Earlier in the week it was reported that PowerPC-emulation software Rosetta will be killed off in OS X Lion. This is of particular concern to users of older apps like Quicken 2007 (which is still for sale) which some users favor because the current version of Quicken Essentials for Mac is missing numerous features that the 2007 version had.
Aaron Patzer, VP/GM of Intuit's Personal Finance Group spoke with The Mac Observer about the intricacies of Intuit's codebase.
Mr. Patzer explained that the PowerPC codebase for Quicken For Mac 2007 was started decades ago and has many intricacies -- including its own custom-built database engine -- that are very much PowerPC specific. Simply porting this code over to Intel is not possible and would require a significant amount of work. So much so that Intuit decided to focus those resources on developing an entirely new application, Quicken Essentials for Mac.
But what of Rosetta and Quicken 2007 and OS X Lion? Intuit is reportedly working with Apple to embed the necessary parts of Rosetta in Quicken 2007 to get it to run on Lion.
The project has been underway for the past few months, with Intuit working to possibly embed specific Rosetta libraries into Quicken For Mac 2007 to get it to run. This, too, is not a simple project and may never come to fruition.
It's a massive project and may never work, but they are working on it. We should know more by the end of the summer.
