What most users should want in 10.7 Lion is support for PowerPC (PPC) apps that require Rosetta. There is a failure by many to understand what an absence of Rosetta means.

If you run Word for Mac 2008, which is Universal Binary and was only superseded in 2010, you won't be able to install it on Lion. Why? Because Word 2008 uses PPC code in its installer. So you'll have to buy another version of Word.

If you run Adobe's Creative Suite 2 (CS2) and have the upgrade CD to the current CS 5, you won't be able to install CS2 on to your new computer which runs 10.7, to then be able to install the update to CS5 if it does not have Rosetta. Why? Because updater CDs only work if they can find a legitimate copy of an earlier suite. If you can't install CS2, which is PPC, then the updater won't find an earlier version to update.

Not particularly relevant, but it does seem to me to be something of a commentary on how disposable computers have become, along with the software that runs on them. I'm still running WordPerfect 12 once in a while, which probably says more about me than anything else, but hey, it works.

Labels: technology, trends