Replacement for Rosetta in Lion?

[schweb]

I would expect 10.8 to drop Carbon and thus 32-bit apps completely.

That's assuming Apple can actually make all their own apps 64-bit and Cocoa which they've been promising for years now.

Either way, I'm pretty sure we'll know well in advance when Carbon is going to die as that impacts far more developers than ancient PowerPC programs. No one actively builds solely for PowerPC any more and look st the drama it caused. If Apple just unilaterally ended Carbon support without enough warning to the major dev houses, it would be chaotic.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

That's assuming Apple can actually make all their own apps 64-bit and Cocoa which they've been promising for years now.

Either way, I'm pretty sure we'll know well in advance when Carbon is going to die as that impacts far more developers than ancient PowerPC programs. No one actively builds solely for PowerPC any more and look st the drama it caused. If Apple just unilaterally ended Carbon support without enough warning to the major dev houses, it would be chaotic.

Oh they won't just drop it and yell "surprise!". If and when they do, it'll be announced when they demo it while in development. It's pretty much a given that it will happen. Might be with 10.8. Heck, it may be with 11.0, whenever that comes about.

EDIT: just as a thought also… since 64-bit apps are restricted to Cocoa, I would also think that any major devs who aren't in the process of moving to Cocoa by now aren't going to unless the matter is forced. Apple shouldn't let these slackers hold back the OS development and advancement.

 

[schweb]

EDIT: just as a thought also… since 64-bit apps are restricted to Cocoa, I would also think that any major devs who aren't in the process of moving to Cocoa by now aren't going to unless the matter is forced. Apple shouldn't let these slackers hold back the OS development and advancement.

I don't disagree at all, but the trouble is most of those "slackers" are major pieces of software like Microsoft Office. And to be quite honest, most software doesn't really gain much from 64-bit versions, especially something like Word for example so I can understand their reluctance to throw resources at it when there are higher ROI things they could be doing.

My point is if Apple is truly going to completely drop Carbon or 32-bit apps in the future, they'll need more than the typical 6 to 12 month new OS announcement as many of these large software packages will take much longer than that to be rewritten and tested.

 

[vansmith]

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 suggest you do some reading up on OS X APIs. You could use the Carbon API with no issues in Intel Mac development. The big issue was that it was 32bit only so moving to 64bit development required a developer to move to Cocoa. The best example of this was the CS suite - Adobe had developed it using Carbon which precluded it from being a 64bit app for quite some time.

Rosetta is not Carbon. Rosetta is an emulation layer, Carbon is a programming API. Apples and oranges.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

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

I'm not sure if you are accusing me of recommending this, but since you attached it to a quote from me...I'm not and I haven't. Someone asked if it is possible. I said that it was, but that it presents licensing issues. That isn't a recommendation. Just a statement of fact, and, if anything, an admonition.

 

[chas_m]

I stand corrected on my erroneous Carbon/Cocoa post. Thanks for the corrections, gang!

So, it turns out I don't know why Rosetta won't work with Lion, other than Apple wants/needs people to move to 64-bit as quickly as possible. Looking at the track record of the company, the direction they've steered us in, while not always perfect, has been in hindsight pretty good. I'm inclined to trust them that a fast transition to 64-bit will outweigh some temporary inconveniences.

 

[cwa107]

I'm not sure if you are accusing me of recommending this, but since you attached it to a quote from me...I'm not and I haven't. Someone asked if it is possible. I said that it was, but that it presents licensing issues. That isn't a recommendation. Just a statement of fact, and, if anything, an admonition.

Snow Leopard Server can legally be used in a VM, provided that the VM runs on Apple hardware as its host - so, you're not out of line at all.

I know VMWare supports it directly. Now, Snow Leopard Server isn't cheap - but theoretically it would provide a simple avenue to run Rosetta apps while simultaneously running Lion.

 

[pjhutch]

It cannot be that hard to provide Universal versions of software that developers own. Any program written using the PPC and works on latest OS' should be made available in Universal form.

Office 2004 is over 7 years old. If you do not want to buy Office 2011, why not try Libre Office which has a Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing, and Database apps and can r/w Doc or Docx files and others ok.

I think companies should look at their product range and get it updated as soon as possible. Drivers are also lagging behind as well, scanner drivers are particularly poorly supported.

 

[Interregnum]

What do you need to run that needs Rosetta? What do you need to upgrade to Lion for? I'm guessing the easiest solution is just to do nothing - there is most likely no immediate need for you to upgrade if you have critical software that won't run under Lion.
If for some reason you must upgrade, and must run software that requires Rosetta, then an SL VM seems like the best solution (all indications point to a change in licensing with Lion, perhaps to address this issue, perhaps to ease development issues).

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Drivers are also lagging behind as well, scanner drivers are particularly poorly supported.

