Filed under: OS, Peripherals, Universal Binary, Snow Leopard
Getting ready for Snow Leopard: Think about your applications
Ahhhh, there's nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that tomorrow I will be spending much of the day upgrading the Macs in my house to Snow Leopard. I received an email from Apple this morning telling me that Snow Leopard had shipped, so now I just need to be available to sign for the package tomorrow.Regardless of how many Mac OS upgrades I've done over the years, there are always one or two drivers, application enhancers, or full applications that just don't run properly on the newly installed OS. With Snow Leopard, these situations should be rare as many developers have already done compatibility checking and worked out the bugs. Before you slip that Snow Leopard DVD into your Mac tomorrow and start doing the upgrade, there are a few things you may want to consider.
If you can tell it's Intel, it's swell!
It's important to remember that Snow Leopard will only run on Intel Macs. Since there's no PowerPC support at all, that means that Rosetta, the environment that makes those old PowerPC apps run on our Intel boxes, isn't installed during a normal Snow Leopard upgrade. If you still have any apps that absolutely require Rosetta, you can install it as an option, or it can be delivered via Software Update after the initial install. Even though you've probably already read this in previous TUAW coverage, Intel-only means that any of those G4 and G5 Macs that were able to run Leopard will not be able to run Snow Leopard. My G4 Mac mini will be stuck in Leopard for eternity, unless I choose to install Ubuntu Linux on it for the heck of it.
How can you tell if an application is PowerPC-only? It may take you a little while if you have as many applications installed as I do, but the best way is to go through older apps and do a "Get Info" (Command-I) for each one. In the screenshot below, this application shows the dreaded words "Application (Power PC)" as the kind of application. That means that if I need to run this particular application again after my installation, I'll definitely have to install Rosetta.
One other thing that you may find, although it's a rather rare occurrence, is a situation where the "Open Using Rosetta" check box in Get Info has been checked. That means that a Universal application (one that runs on both PowerPC and Intel Macs) that might work better on an Intel Mac under the Rosetta environment. In some cases, Safari had to be run this way to allow for legacy plugins to work (such as older versions of the Adobe Shockwave player).
If you find relatively few applications that are PowerPC-only, it would be worthwhile to check with the software developer to see if they have a newer version available, or consider finding an Intel-based solution to replace the other app. That way, you can avoid having to install Rosetta -- not that it's a bad thing...
64 bits does not mean 8 dollars
In my continuing attempt to move all of the accumulated trivia from my brain into the minds of TUAW readers, that title refers to the old US habit of referring to a quarter-dollar coin as "two bits." Now that we're off the trivia, let's talk about the vaunted 64-bit capabilities of Snow Leopard.
At this time, Snow Leopard boots by default into 32-bit mode, so it won't take advantage of the huge addressing space that a 64-bit codebase can provide. That means that initially, most drivers and kernel extensions that were written for a 32-bit world will still work perfectly. Eventually, Apple wants manufacturers of hardware devices (printers, scanners, and the like) to migrate their drivers to work in the 64-bit environment, meaning that future versions of Snow Leopard or Mac OS X 10.7 may do away with 32-bit compatibility altogether.
Since Snow Leopard will boot into 32-bit mode, most drivers and kernel extensions will work flawlessly in the new operating system. You may want to check with printer and scanner vendors before doing your upgrade to Snow Leopard, just to see if a new driver is available or if they list Snow Leopard compatibility.
That being said, Snow Leopard does a much better job of installing printer drivers than before. Rather than filling your hard disk with gigabytes of drivers you'll never use, Snow Leopard will determine what printers you have used in the past or that are currently connected to your Mac, and will then install only the necessary drivers.
If you find relatively few applications that are PowerPC-only, it would be worthwhile to check with the software developer to see if they have a newer version available, or consider finding an Intel-based solution to replace the other app. That way, you can avoid having to install Rosetta -- not that it's a bad thing...
64 bits does not mean 8 dollars
In my continuing attempt to move all of the accumulated trivia from my brain into the minds of TUAW readers, that title refers to the old US habit of referring to a quarter-dollar coin as "two bits." Now that we're off the trivia, let's talk about the vaunted 64-bit capabilities of Snow Leopard.
At this time, Snow Leopard boots by default into 32-bit mode, so it won't take advantage of the huge addressing space that a 64-bit codebase can provide. That means that initially, most drivers and kernel extensions that were written for a 32-bit world will still work perfectly. Eventually, Apple wants manufacturers of hardware devices (printers, scanners, and the like) to migrate their drivers to work in the 64-bit environment, meaning that future versions of Snow Leopard or Mac OS X 10.7 may do away with 32-bit compatibility altogether.
Since Snow Leopard will boot into 32-bit mode, most drivers and kernel extensions will work flawlessly in the new operating system. You may want to check with printer and scanner vendors before doing your upgrade to Snow Leopard, just to see if a new driver is available or if they list Snow Leopard compatibility.
That being said, Snow Leopard does a much better job of installing printer drivers than before. Rather than filling your hard disk with gigabytes of drivers you'll never use, Snow Leopard will determine what printers you have used in the past or that are currently connected to your Mac, and will then install only the necessary drivers.
Notable application extensions that currently don't play well with Snow Leopard include 1Password 2.0 (you'll need to either upgrade to 1Password 3.0 when it is released, or follow these steps to get it to work with Safari) and the popular Mail Act-On (you'll have to wait for an update). While we haven't heard of many app enhancers that won't work with Snow Leopard, I'm sure that tomorrow will bring a new list of non-working extensions. Keep your browser pointed to TUAW during the first day of Snow Leopard for breaking news on what works and what breaks.
