Is it safe to install Mavericks on my iMac ? I have Snow Leopard and use Adobe CS4 for my graphic programs. I have heard Mavericks may be a problem with the Adobe software.
Adobe CS4 works fine under Mavericks. See:
RoaringApps
You can look up all of your other software for compatibility with Mavericks here:
RoaringApps - Application compatibility and feature support for OS X and iOS
However, any and all applications that were written for the PowerPC processor that were running in Snow Leopard thanks to Rosetta, won't run under Mavericks. Rosetta was discontinued after Snow Leopard.
So, if you use and love AppleWorks or Eudora, for instance, you will have to say goodbye to them with the upgrade to Mavericks, and switch to an alternative program.
You can tell if an application is a PowerPC application by highlighting it’s icon in the Finder, and choosing File menu —> Get Info. In the Get Info window, under General, if it is a PowerPC application in will say so under Kind.
You can check *all* of your applications simultaneously by opening System Profiler (in the /Applications/Utilities folder; or in:
Apple menu --> About This Mac --> More Info)
click on the disclose triangle next to Software, choose Applications, then click on the Kind column to sort by kind.
An application that has a Kind of “Universal” or “Intel” will most likely run fine in Lion and later. Any application that is “Classic” or “PowerPC” won’t.
If you would like to generate a text file that lists all of the PowerPC applications on your hard drive, complete with the path to get to each of these applications, copy and paste this line into the Terminal application (in your ~/Applications/Utlities folder), hit return, and then be patient and let it run for a few minutes before opening the text file that will instantly be generated on the desktop.
system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType | grep -A4 PowerPC > ~/Desktop/Applications_Report.txt