With the arrival of OS X 10.7 (LION) I thought it was time for a few notes on getting yourself, and your computer, ready for the upgrade. I highly recommend that you visit the Take Control website (Click on the image) and get yourself their excellent publication aptly titled:
“Take Control of Upgrading to Lion”
Here’s an excerp explaining what the fuss about ‘Rosetta’ is and other items to check before you make the leap into the installation.
I’ve read thousands of articles, blog posts, and message board comments about Lion in the past several months, and the one change that seems to provoke the most consternation is the loss of Rosetta — a component of Mac OS X that many Mac users were completely unaware of until recently. Upgrading to Lion entails living without software that requires Rosetta, and if you use such software regularly, you’re going to be unhappy with Lion unless you take one of several steps to adapt to the new world order.
To find out what PowerPC software you have on your disk, follow these steps:
1. Open System Profiler (in /Applications/Utilities).
Get Info: The utility heretofore known as System Profiler will be called System Information in Lion.
2. In the list on the left, scroll down until you see the Software category. Under that (click the triangle next to the word Software, if necessary, to show its subcategories), select Applications. Wait a few moments while System Profiler compiles a list of the applications on your Mac.
3. In the list of software, look for a column named Kind. If you don’t see it, you may need to enlarge the window or scroll to the right. (To make the display easier to work with, I suggest dragging the Kind column header to the left, so that it’s right next to the Application Name header, and clicking the Kind header to sort the list by Kind.)
4. Scroll through the list, keeping an eye on the Kind column, which will show one of the following categories for each application:
- Intel: This is an Intel-native application. It’s all good.
- Universal: This application has both Intel-native and PowerPCnative code; it’ll run just fine under Lion:
- PowerPC: This application depends on Rosetta—and will not run under Lion!
When you encounter a PowerPC application, decide what to do about it. If it’s an application you recognize but never use, feel free to delete it. (If you have no idea what it is, the smartest move is to ignore it for the time being.) If it’s one you know and depend on, however, you have several choices when it comes to Lion. Here are your options, in the order I think you should consider them:
Upgrade to an Intel-native (or Universal) version if possible. Consult the developer’s Web site to see if there’s a newer version that will run under Lion. Some upgrades may be prohibitively expensive, of course.
Migrate to alternative software. In many cases, another application may be close enough in functionality to the old PowerPC application that you can switch without much grief— perhaps even importing your old files in the process. Figuring out a viable alternative may require some Web searching.
For Instance:
AppleWorks: Pages and Numbers (http://www.apple.com/iwork/) can import AppleWorks word processing and spreadsheet documents, respectively, but not drawings or databases.
Processor Support
Lion, like Snow Leopard before it, requires an Intel processor; PowerPC-based Macs—PowerBooks, iBooks, PowerMacs, eMacs, and pre-2006 iMacs and Mac minis—aren’t invited to the party. But unlike Snow Leopard, it won’t run on just any Intel-based Mac; it requires a Core 2 Duo or more powerful processor—in other words, any Mac released in approximately the last 5 years. This requirement eliminates some of the earliest Intel-based Macs—specifically iMac, MacBook, and MacBook Pro models introduced in the first half of 2006, and pre-2007 Mac mini models.
Not sure what processor your Mac has? Choose Apple > About This Mac and look at what the Processor line says. Look for Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon. Anything else—specifically, “Core Duo” (without the 2) or “Core Solo”—and you won’t be able to run Lion.
So there you are some preliminary hints on LION – My thanks to Take Control and Joe Kissell for providing the above notes – Do yourself a favour and go to the site and get the book – Just $10 and immediately downloadable.
Apple has released its most recent update for Final Cut X, which brings a multitude of tools for editing multicam based projects. Apple stated that the program will now automatically sync different shoots together by using time and date, audio waveforms, or timecodes to create a multicam clip that can consist of up to 64 different angles of video. These angles can include different frame rates, frame sizes, and even different formats.
