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OS X Lion removes the support and applications Rosetta PowerPC

LIONTodas Mac OS X native applications for PowerPC (G3, G4, G5) stop working with Mac OS X Lion and with them Freehand.

OS X Lion removes the support and applications Rosetta PowerPC


Mac OS X Lion, apart from being an operating system only available for Intel-based Macs, does not support Rosetta (PowerPC emulator for Intel computers).

Until the year 2006 (5 years ago) Apple computers equipped in primary brain processor IBM / Apple / Motorola, called PowerPC. But in 2006, Apple went on sale the first Mac (iMac) Intel Core Duo.

PowerPC and Intel were not compatible, so we had to find a solution for applications to continue running. To do this we found two:

    Creating the concept of universal application (effective today) where in the same application file (. App) is included to run the binary systems with PowerPC and Intel systems, two binary (the file containing the application itself ) different within the same application.

    Create a plugin system called Rosetta, which is nothing more than a PowerPC emulation layer that runs on Intel processors. Thus, any application that does not have universal version or not ready to Intel, you can run.

With Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the system can only be installed on Intel-based Mac and eliminates installation Rosetta normal (automatic). Rosetta can be installed as a supplement.

In Mac OS X Lion, Apple removed this add-on forever and Rosetta

(While remaining compatible) one stroke eliminates the need for universal applications. In fact, the Mac App Store was a first step towards this, and only works under Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Lion (ie only on Intel processors) and apps in it are no longer universal, and work only in Intel processors.

There is a simple way to know what kind of application are those that have and therefore ready for OS X Lion. We just have to go from the Finder to the Applications folder and request information CMD + click, Get Info (or press CMD + I). Thus, at the top we will see a sign that says Type: Application and brackets will tell if Universal, Intel or PowerPC.

So before installing Mac OS X Lion should check whether we are using incompatible applications.