Compatibility issues are quickly disappearing.

Six weeks ago I cautioned against an early upgrade to Snow Leopard largely on grounds of its lack of compatibility with many common applications.

Having tried SL 6.1 on my iMac I can report that most of the most commonly used applications I use now run fine. It’s especially satisfying to see that legacy PPC applications (ones written for the old Macs using the IBM G3/4/5 CPUs) run really well under Rosetta, though why on earth Apple makes Rosetta an optional install which you have to search for (under ‘Customize’) beats me. Most specifically, Photoshop CS2 runs perfectly and I have no need or desire to pay Adobe for a later version given my limited PS use. And yes, I still run ancient versions of Microsoft Word and Excel as they do all I need and I simply hate paying Microsoft for anything.

Lightroom in 64-bit mode runs fine and, once again, it’s a wonder to me Adobe doesn’t simply detect 64-bit systems automatically rather than insisting on installing in 32-bit mode by default. The switch is beyond obscure – right click on LR in Finder and uncheck the ’32-bit’ box. Jeez! To confirm you are running in 64-bit mode, switch on the splash screen to make it show when LR starts (it’s under ‘Preferences’) and you should see the ’64-bit’ narrative there.

Why switch to Snow Leopard at all? Because sooner or later it will be mandatory as older OS version are supported less and less. Do it now and it’s easier. Do it later and lots of things have to be fixed all at once. And Apple does a decent job in major OS revisions (Panther->Tiger->Leopard->Snow Leopard) that once they are past the first or second version things tend to run pretty well. They have for me.

Now if we could only get the likes of Adobe to rewrite their applications to properly use multi-core CPUs and all that 64-bit goodness, wouldn’t life be sweet? Unfortunately, one of the sadder aspects of the gradual demise of Aperture is that Adobe has less competition. Would that Apple bought Adobe (chump change to Apple) and brought some modernization and proper user interface design to Photoshop, though why anyone would want the aggravation of all those angry help calls from Windows users beats me.

But look, I’m not grumbling. Lightroom 2.5 runs just fine with Snow Leopard. For that I am sincerely grateful.

There’s actually some pretty interesting technical information on 64-bit technology and related developments to be found on Apple’s site which those so inclined can find by clicking the picture below.