Could Someone Please Tell Me...

at 10.6 you lose:

ability to execute on PowerPC

at 10.7 you lose:

Ability to run Rosetta-based PowerPC programs, the top 6 of which are:

AppleWorks

Quicken 2007

Word 2004 and the rest of Office 2004

Eudora 6

FileMaker Pro 6

CS2

at 10.8 you lose:

ability to execute on Macs issued during 2007 and earlier that do not have EFI-64 firmware.

--------

The current Mac Pro models at this writing are almost the same as those issued in 2010, except for minor changes, and can execute an older version of Mac OS X, if you have a "Full Retail" DVD on hand.

But the 5770 and 5870 graphics cards require 10.6.5 or later.

Your software list looks positively modern. I see nothing there that would drop out.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

at 10.7 you lose:

Ability to run Rosetta-based PowerPC programs, the top 6 of which are:

...

Quicken 2007

...

Your example of Quicken 2007 is way out of date. Intuit released Quicken 2007 for Lion for $15 back in March, 2012:

http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-finance-software/quicken-2007-osx-lion.jsp

MichaelLAX -

you are right. You have reminded me of that before and I should try be more precise.

Quicken 2007 (unless you buy the US$15 update from Intuit)

There are tons more Rosetta programs that disappear as well. There must be a lot of The SIMs software that stops working as well, because that is another popular question.

----

On your favorite solution for running 10.6.8 in "emulation", about how much extra memory is needed?

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

MichaelLAX -

On your favorite solution for running 10.6.8 in "emulation", about how much extra memory is needed?

It works with only 4GB on my MacBook Pro, but clearly slows down everything else that is running.

On my main machine where I use SL in Parallels, I purchased an upgrade to 8GB for my mid-2011 Mac Mini and with an allocation of 4GB to Parallels, I notice no slow down at all.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

at 10.8 you lose:

ability to execute on Macs issued during 2007 and earlier that do not have EFI-64 firmware.

--------

Grant: Does your research indicate that all software that runs on Lion will contintue to work on Mountain Lion?

I am still operating at Lion...

MichaelLAX-

I honestly do not know for certain. The BIG issue is Mac OS X will no longer run 32-bit, so Mac OS X 10.8 will not run on those older Macs. There is that Hackintosh trick of loading a 64-bit EFI "work-alike" (Chameleon or its offspring Chimera) into RAM. But that seems like a solution with a lot of complexity. (Fine for developer types, but too hard for casual users.)

My expectation is that Applications should be able to run 32-bit even under 10.8, so that very few Applications that DO run under 10.7 will not run under 10.8.

Roaring Apps has their list, but they do not seem to be drawing general conclusions, just the huge list.

CS6: you want a machine that allows 64-bit kernel mode and 24-48GB RAM so the 2010 is fine and much better than even 2009.

Maybe ML is more a large service pack and throws in more features. And support for Nvidia GTX 670 for instance that can help CS6.

Of course 32-bit apps and plug-ins work but 32-bit drivers would limit you and you DO want to boot 64-bit mode.

I would avoid 2008 3,1 "like the plague" and skip the 2009.

But you do need to upgrade some apps and $$$ - any Mac Pro can run 10.6.5+ and some run 10.6.8 better than they do Lion or ML.

Grant:

OK, thanks!

My interest is when I upgrade to Mt. Lion on my two Macs: 2009 MacBook Pro and 2011 Mac Mini, so the 32 bit issue is not one that I am concerned about.

Just whether software that works with Lion will work on Mt. Lion.

Of course, software that does not work with Lion, is already taken care of by my installation of Snow Leopard (with Rosetta) into Parallels. I have already upgraded my Parallels to Parallels Desktop 7.0.15104 which supports Mountain Lion.

10.8 has no problem at all with 32-bit applications. Any application built using the 10.7 SDK should work, if the developer followed published guidelines.

I think I have an even worse problem. I've waited until now to migrate from my G4 933 [OSX 10.5.8, MS Office 2000] to a new Mac mini. How do I preserve my Office 2000 files if Office 2004 is broken under 10.7? Does it make any sense to upgrade to Office 2007 on my G4 first?

Compatibility has two facets: Application type and File Format.

Moving to 10.7, you lose the ability to run PowerPC Applications directly. So you will need a different Application to read and write those old Office files. It may be Word if you prefer, but you could use one of the several Open Source Office "work-alike" packages such as OpenOffice, NeoOffice or LibreOffice. Or you could transition to a different package altogether, such as Pages.

Moving to 10.7 nothing changes about the ability to read older Word and Excel FILE formats. There is still pretty good compatibility reaching back to older versions, but you may have a few conversion issues. The longer you wait to convert those old files, the more you may need an intermediary step (such as your suggestion of laundering them through office 2007) to get most of the formatting intact.

Thanks very much. Would that apply to Classic format docs? I have several senior docs I still use [MS Word 6/Excel 4], that have never converted because Office 2001 reads and writes them just fine. I probably should convert them to be sure.

Not to threadjack, but have you any advice on Eudora 6 migration to Apple Mail?

Importing Eudora mailboxes into Mail: Apple Support Communities

.

If you leave these files for too long, the issues are compounded.

We have a lot of really old files created by Word for Mac 3.0.2 and Word for Mac 5.1a. Those formats seem different from each other and each requires a slightly-different intermediate version or Word to read them and write a more modern Word File.

To bring Word 3.0.2 files forward, we open them in Word 5.1a, then save as "normal" format.

To bring Word 5.1a files forward, we open them in Word X, then save as Word X "normal" format.

If you try to read files that old with Word 2004 or more modern version, either too much of the formatting is discarded or changed, or they not recognized.