Yes indeedy. If you do a "Get Info" on the drivers for your
various peripherals, you will probably find that several of them are
"PowerPC" and won't run under Lion.

Various peripheral manufacturers take varying amounts of time to
update the drivers for their hardware when a new major version of the
Mac OS is released. HP is especially infamous for taking a long time
to update drivers, and sometimes even orphaning some fairly recent
models of peripherals when Apple comes out with a major update to the
Mac OS.

You can expect the driver situation under Lion to be even worse than
with previous releases of the Mac OS, because this time many drivers
will have to be rewritten from scratch due to the absence of Rosetta
in Lion.

This is one of the many reasons that I always recommend that users
wait until at least the second update to a major release of the Mac OS
before upgrading. By the time the second update is released, all of
the major bugs should have been exorcised, and, hopefully, all
peripheral driver updates should be available.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

One way to do a quick check to see how much of your current software won't work under Lion (and thus needs to be either upgraded or replaced) is to open up "System Profiler" (in your Applications/Utilities folder).

Then in the left hand column, click on Software --> Applications, which will
bring up a nice long list of *all* the applications and drivers on your
computer.

Click on "Kind" at the top to sort by the type of application
(Intel, PowerPC, Universal, Classic). This will give you a printable/PDF-able list which you can make a checksheet out of. Anything that says "PowerPC" or "Classic" won't run under Lion. You should start making plans to update or replace these. Everything else is likely to be able to run under Lion.

There is a wiki that can tell you which of your apps are compatible with Lion, and if there are updates available:
App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps

 

[Randy B. Singer]

ArchDetect (free)
is a little application that will perform a quick Spotlight-powered search for applications on your computer, then will detect the architectures for each of them. It'll give you the results in a nice table, which you can search,
sort & filter any way you like. Find something not yet Universal? You
can easily select an application, and press "Update" to pull up
search results from MacUpdate - or any download site of your choice.

http://is.gd/9jfxEc

 

[chas_m]

Excellent find, Randy. I actually already had it on my system, and had forgotten all about it!

I've started making a list of the "PowerPC" only apps that are on my system, and which ones I care about keeping (or just updating). So far (I'm up to the Fs), I've gotten rid of a ton of old apps I don't use, updated a handful, still need to update a few more, might have to re-buy a few (nothing expensive, mostly casual games I'm fond of), in short no trauma or drama so far.

 

[bobtomay]

Just checked out ArchDetect myself. Some folks are not going to like it if the results are correct.

It indicates Steam is a PPC only app at present.

Max is Intel, but some of it's underlying functions are PPC only.

This one won't kill anyone, but Geekbench is also being indicated as PPC only - even the 64 bit version.

 

[schweb]

Just checked out ArchDetect myself. Some folks are not going to like it if the results are correct.

It indicates Steam is a PPC only app at present.

Max is Intel, but some of it's underlying functions are PPC only.

This one won't kill anyone, but Geekbench is also being indicated as PPC only - even the 64 bit version.

Pretty sure that's not accurate. I don't have Rosetta installed under SL right now and I use Steam without any issue. Also use Geekbench.

Doesn't Activity Monitor just show you if something's Intel vs PPC? You could verify it that way I suppose.

 

[bobtomay]

Pretty sure that's not accurate. I don't have Rosetta installed under SL right now and I use Steam without any issue. Also use Geekbench.

Doesn't Activity Monitor just show you if something's Intel vs PPC? You could verify it that way I suppose.

Didn't go that far with it this morning - ran out of time. That was just the results of the scan from ArchDetect. And of course, I use both of them in SL also - and am pretty sure I do not have Rosetta installed either.. Can't check it out further until this evening.

 

[Slydude]

Either Activity Monitor or System Profiler will show you which apps are PowerPC, Intel, or Classic. I can't seem to export either into a searchable table directly though. The closest I came was exporting they System Profiler report as a text file and search that way.

I had more PowerPC stuff than I thought but most of it is stuff I have not run since some guy named Noah said, "I think it is going to rain". A lot of people will be surprised at the number of printer drivers and programs that are not Intel.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Max is Intel, but some of it's underlying functions are PPC only.

Have you looked at X Lossless Decoder? I used to use Max some time back, but XLD has long since won me over.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Pretty sure that's not accurate. I don't have Rosetta installed under SL right now and I use Steam without any issue. Also use Geekbench.

Steam most certainly doesn't have any PPC code. It didn't even exist pre-Intel. I just ran it through the code-thinning module in TinkerTool System and it confirms that it is Intel-only.

 

[chscag]

What surprised me after running the scan is how much of Office 2008 is using PPC code. For example: The Excel converters are PPC coded. It looks like I may have to dump 2008 on the one machine we're running it on and install 2011. I'm glad now that I bought the family 3 install version.