Sometimes it's the little things that you don't expect to create an incompatibility that will trip you up. System Preferences panes may do this to you! System Preferences is a 64-bit application, although it is written to know when you are opening a 32-bit pane and will relaunch in 32-bit mode. Although we haven't heard of any SysPrefs panes that are known to have issues, it's something to keep your eyes open for as you travel into Snow Leopard territory tomorrow or in the next couple of weeks.
Finally, most of your standalone applications should work flawlessly. The apps that are most likely to experience problems are those that address hardware directly. For example, I'd be wary of any apps that talk to scanners, DVD burners, or other hardware, or of any application that has been written use unsupported hooks into the OS. Once again, it's advisable to go out and check with the vendors of any hardware or software before you upgrade, just to see if they've already addressed Snow Leopard compatibility.
Best of luck with your Snow Leopard upgrade, and let us know if you run into any unforeseen problems.
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
MM2 said 12:12PM on 8-27-2009
That's not the best way to check what applications are PowerPC by the way, you can list them all in the "Applications" part of System Profiler and sort by kind, showing all PowerPC/universal/intel applications
Reply
dagamer43 said 12:14PM on 8-27-2009
In order to install Office 2008, you have to install Rosetta. It's quite dumb.
Reply
Brian said 2:52PM on 8-27-2009
This is definitely unfortunate, but I expect that Microsoft will update Office in their next release so that Rosetta will be unnecessary.
Andre said 12:24PM on 8-27-2009
The ones on my system that show as PowerPC are:
Various Office2008 components
MacTheRipper
Windows Media Player
GPSBabel+
Epson Print CD
Image Rescue
I'd really prefer not to install Rosetta, but it does look like Office2008 requires it. Maybe I can get by somehow without those components.
I have one app, "DesktopDB" that reports itself as "Classic" (in /System/Library/CoreServices/SKPlugins/DesktopDB.service". Not sure how that's possible, or if OSX even uses it.
Reply
Aelver said 11:03PM on 8-27-2009
I believe the newer versions of MTR are universal.
midas89 said 12:25PM on 8-27-2009
So, I did a straight upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard. All went well until I foolishly decided to do a Defrag using the Dive Genius 2.2 Boot DVD. The Defrag failed so badly I could no longer boot. I urge all users of Drive Genius to hold off on doing a Defrag for now.
My only option was to do a reformat and then a clean install. Unfortunately, since my Macbook came originally with Tiger, I got an installation error using the Snow Leopard DVD. So, I had to install Tiger fresh first. Once that was done, I was able to upgrade direct to Snow Leopard.
And yes, Office 2008 requires Rosetta to be downloaded. Something to do with Microsoft's automatic update checker program that runs in the background. This program requires Rosetta.
Oh, and my beloved MoveItemsX ContextMenu plug-in no longer works in Snow leopard. MoveItemsX is allows one to simply right-click a file and be able to move or copy it to any folder or the Desktop without having to drag and drop it.
Reply
gregmancuso said 3:46PM on 8-27-2009
Is there any way to do a custom install of Office 2008 to not install the auto update checker app? I'm quite capable of checking manually and would rather not install Rosetta.
Brian said 3:12PM on 8-27-2009
In all my experience with Macs, I've always been advised against defragmenting the harddrive. Here's an Apple kb article that discusses it: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375
From what I understand, the system auto-defrags files that are under 20MB in size. If you are using the HFS+ filesystem, you may actually slow things down because it uses Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering. This means that the system is automatically defragging on the fly, and by running a 3rd party defrag application, you may undermine what the system has done to reduce fragmentation.
I've never defragmented my Mac with a 3rd party app, but then again, I do a clean install of the OS when there's a major release just to make sure that I don't have any legacy files left behind. It also gives me a chance to decide which apps I'm still using or should get rid of. That's a pretty good defrag in and of itself.
lfauset said 12:36PM on 8-27-2009
Oh... Starcraft is a PowerPC app... Anyone know if Rosetta is good for that?
Reply
mikeB said 12:40PM on 8-27-2009
Unfortunately for me Diablo II also requires Rosetta, in addition to Microsoft's Office 2008 shenanigans.
Reply
Katanna said 12:44PM on 8-27-2009
http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/ has a list of applications and if they are compatible with Snow Leopard. Go there to see if your apps will work!
Matthew
Reply
antiorario said 12:58PM on 8-27-2009
The site returns a 500 error.
antiorario said 12:59PM on 8-27-2009
Hmm, must have been a temporary error. It works fine now.
Katanna said 7:39PM on 8-27-2009
Ya, it was going in and out for me when I posted it.
Matthew
funkyd said 12:46PM on 8-27-2009
I'm curious about the statement "At this time, Snow Leopard boots by default into 32-bit mode, so it won't take advantage of the huge addressing space that a 64-bit codebase can provide."
What does this really mean? Is there a way to make it boot by default to 64-bit mode? Is there something you can do to make it 64-bit?
Reply
Andre said 12:48PM on 8-27-2009
It is the kernel itself that does this. You can still run 64-bit apps. To force it into loading the 64-bit kernel, hold down the 6 & 4 keys while starting up.
verbz said 12:48PM on 8-27-2009
Does anyone know if ProTools (8) will work on snow Leopard?
Reply
Matthew said 1:04PM on 8-27-2009
According to the Digi site http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=48&langid=100&itemid=38972 they are "working on it." I won't be trying it on my production machine on Friday.
Jash Sayani said 12:56PM on 8-27-2009
Damn! 1Password 2 will not work with SnowLeopard. Have to upgrade to version 3. That sucks!!
Reply
Galley said 1:00PM on 8-27-2009
The only app I had that was PPC was Bejeweled 2, and PopCap sent me a serial number that I could use for the Universal Binary edition they allowed me to download for FREE.
Reply