Saying goodbye to PowerPC apps and hello to Lion
Several months ago we talked about checking your running applications to ensure they would work with Lion, OS X 10.7, which no longer supports applications written for the older PowerPC processors.
That’s fine for the day-to-day applications you run all the time, but what about the programs you use once a blue moon? Well there’s a simple way to check those, too.
Open the system profiler (available in the Utilities folder or click the Apple menu, hit “About This Mac” and then “More Info”),
When you have the profiler open, click File, then Save and save as text or RTF. Put the file someplace you can easily find it -- I use the desktop -- and then open the file in Word, TextEdit or Pages.
Do a search for PowerPC and make a note of every application that says it is a PowerPC application.
If it says Intel, Intel 64-bit or Universal, the app will work with Lion and the soon-to-be-released Mountain Lion.
If you find PowerPC apps -- and you will -- look for an update, replacement or decide if you really need it. My computer had a dozen apps for HP printers, apps that I have never used. I dragged all of them to the trash, recovering a couple gigabytes of space.
That’s fine for the day-to-day applications you run all the time, but what about the programs you use once a blue moon? Well there’s a simple way to check those, too.
Open the system profiler (available in the Utilities folder or click the Apple menu, hit “About This Mac” and then “More Info”),
When you have the profiler open, click File, then Save and save as text or RTF. Put the file someplace you can easily find it -- I use the desktop -- and then open the file in Word, TextEdit or Pages.
Do a search for PowerPC and make a note of every application that says it is a PowerPC application.
If it says Intel, Intel 64-bit or Universal, the app will work with Lion and the soon-to-be-released Mountain Lion.
If you find PowerPC apps -- and you will -- look for an update, replacement or decide if you really need it. My computer had a dozen apps for HP printers, apps that I have never used. I dragged all of them to the trash, recovering a couple gigabytes of space.