Replacement for Rosetta in Lion?

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Does anyone know of a replacement available from anywhere, for Rosetta, that will allow PowerPC programs to run when using Lion?
 

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So far, I haven't heard of anything - but then again, I haven't heard any reason why the version of Rosetta bundled into 10.6 wouldn't run in 10.7. I also haven't heard whether 10.7 will remove an existing install of Rosetta when upgrading from 10.6. I guess we'll know for sure in a couple of weeks.
 
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So far, I haven't heard of anything - but then again, I haven't heard any reason why the version of Rosetta bundled into 10.6 wouldn't run in 10.7. I also haven't heard whether 10.7 will remove an existing install of Rosetta when upgrading from 10.6. I guess we'll know for sure in a couple of weeks.

Just reading some info. at macworld, they were saying Rosetta will not work with Lion, therefore anyone still using older versions of Quicken or any version of Appleworks or any PowerPC program will be out of luck.
I am going to start the process of changing all my Appleworks files I wanted to keep over to Types that Open office can open, usually means saving the appleworks files in word or excel formats as applicable. I am also not going to rush into switching to Lion anyway. Hopefully someone will come to our aid with a new translator.
 

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CWA, all I have read seems to say Rosetta will not work in 10.7. Time will tell for sure, but I also feel down the line someone will make an emulator like say Sheep Sheerer that runs OS9 apps in OSX for Lion.
 

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I've read the same. Also, unless Rosetta is carried over when upgrading Snow Leopard to Lion, as far as I can determine, there is no way to download it from Apple. It's also possible the Lion upgrade will disable Rosetta if it's present.
 
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So far, I haven't heard of anything - but then again, I haven't heard any reason why the version of Rosetta bundled into 10.6 wouldn't run in 10.7. I also haven't heard whether 10.7 will remove an existing install of Rosetta when upgrading from 10.6. I guess we'll know for sure in a couple of weeks.

It might depend on how Lion does it's install. I have read that SL did an "Archive and Instal" by default when simply choosing to upgrade, vice just an "upgrade" (I honestly don't know, I never upgraded, both my Macs are new enough to have come with SL pre-installed). If it does this then Rosetta would be lost. If it's just an upgrade, then I suppose it could still work....
 

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It might depend on how Lion does it's install. I have read that SL did an "Archive and Instal" by default when simply choosing to upgrade, vice just an "upgrade" (I honestly don't know, I never upgraded, both my Macs are new enough to have come with SL pre-installed). If it does this then Rosetta would be lost. If it's just an upgrade, then I suppose it could still work....

I guess I'm wondering why it wouldn't... unless it was deliberately disabled. As far as I know, there were no major changes to the core OS, so why would it suddenly not work? Does making the front end look like an iPad really break software that has been around through two other huge revisions?
 
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I read that the license for Lion now allows for virtualization. I wonder if that means they'll allow that for Snow Leopard as well.
 
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I guess I'm wondering why it wouldn't...

I'm under the impression Apple deliberately disabled or removed it. I don't get the impression this is just a GUI update to SL, I suspect there was a lot of tinkering under the hood and simply removing it or disabling it seems like the obvious answer. If the Lion instal does an A&I by default, you end up with a whole new system folder vice an upgraded system.
 

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I for one don't expect Rosetta to be there. Especially if Apple is serious about moving as much of the code as possible to 64 bit mode. I don't even expect it as an optional install really.
 
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I believe Apple are making a clean break and will no longer be using Rosetta nor will they will be replacing it.

One of the refreshing things I like about OSX is they make a clean break of it sometimes and just say that really old software (i.e. in this case software that only runs on a PowerPC CPU) just wont work on the latest OS so you end up with a slick and fast OS that isn't full of 'backwards compatibility' like Microsoft's OS's...
 
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Refreshing?

If you're one of those people who are faced with having to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on replacement software, the word refreshing is not the first that comes to mind. I was unhappy with but tolerated being forced to purchase a new Apple system to move to Leopard. I'm exceedingly unhappy that several apps (Adobe's, Microsoft's in my case) which work on my Snow Leopard system apparently will be killed by Lion. I really want to upgrade to Lion, but for the time being I think I'll wait a bit and see if someone comes up with a means of providing a Rosetta-like solution. If not I'll probably ditch the MS apps altogether and move Illustrator to my Win 7 system.
 

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Which MS apps do you have? Office 2004 will definitely not work in Lion, however, MS is expected to patch Office 2008 so that the installer will work without Rosetta. Office 2011 does not need Rosetta and is fully compatible with Lion.
 
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I really want to upgrade to Lion, but for the time being I think I'll wait a bit and see if someone comes up with a means of providing a Rosetta-like solution. If not I'll probably ditch the MS apps altogether and move Illustrator to my Win 7 system.

It's important to understand that Rosetta is based on technology that Apple didn't create and doesn't own. They license the technology from Transitive. It may simply be that Apple feels that enough time has passed for the PowerPC to Intel transition that they don't need to keep on providing Rosetta and paying to license it .

The brains behind Apple's Rosetta: Transitive - CNET News

It is highly unlikely that anyone will be providing anything like Rosetta for you to use. Though there are rumors that Intuit is negotiating to license Rosetta to make Quicken run under Lion. (I wouldn't hold my breath...)

