Intel Macs and Carbonized Apps

You are correct the new Intel Macs will not run Classic or OS 9. Just about any application that will normally run in OS X will run on the Intel Macs, although they will have to run through Rosetta unless they are dual binaries.

There are specific restrictions concerning an application's ability to run in Rosetta beyond not running pre-Mac OS X (Classic, Mac OS 9 and earlier) applications as Kappy notes. It's not that simple.

These are detailed in "Appendix A: Rosetta" of the Universal Binary Programming Guidelines, Second Edition. While Carbonized apps are not explicitly excluded, a given Carbonized app may have dependencies which cannot run in Rosetta. I recommend reading that entire appendix.

Bottom line is you're going to have to either test it or check with the applications vendor to determine if a Carbonized application compatible with Mac OS X on PPC hardware can run in Rosetta on Intel-based Macs.

Good luck!

😉 Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X