to a faulty power supply board (the one
under the trackpad). I bought a secondhand replacement, pulled the old
one out, and found it to have a burnt-out chip on it.
Worth knowing about things like this. I've never been able to revive
a sick Mac by resetting the PRAM or anything normal like that.
Great site. Keep it up!
cheers
Alex
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Hi Alex,
Glad you were able to revive your Pismo. I also have a dead Pismo
with what I deduce is a fried power supply board. It could still be
revived, but I've subsequently cannibalized it for its display and
video inverter board to repair another of my Pismos.
Charles
Web Browsers for Tiger and PowerPC
From Dean:
Hi Charles,
I've been reading your recent columns about web browsers dropping
support for PowerPC Macs for the last couple of months. I downloaded
TenFourFox,
which you mentioned awhile ago, and have been using it for a couple of
months now. I installed it on my Pismo (G4 upgraded, 1 GB memory) and
on my Quicksilver
desktop. I have found it very stable with few issues. So it seems to be
a good alternative with the continued dropping of PowerPC support. The
irritating part is if you look at Firefox 4's system requirements, they
still support Windows 2000, but Mac OS X 10.5 PowerPC isn't
supported. Interesting.
Dean
P.S. The Quicksilver has been tweaked a bit. Dual 1.8 GHz G4
processors, two 7200 RPM Western Digital 500 GB SATA hard drives via
serial controller PCI card. Two 80 GB Western Digital 7200 RPM ATA/133
hard drives. Two Pioneer DVR-116D dual-layer DVD drives (one external).
ATI Radeon 9800 video card. Interesting in that this Mac was built in
late 2001, was upgraded over the years as I had parts, and is still
running 10 years later. Like the Pismos, very versatile.
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Hi Dean,
Yes, the Quicksilver is sort of the desktop tower
counterpart of the Pismo (or perhaps vice versa) in terms of
versatility and upgradability.
Thank you for the report on TenFourFox. I must get
around to giving it another try. Actually, this past week or so I've
reverted to Netscape Navigator
9, which still works very nicely on the Pismo under OS X 10.4,
and especially is faster and less sluggish in interface response than
the current versions of SeaMonkey and Camino.
Incidentally, the Camino team has announced that it's
approaching the end of the road for upgrading and continued development
of that browser using the Gecko rendering engine after the version of
Gecko used in Firefox 3.6 - Gecko 1.9.2. The Camino team is reportedly
mulling the prospect of switching Camino to Apple's WebKit rendering
engine, but the intensive amount of work it would take to execute the
port would probably make it prohibitive, in which case another
OS X 10.4 compatible browser bites the dust. Actually, even if
Mozilla.org had not decided to terminate Gecko embedding, Gecko 1.9.2
is the end of the line for Tiger anyway, since the later Gecko versions
(i.e.: the ones used in Firefox 4) only support OS X 10.5 and up.
I presume that this news will also pertain to the future of SeaMonkey
development.
In the same vein, I'm pessimistic about Apple
continuing to support and update Safari 4 for Tiger after Lion is
released, so that means that other browsers using the WebKit rendering
engine will be obliged to drop Tiger support for future releases. It's
quite possible that the current Safari 4.1.3 will be the definitive
supported browser for Tiger, analogous to OS X 10.4.11 being the
ultimate supported operating system version. That will leave us Tiger
holdouts with the choice of using legacy software, dependent on hacks
like TenFourFox, or resorting to a hacked install of OS X 10.5
Leopard. Your Quicksilver could probably handle Leopard quite nicely,
but I'm highly skeptical that it would run decently on my gizmos with
their puny RAGE Mobility 128 GPUs and 8 MB of VRAM.
Charles
Publisher's note: I'm with Dean and Charles on the use
of vintage Macs, vintage operating systems, and vintage apps. I've had
a dual 1 GHz Mirror Drive
Door Power Mac G4 for about six years now, and it remains in daily
use running OS X 10.4 Tiger with Classic Mode and good old Claris
Home Page 3, the only pre-OS X app that I use. This is the machine I
use to write, edit, and upload content, along with some help from
TextSoap 4 (two
versions behind), TextWrangler 2.3 (3.5.3 is current), and KompoZer 0.7.10 (0.8 has been
in beta for 1-1/2 years).
Until two days ago, my other production machine was a
dual 1.6 GHz
(upgraded) Digital
Audio Power Mac G4 running OS X 10.5 Leopard. Why two Macs?
Because NetNewsWire, a great
news reader that I've been using for years, dropped sync support for
the last Tiger-compatible version. This has also been my email, iPhoto,
and iTunes machine. I use Teleport (freeware) to control both of these
Macs and my server from the same keyboard and mouse - much easier than
switching input devices, with the plus that Teleport also syncs the
clipboard, making it easy to move text (articles, URLs, etc.) from one
Mac to the other.
I'm just about finished migrating to an Intel Mac
mini. I'll be detailing that switch Real Soon Now. Teleport is kind of
flaky, but everything else seems to be working well in OS X 10.6.7
Snow Leopard. dk
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