Lion Prep: PowerPC Application Purge
Lion is predicted to drop next week, and one characteristic is no more Rosetta, which means any PowerPC apps won’t run.
To generate a list of PowerPC apps hiding out on your Mac, open the System Profiler (Apple Menu -> About this Mac -> More Info), click Applications from the list on the left, and click the header of the Kind column to sort.
Our main Mac Mini had a few programs:
- Quicken: Been using this to track finances and investments for years, but Intuit’s inability to release a solid upgrade (Quicken Essentials is decidedly not, and Mint wasn’t able to access data in some of our accounts) means deletion. Replaced with MoneyWell for day-to-day transactions, and StockMarketEye for investments. MoneyWell is pretty cool and has an associated syncing iPhone app which I intend to pick up soon. StockMarketEye is a little quirky and doesn’t feel very OS X like, but does the job.
- MacMAME: Replaced with MAME OS X.
- Toast 6: Can’t recall the last time I needed to burn a DVD viewable in a DVD player. In keeping with the disc-less future, deleted.
- Stuffit Expander: Can’t recall the last use. Deleted.
- StarCraft 1: Not sure about this one. Yes, I have played recently.
- OSXII: Apple IIe emulator, replaced with a more recent Universal version.
- Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 17: Not replaced just yet, if needed will get a more recent program.
All in all, not that big a deal, except for zerg killing.
Yeah, Blizzard’s announced that Starcraft won’t be updated for 10.7.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1874253837
Running within Windows, either via Boot Camp or VMWare/Parallels, should work. If you don’t want to install Windows, CrossOver Games is a nice compromise (I played Team Fortress 2 within CrossOver Games until Valve released a Mac-native version).
I’d love to know what you think of MoneyWell. I was looking at that yesterday, myself.
Good tip… I downloaded StarCraft recently so many I’m entitled to a PC version (hope so). I’d probably install it in Boot Camp Windows. Hope it runs in Windows 7. Never heard of CrossOver Games will definitely check it out!
I like MoneyWell. It has daily transactions and connects to a lot of financial institutions. It uses a “bucket” method for budgeting which I’m not even using. Probably the best thing about it is the ease of entering transactions. When moving money from one account to another (say paying off a credit card from your checking) you drag one account to another, enter in the info, and the add / subtract is kept straight. It doesn’t track investments.
I also got an email from the developer a while back saying they were planning on using DropBox for their sync between the desktop and iPhone app. Looking forward to that.
Oh yeah, your Starcraft key should work fine on the PC version, if I remember correctly. Blizzard is awesome — I’m sure it works on Windows 7. Check for a patch at blizzard.com.
That was one the other questions on my mind — I’d never sync if it didn’t happen in the background. Dropbox support would be awesome! Thanks dude, I’ll give MoneyWell a serious look when they upgrade the sync.
[…] So it’s sort of good Lion didn’t show up Thursday — I spent several hours dealing with Boot Camp and Time Machine, in preparation for Lion, which doesn’t run PowerPC apps, one of which is classic StarCraft. […]