However, there *are* alternatives. For instance, you can partition your hard drive and put Snow Leopard (SN) on one partition and Lion on the other. You can do the same with an external hard drive too. However, dual-booting would mean that you couldn't use your Lion apps at the same time as your SN apps.

You could use virtualization software (e.g. Parallels, Fusion, Crossover) to run SN simultaneously with Lion, but that would both create licensing issues, and it would be sufficiently complex that such a solution would only appeal to nerds.
 
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You could use virtualization software (e.g. Parallels, Fusion, Crossover) to run SN simultaneously with Lion, but that would both create licensing issues, and it would be sufficiently complex that such a solution would only appeal to nerds.

I had read that with Lion, Apple is allowing it to be run in a VM. I was under the impression that Snow Leopard and earlier can't be (or rather, aren't allowed to be) run in a VM. Are they relaxing that for Snow Leopard also when Lion drops? Or am I just mis-informed? And how would one run a PPC app under Crossover? AFAIK, Crossover is strictly for loading Windows programs under Linux/OS X.

BTW… I just recognized your name and website. I've made reference to your discussion about defragging in OS X a few times here when providing counterpoints to the "OS X doesn't need a defragger" myth. It's a great breakdown and analysis on the matter. :Cool:
 
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I had read that with Lion, Apple is allowing it to be run in a VM.

I haven't heard that before.

I was under the impression that Snow Leopard and earlier can't be (or rather, aren't allowed to be) run in a VM. Are they relaxing that for Snow Leopard also when Lion drops? Or am I just mis-informed?

I haven't heard that either. SN is specifically prohibited in the license from being run in a VM. I don't know whether there is anything technically that would keep it from running. We can hope that Apple will change their mind about this, but I haven't heard anything that would indicate that they intend to.

And how would one run a PPC app under Crossover? AFAIK, Crossover is strictly for loading Windows programs under Linux/OS X.

Sorry, I was thinking of Oracle's VirtualBox as the third virtualization program. Not Crossover, which, as you say, is something somewhat different.

BTW… I just recognized your name and website. I've made reference to your discussion about defragging in OS X a few times here when providing counterpoints to the "OS X doesn't need a defragger" myth. It's a great breakdown and analysis on the matter. :Cool:

Thanks! I'm glad that you found it helpful!

It's possible that that Web site will very soon be entirely outdated.;P
 
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As far as I know, there were no major changes to the core OS, so why would it suddenly not work?

You're just not understanding what's going on.

Lion is a Cocoa OS. Rosetta is a Carbon environment allowing Carbon apps to work.

Since Rosetta itself is Carbon, it requires Carbon to work. Lion doesn't have Carbon, so it won't work, and whoever maintains Rosetta (Apple) won't update it to be a Cocoa app because you shouldn't still be using Carbon apps. You've had YEARS of warning about this.

As an example, I still have Photoshop CS3. Because it works great with this machine. Never upgraded it.

Guess what, it won't work with Lion. Am I upset? No, why should I be? I knew this day would come when I turned down upgrading to CS4.

In my case, for what I do with it, Pixelmator will do the job. If I really NEED full Photoshop (or even if I just decide I "want" it), I'll pay to upgrade to the latest version. CS3 came out *four years ago.* I more than got my money's worth out of it. No complaints here.
 
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I haven't heard that either. SN is specifically prohibited in the license from being run in a VM. I don't know whether there is anything technically that would keep it from running. We can hope that Apple will change their mind about this, but I haven't heard anything that would indicate that they intend to.

The problem is you shouldn't be recommending for people to do things that are against the license agreement whether you can do it or not. It violates the spirit of the Mac-Forums Community Guidelines
 
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Lion doesn't have Carbon,

This is 100% false. There his a huge difference between Carbon support and PowerPC support via Rosetta.

Lion does still support Carbon apps. Case in point is Microsoft Office 2011 which does work in Lion and is still mostly Carbon apps.

Oh yeah, and a little program called iTunes is still Carbon.

Carbon and Cocoa are sets of APIs, they are not programming languages. Both are still supported in Lion. Cocoa may be preferred, and has been for some time, but Carbon will continue to work for quite some time I'm sure.
 
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You're just not understanding what's going on.

Lion is a Cocoa OS. Rosetta is a Carbon environment allowing Carbon apps to work.

Since Rosetta itself is Carbon, it requires Carbon to work. Lion doesn't have Carbon, so it won't work, and whoever maintains Rosetta (Apple) won't update it to be a Cocoa app because you shouldn't still be using Carbon apps. You've had YEARS of warning about this.

I didn't realize that Carbon apps wouldn't work under Lion, but you're right… that shouldn't come as a surprise. Carbon was initially intended to be a temporary stop-gap measure for developers to write apps that could run under OS 9 and OS X. It's time for it to just die already.

EDIT: Actually it looks like schweb is right. Until OS X drops support for running 32-bit apps, Carbon will have to be around for a bit. It's only Cocoa that has 64-bit support. I think Lion is the final warning shot. I would expect 10.8 to drop Carbon and thus 32-bit apps completely.
 

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