Mac Memos

We have an old copy of Quicken 2005 running on Snow Leopard. It is a PowerPC app so it needs Rosetta to run on our Intel iMac. No problem. Although Rosetta is not installed automatically when you upgrade to MacOS X 10,6, it IS installed if you have applications that need it. Rosetta is included on the Snow Leopard installation disc.

Here’s what happens…. the installer disc checks to see what you have on your hard drive. It restarts your machine and begins the lengthy installation process. 45 minutes in our case. If you have applications that require Rosetta, you will get a dialogue box asking if you’d like to do the Rosetta installation. Yes, you would. Takes about a minute, and your old PPC app is happy.

What happens if you install an old PPC app onto your Mac after you have done the Snow Leopard installation? Still no problem.

If there were no PPC apps on your machine when you first installed Snow Leopard, there would have been no need for Rosetta, so it wasn’t installed. If you add, say, Quicken 2005 later and click the app icon to open it, you get a dialogue box saying you need Rosetta. Just put your Snow Leopard installation disc in the slot and your Mac will get Rosetta from it.