Lion WARNING Power PC apps not supported :-(

It's been well documented, I'm afraid.

There have been multiple warnings about this, where didn't you look?

And what do Apple have to sort out, PPC apps are no longer supported.

Office 2004 files will all open in Open Office

This caught me by surprise too. I think Apple could have been clearer on this, in spite of the comments posted above. Many of us have been using certain apps for so long we can't remember whether they were Intel native or not. I can understand Apple moving forward, but I was caught unawares and now have several things I can't do, and can't find appropriate replacement apps for.

It would have been nice if Apple had set the installer to gather those apps into a single folder, to facilitate downloading replacements. As it is, you have to stumble throught the Application Folder, looking for a white circle over an icon (not easy, visually).

Not that AppleWorks is officially dead (been unsupported, but it worked at least) you can open files with Pages -but you may lose a lot of formatting.

You can easily find all your Power PC apps by Apple Menu/About this Mac/More Info/System Report/Software/Applications/Kind

And if you open a finder window to show applications in Icon view...

there is a No Entry or circle with a line through it...

I always hated my old scanner... now it looks like a new one is in order!

Agreed. The information about PowerPC-only applications should be more readily available from Apple.

Apple should simply make Rosetta available for a few dollars more

I believe Apple did something similar with the transition from OS 9 to 10, by way of the "Old System Folder"..

igmackenzie wrote:

It's been well documented

Maybe not properly documented by Apple for end users, for potential purchasers of the upgrade.

I'm aware of the issue, but please, for the benefit of other users: do you have any link to end user-facing information from Apple about the absence of Rosetta from 10.7?

Graham Perrin wrote:

Agreed. The information about PowerPC-only applications should be more readily available from Apple.

It has always been available, all you had to do was look.

I suggest you subscribe to the Macworld RSS feed where this has been discussed in a half-dozen different articles.

FreehandAddict wrote:

Apple should simply make Rosetta available for a few dollars more

Perhaps the company that owns the program won't license it any more. If so, what do you suggest.

Yup, it's been discussed a lot. Discussed in a bunch of forums us techie guys love to read. So everyone who knows are those that should know. ..Oh wait! Hmmm, what of the average user? Those who dont CARE to read tech forums like we do?

I understand our points that it is well documented in the forums and in some tech specific outlets, but the average user doesn't read these. Designers, movie editors, the flower shop owner don't care because they only use a Mac as a tool to run their business. Some have invested countless hours developing on those legacy applications/programs. Some people don't find easy just dumping their old application with perhaps thousands of files they have developed through the years.

Many have a Mac simply because they find it easier than using the complicated and ever changing Windows. Not that they are loyal to the Apple brand, it is simply because that "thing" runs my favorite application better than Windows or that "thing" runs the application that Windows doesn't. Many don't have the budget to buy whatever is out there that replaces their legacy program, they don't have the time to convert or the know how to relearn something different and apply it to their business.

On the other hand, I also understand that the company that developed the application would provide an upgrade for Lion compatibility. That is not true on all the cases. For example, one of my customers (and no I don't provide PC consulting only IBM Systems) uses Corel draw, he has hundreds and hundreds of files and now they don't work and Corel is no longer supporting CorelDraw for Mac nor will they provide a fix. Second example, I have a friend that uses EffectsLab Pro. FXHome will not rewrite their application because they say and I quote "sales are not good on the Apple platform to put resources (programmers) on it and they will concentrate on their Windows customers". -dead end.

Even though WE KNEW Lion was not going to support PowerPC, the average user did not. Actually, that information should be clearly specified in the product info when buying Lion. It's not explicitly expressed, anywhere in there. And I'm talking about a CLEAR statement like "PowerPC applications are NOT supported in Lion" or "Some of your applications will NOT be compatible with Lion" with a link to a page with Applications found so far during the developer and UAT period. All it says is: "Some features require apps developed to work with Lion". From and average user's perspective it says nothing. It says "some features", not that the whole application will not run.

I dislike Windows with all my heart, I honestly do. I work with IBM Systems and lots of client side apps run on Windows. But one thing I still find interesting... some of the IBM shops I support still have crazy old DOS programs running on the new Windows Server...

If I had known this I would never have installed it.

So, then just uninstall it and go back to Snow Leopard.