• Software

  • running power pc applications on OSX lion?

hello guys, the other day I downloaded the Game "Generals zero hour" for mac, and when I tried to run it, a window popped saying that Power Pc application are no longer supported.
A quick google search showed that I can run Power Pc application on OSX If I am to use a virtual machine such as Parallel 7, but the Parallel 7 I have comes with windows 7 not snow leopard. Is there a way to install snow leopard? I don't have the CD for it.
and will this game work or is it to much for an emulator?
Is there an online guide that you recommend, I tried to read one and I got instantly confused.
thanks for the help.
As I understand it, they don't only mean that you should use a Virtual Machine, they also mean that you must run Windows under that Virtual Machine. This is what Parallels 7 is for. You install the game inside Windows 7 running under Parallels 7. Parallels 7 is by itself a Virtual Machine that runs Windows, so it cannot run any Mac OS.

As far as I know, Generals Zero Hour has a Mac version. You might want to get that version.
let me get this straight, i should run a virtual machine inside the parallel, where the hell is Xzibit XD
it is the mac version, except apparently it only works with snow leapord or earlier os, unless you have a link to let me download a generals game compatile with 10.7, then please pm me a link i would be really greatfull.
Your game is too old to run on modern Macs. Apple used to include PowerPC CPUs in the Mac until recently (2006?), when they moved to Intel. Your OS is telling you that it won't run the game because it has PowerPC specific instructions. This is not surprising, games are incredibly resource intensive, so they call CPU instructions directly (making them very hard to port).

Apple is to be blamed big time for breaking backwards compatibility like this, but as usual their legion of fans will make up excuses.

You can read more about the issue on the Apple Stackexchange Q&A website.

About yasamoka's answer
It might be worth a shot to install Windows inside a virtual machine and test it. However this only has a chance of working if you buy the Windows version of the game. Crap, I know.
thanks rahmu, i guess ill find something else to download, I am a little dissapointed that i wasted a lot of time downloading it.
Thanks again.
I guess the game should run pretty well on Windows inside a virtual machine if your Mac has support for VT-d virtualization, which allows the Virtual machine to access the hardware directly. If you have VT-x, it's probably not enough. Can you check?
i dnt know how to chek, the thing is the.game is a mac version not a windows version.
macbook pro, 2008 early.
osx 10.7
Geforce 8600 GT
4gb ram.
Apple is to be blamed big time for breaking backwards compatibility like this, but as usual their legion of fans will make up excuses.
I have to disagree. Apple maintained backwards compatibility for 5 years. They moved to the x86 ISA in 2006, but continued on supporting PowerPC binaries through Rosetta until it got dropped in summer 2011 with the release of OS X Lion. If you want to run PowerPC binaries, you can use Rosetta on OS X Snow Leopard.

Honestly, I used to hate those huge universal binaries that took around twice the time to download. The move to Intel-only spared me to download all the unnecessary cruft.
Easy. Get VMware Fusion 5. Create a new VM and install Mac Snow Leopard on it. Install Rosetta to support Power Pc applications then install Generals Zero Hour for Mac.

VMware Fusion 5 supports 3D acceleration, so you should be able to run games inside the virtual machines.

Try it out, let us know if this works.