A few weeks ago, Apple upgraded their current operating system (OS), Snow Leopard (10.6), to 10.6.8 in preparation for the release of their new OS, Lion (10.7). Lion will be released this month (quite possibly, tomorrow, July 14) and, although it's a great OS with lots of fantastic features, it's important that you understand the implications of moving to Lion.
First and foremost, Lion drops support for older applications that were written for the PowerPC family (the old G3, G4 and G5 computers). Leopard (10.5) and Snow Leopard (10.6) included a technology introduced in 2006 called "Rosetta" which allowed Intel-based Macs to run applications that were made for the older PowerPC computers. These applications include Microsoft Office 2004, Quicken 2007 (and earlier) and Adobe CS3 (and earlier) among others.
With Lion, Apple is no longer including the Rosetta layer that allows these PowerPC applications to work. In most cases, this shouldn't affect anyone that has upgraded to current versions of their everyday applications. For example, Microsoft Office 2011, Adobe CS5 and newer, FileMaker Pro 11, etc. should work fine with Lion (with some minor updates by the respective software vendors, no doubt). Note, although Microsoft Office 2008 is a Universal application that works on Intel computers, its installer is PowerPC only so it won't be able to be re-installed under Lion. Also, Quicken 2007 will NOT run on Lion. So, if you depend on Quicken for your personal accounting needs, you will need to look for alternatives. There are many such as the more limited Quicken Essentials, iBank, MoneyDance and more. Of course, all the iLife '11 (iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iDVD and Web) and iWork '09 (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) applications will work fine. A wonderful (but a bit incomplete) resource that lists some compatibility with OS X Lion is available at http://roaringapps.com/. This website will undoubtedly get updated quickly soon after Lion is released.
So, the best way to prepare for moving to Lion is to go through your application list and see if you're using the latest versions of those applications and upgrade if you haven't. One of the simplest ways to do this is to use the System Profiler and the quickest way to open it is to hold down the Option key and select System Profiler as the first item under the Apple Menu. In the Software section of System Profiler, click on Applications. It might take a few minutes to scan all the applications on your computer. Once you see the list, scroll across to the Kind column and actually click on the column header "Kind". This will sort your applications by kind. Applications that are listed as "Intel" or "Universal" are OK (but might need some minor updates if their out of date). However, any applications listed as "Classic" (wow you still have these?) or "PowerPC" will not run and these are the ones that you'll either need to abandon or replace with newer Intel-compatible versions or alternatives.
So, make sure to follow these guidelines prior to moving to Lion:
1. Make sure your computer meets the minimum requirements. Only Macs with Intel Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7 and Xeon processors will work. The first generation Intel Macs (from five years ago) that had Core Duo (not the Core 2 Duo) will NOT run Lion. Many earlier Intel Macs shipped with only 2 GB of RAM. You'll want to make sure you upgrade to 4GB (or more if your computer can handle it) for better performance. Also, make sure you have at least 20 GB of free space as it will need some working room during installation. But, if you've only got 20 GB of space left, you might consider getting more storage. C'mon, it's really cheap when you can get 1 TB for under $100.
2. Go through your list of applications and make sure you're up to date with everything. Many applications can update themselves from within the program. Also, make sure you know what applications (PowerPC apps) will no longer work once you move to Lion. Remember to use System Profiler as described above as the quickest way to do this.
3. Backup…Backup….Backup! You can't have too many backups. Although Time Machine is a great personal backup system, it's not the only one and you shouldn't rely on just one system. Another backup method is to make a bootable clone of your working drive(s) onto other external drives that can be taken offsite. Some applications to do this are SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner.
4. Make sure you're on Snow Leopard and sign up for an Apple ID for purchasing Lion. In the recent updates to Snow Leopard, Apple introduced the Mac App Store (MAS) which allows you to use your existing Apple ID if you already have one for your iPhone/iPad app purchases (or you can just sign up for a new one if you don’t already have one). Note that if you're on Leopard, you'll need to purchase, install and update a retail copy of Snow Leopard first in order to purchase Lion. The MAS only works with Snow Leopard 10.6.6 and higher.
If you're a bit wary of going through all this on your own or you don't want to be the "first kid on your block" with Lion, you may want to wait a little bit to let companies that haven't yet upgraded their apps for Lion compatibility release their updates. You might also want to wait for the "shakeout" to see how the rest of the industry and other users have fared in their upgrades prior to doing your own.
As always, please don't hesitate to contact me with questions about Lion, your Macs, your iPads/iPhones or about the forthcoming iCloud system that Apple will be releasing this fall to replace MobileMe. I'll look forward to helping you move to the new "big cat"!