Mac OS X Lion marks the end of Rosetta, the transition technology that allowed Intel Macs to run PowerPC applications. After installing Mac OS X, I took a peek at the Applications folder. If you have been migrating all your applications from computer to computer over the years, you may have some Power PC applications, such as Internet Explorer, sitting around unused on the hard drive. Now would be the time to clean up the computer because clicking on Internet Explorer (which now has a slash through it) brings up this warning:

You can’t open the application Internet Explorer.app because PowerPC applications are no longer supported.

No offer to download Rosetta separately. Game over. Of course, losing a 2004 version of Internet Explorer is no big deal with Safari, Firefox and Chrome offering newer and better options. The bigger problem is Quicken 2005. I haven’t committed to any of the alternatives yet. That’s why I installed Lion on the older MacBook Pro and not the newer one that has all the mission critical applications and data.