I've already 'migrated' from PowerPC to new Intel iMac - what should I look out for?

O

owen-b

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Hi,

I've just bought a new Intel iMac and when it arrived used the setup assistant to migrate everything possible from my Powerbook to the iMac. It wasn't until afterwards that I found people saying this was a BAD idea. Well, if it was such a bad idea why did Apple let me do it...?

Well anyway!

I gather that PowerPC apps are what I most need to look out for, so I went through all my apps and utilities and found only a few that weren't Universal. I either upgraded or deleted them, with one or two such as Mac The Ripper that I've kept.

I'm not sure which of my widgets aren't Universal - any way of finding out?

What else should I be on the lookout for? I can see a 2GB-large 'system' folder in the root of the hard drive which only seems to duplicate the system folder in the Library. I've heard this is a side-effect of migrating and can be deleted. Can it?

Finally, in the migration process, Photoshop seems to have lost all my filters and plugins, even though they are all where they should be in the plugins folder. What's happened there?

Cheers all!
 
Don't delete that "System" folder. If you see a folder named "Previous System" then that would be OK to delete, but the "System" folder is required for operation.

I believe that Widgets aren't applications, and, therefore, there is no difference between a PowerPC widget and an Intel widget.

The PhotoShop filters are, in essence, tiny applications. Usually with a PowerPC application on an Intel machine, the application would be run through a technology called "Rosetta" which is on-the-fly code transformation from PowerPC to Intel. Your PowerPC application would then run on your Intel machine, with a slight speed decrease due to the code transformation. PhotoShop filters, though, cannot use Rosetta -- if you're on an Intel machine, you MUST use Intel-specific filters... likewise, if you're on a PowerPC machine, you MUST use PowerPC filters. Check with the filter company for updated Intel PhotoShop filters.
 
Okay, cheers for that...

More precisely, this 'System' folder contains just one folder, 'Library', which contains a whole bunch of stuff that's also in the 'Library' that's on the same level in the root of my hard drive as aforementioned 'System'. Are we sure they aren't duplicating each other?
 
Activity Monitor's your friend, it shows you all the apps that are running and whether their universal binaries or not.
 
owen-b said:
Okay, cheers for that...

More precisely, this 'System' folder contains just one folder, 'Library', which contains a whole bunch of stuff that's also in the 'Library' that's on the same level in the root of my hard drive as aforementioned 'System'. Are we sure they aren't duplicating each other?
Click to expand...

No, because I also have that folder, even though I never migrated from or to anything. And - inside these two Library folders are completely different things, if you would check!
 
owen-b said:
... Are we sure they aren't duplicating each other?
Click to expand...
No. Things in the root-level Library folder are placed there for users and their applications. There is a Library folder inside your Home directory. This folder holds files which are specific to your account. Things in the Library folder within the System folder are required by the OS. Long story short, each user sees three Library folders. If you mess with the one inside the System folder, then you may have a very bad day. Do not muck with it.
 
I don't think it's really a problem besides having a lot of PPC binaries all over. You might have lots of things in /Library/Application Support but it should all work if you don't update it.

Just update all your applications to universal versions and you should be good to go. Only worry about it if you are having problems. If not then I don't think there's anything wrong with what you did.
 
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