End of Rosetta?

Seems like a better idea would be to pay for software that was End of Lifed several years ago.

Where it's possible, that's what I believe most users have done. But not everything has been updated to work as Intel native apps, though they sure should have by now.

I have three such PPC apps which absolutely cannot be replaced, and I absolutely need.

1) oXYgen Scan for our Eversmart Supreme scanners. And no, there is no substitute software to drive these scanners.

2) Monaco Profiler and ProfileMaker Pro. X-Rite did finally release i1Profiler, which I have, but it does not include a scanner profiling module, or a full profile editor. Both of which are mandatory to do my work. So I have to use one of the older apps to perform those functions.

Just remember, there is no reason to believe you can't have a Snow Leopard partition separate from your Lion partition, or a second hard drive for Snow Leopard to continue to have Rosetta access.

Unfortunately if Rosetta is demolished with Lion, new machines that come out after Lion's release would likely not have the ability to run Snow Leopard or Rosetta for that matter since Apple has always made Macs operating system minimum be that which is available new at the time of the Mac's production date. So unless Apple changes that, I can see many might have problems. As with the Mac App Store limitation, I am recommending everyone post to:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

any enhancements they wish for Lion. But also third party developers should be informed that Rosetta's life is being predicted to be short. Whether true or not, the time is now to get them ready for the upgrade if they haven't already. Furthermore, if they don't depend on Rosetta, their applications will run faster on Intel Macs.

Hi a,

Just remember, there is no reason to believe you can't have a Snow Leopard partition separate from your Lion partition, or a second hard drive for Snow Leopard to continue to have Rosetta access.

Unfortunately if Rosetta is demolished with Lion, new machines that come out after Lion's release would likely not have the ability to run Snow Leopard or Rosetta

Yes, that was what I was referring to. Though I despise booting back and forth between operating systems to get things done, a person could always do that as long as they have a Mac capable of running Snow Leopard.

The main problem of course, and what users are really concerned about, is newer Macs which will only run Lion or newer. Someday, I will need to replace my Mac Pro, then what? I've heard of a few possibilities.

1) Apple didn't write Rosetta. It was based on Transitive Corporation's, QuickTransit. IBM bought them out and now have the software, which they released as PowerVM.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/virtualization/

So it's possible that IBM will see a sales opportunity and make PowerVM available to Lion users who need to run PPC software.

2) Apple themselves could make Rosetta a separate purchase for Lion. That all depends though on the licensing rights they have with IBM. That it's possibly run out may be why Rosetta isn't in Lion in the first place. Who knows though, it could still be put back in before Lion's official release.

3) Lion has the Server upgrade available as a $49 purchase. From what I've read, the rules for what you can run in a VM will include the non server versions of Leopard or Snow Leopard, as long as the VM is on the same Mac running Lion Server.

But there's a problem there, too. At least for me. The scanning software only recognizes the scanner on a FireWire 400 port. Right now, all VM software only support links to USB ports. Since Thunderbolt is a derivative of FireWire, there are already FW400 and FW800 to Thunderbolt adapters available. Users of these scanners have already confirmed that the software can find the scanner on a FW800 port using a FW400 to FW800 adapter. So a FW400 to Thunderbolt adapter should also work. But the VM software itself would still have to be updated to include a link through to Thunderbolt ports.

One alternative would be to install Windows via Bootcamp and run the Windows version of Quicken from there. Or use a virtual machine like Parallels. I actually bought Quicken Essentials to see if it would work as a replacement for Quicken 2007. Essentials is a disaster, useless to me.

That was what I decided to do also. I already had a boot camp partition, so I got the latest Quicken version for Windows yesterday. The data did not export/import gracefully though and I'm still tweaking it into Windows. I intend to switch over completely with my next reconciliation at the beginning of next month.

My data is fairly simple with just checking and credit accounts. I can't imagine a 20yr file with investments and such will be easy to migrate.

On the plus side, the Windows version of Quicken is more feature rich than the Mac version ever was.

Why not just ignore the 10.7? It's what I plan on doing. Nothing wrong with Snow Leopard.

I'm with WZZZ on this one. Just because there's a new OS out there doesn't make it a compulsory purchase.

If Quicken isn't supported for Lion, what about TurboTax? I wonder whether or not Intuit is going to produce a version for use with Lion?

Harvey Scherr wrote:

If Quicken isn't supported for Lion, what about TurboTax? I wonder whether or not Intuit is going to produce a version for use with Lion?

You bet they will, if there's money to be made. Besides, it's also a universal. It hasn't been PPC only in quite a while. And, it's produced yearly, so we can expect a version for 10.7.

I have also started using iBank because of Quicken 2007 not running on 10.7, I have tried Quicken Essentials for the last year, but the lack of investments is a deal breaker. I have started using iBank, May 2011, my import from Q 2007 went well, I did have to do some fine tuning, but I was importing info from 1989. Good support from iBank has been outstanding, they really seem to try and get back to you with in 24-48 hours. There also is a very active forums group. There are some differences, and a learning curve, but they offer a very extensive users manual.

Lamarch

(no financial interest or other interest in iBank, just a happy user)

Obviously this has hit a very tender spot with Apple users. It is always with frustration that we greet unfortunate and unplesant news. I won't be upgrading.

Like I said, I will likely postpone an OS upgrade.

There's nothing unusual about that.

Many people partition their hard drives in order to run older versions of the Mac OS for reasons similar to the ones you describe.

In 2011 is beyond my comprehension how a company can not support Macintosh. 10 years ago there were many “Windows only” programs. Today however there are few.

Well I am going to give it a try. I bought a new Seagate 1TB external drive on ebay (very reasonable at $32.00) and I will use it for Lion. I plan to keep 10.6 on my computer hard drive, but I will play around with Lion just to see if I think it's worth taking up disk space. I can always use the drive on my other iMac as a time machine backup if I don't like Lion.

Unfortunately Apple is so intent on staying ahead of the PC game that it's hard for some of us to keep up. Their disregard for those of us who have older, but very useful software, really shows a contempt for those of us who either cannot afford, nor want to buy new applications to work with their "new and improved" operating systems. I guess success has gone to someone's head, otherwise they would not leave out a way to make their newer OS backward compatible with the expensive software we have already bought and paid for. It's the golden rule, "the guy with the gold makes the rules." As a stockholder they make me happy, but as a long time user I am disappointed.

I just downloaded an update to my ipad, i suppose that has to do with interaction with Lion, but who really knows what Apple has on its collective mind??? Great products, but turned into a company with no regard for its customer base

What about Quickbooks? It is supposed to do accounting, which an accountant would be very knowledgeable about.

Intuit just released an update for QuickBooks 2011 for Mac a couple of days ago to make it compatible with Lion. That is the only version they are bringing forward. If you have an older version, you're out of luck.

I've been using Apple and Quicken for many years (1984); I was going to buy a new 27 inch iMac but I use Quicken intensively; so gonna stick with my old iMac until they not us have to come up with a solution!