PPC legacy applications and others

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Nicholas Law Author

Level 1

143 points

PPC legacy applications and others

Hello,

I have the following set-up:

MacBook Pro mid 2012

OS: Yosemite 10.10

There is currently only one partition on the HDD.

I also have a pen drive with a bootable and installable version of OS Yosemite 10.10

I need to use various legacy applications , some that work only with PPC Macs and others that works only with Mac OS up to 10.12.

I do not wish to upgrade beyond 10.10 for the moment as it may make the MacBook Pro run too slowly.

I would be very grateful for any step-by-step instructions as to what I need to do to run the legacy apps. I understand that I may need to install a virtualisation app and then, perhaps the Snow Leopard Server app. I have read about this in the forum, but the discussions are now perhaps rather out of date and do not make any reference to Yosemite 10.10.

Thank you in advance.

Nick

Posted on Dec 30, 2021 3:47 AM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

68,678 points

Dec 30, 2021 5:24 PM in response to Nicholas Law

I believe macOS 10.6 Snow Leopard was the last version of macOS that supported PPC apps using Rosetta 1 which was found on one of the Snow Leopard DVDs.

You can create a bootable USB installer using the instructions in this Apple article:

How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

You need to slightly modify the command for the macOS 10.11 installer to reflect the different OS name between El Capitan and Yosemite.

sudo  /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia  --volume  /Volumes/MyVolume  --applicationpath  /Applications/Install\ OS\ Yosemite.app

You can find a link to the Yosemite installer in this Apple article:

How to get old versions of macOS - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Nicholas Law Author

Level 1

143 points

Dec 30, 2021 11:04 PM in response to HWTech

Thank you, HWTech.

I already have the bootable USB installer with Yosemite 10.10 on it.

I share your belief that Snow Leopard is the last OS version (with Rosetta) to support PPC applications.

Are you suggesting that I should erase and partition the HDD and then install Snow Leopard on one partition and Yosemite on the other? That would not be so convenient because I would have to restart the Mac every time I want to switch from Snow Leopard to Yosemite and vice versa.

If I wish to keep Yosemite as the OS on the MacBook, do I need Snow Leopard or Snow Leopard Server to be able to run PPC apps?

And do I need some virtualisation software so as to be able to run Snow Leopard or Snow Leopard Server in Yosemite?

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PPC legacy applications and others

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