Upgrading A Mac System, part 3: Apps

Photo credit: Derorgmas
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Upgrading A Mac System series:

• Part 1: Hardware Purchase
• Part 2: Migration
• Part 3: Apps
• Part 4: Peripheral Hardware

In part 2 of this article series, I described the migration process to move all my stuff to the new computer. In this article, I want to share my experiences with application support. What just worked, what didn't work and what was easy and hard to make work.

As you probably know, the latest versions of macOS, starting from version 10.15 (Catalina), do not support 32-bit applications. No 32-bit application will work unless you run it on an older version of macOS (e.g. via a virtual machine). Apple has supported 64-bit applications for a very long time, and they have always been supported on Intel processors. Nevertheless, quite a lot of Mac apps in my possession were 32-bit. I'm not sure why, since 64-bit compilers were available on the Intel Mac platform since day-one.

What just worked

Quite a lot of my software just worked after migration. Some was expected, and some was a surprise to me. So here they are:

• Audacity. An incredibly good open source audio editor
• Carbon Copy Cloner. The backup software I use
• GNU Emacs. Although this package has been regularly updated, I'm still using version 23, which I downloaded and installed in 2011.
• Microsoft Office. I have an Office 365 subscription, so I expected this to work, even though it had been over a year since its last update (since Microsoft had stopped supporting macOS version 10.12). After signing in to Office 365, I was able to just use the Microsoft auto-update to download the latest versions of everything.
• Mozilla Firefox. Since I was running the latest version, I expected it to work. And several annoying bugs went away after migration to the latest hardware and operating system.
• Mozilla Thunderbird. Again, it just worked.
• SilverFast 8. The scanner software I use
• Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection. A great collection of puzzles. Sadly, this is the only one of my games that survived the migration.
• Snapz Pro X. This one really surprised me. I bought it back in 2012 and it was last updated in 2013. I expected to lose this wonderfully useful app because of its age and the fact that its publisher, Ambrosia Software, no longer exists. But it's still working!
• Stuffit Expander. Although there are newer versions, my installation from 2016 continues to work great.
• VLC media player. Although there are newer versions, the one I had installed (from January 2019) seems to work just fine.
• XQuartz. An X11 server. I am truly surprised that this remains compatible since it was last updated in 2016.
• Almost everything I had purchased from the App Store. Only one app (from a company that no longer exists) wouldn't work and had to be deleted. See below.

Another pleasant surprise is that all of the applications I compiled myself continued working. It would appear that Apple's Xcode development tools have always generated 64-bit applications, so I didn't need to recompile anything - the apps just continued working.

What needed a bit of hand-holding

A few apps worked, but required me to take a few steps to get them up and running:

• Apache web server. I am no longer running Apple's macOS Server, because Apple has dropped most of the features I used it for. But that included the web server! I was originally expecting to have to manually download and install it myself, but as it turns out Apple still bundles the Apache web server with macOS. They just don't give you a friendly control panel to configure it.

  Fortunately, I found a few articles that helped me get it up and running. I'll probably write an article about this in the future, but for now, here are links to the pages I used:

  • Jason McCreary: Installing Apache, PHP, and MySQL on macOS Catalina
  • Apple Communities: Setting up a local web server on macOS 10.15 "Catalina"

• MacPorts. A great system for installing UNIX apps on macOS that are too complicated or have too many dependencies to easily build and install by hand. The apps seem to just work after migration, but migrating MacPorts itself was strongly recommended, so I did.
• Oracle VirtualBox. Although it appeared to run, it could not start any VMs. It complained about being unable to install the kernel device drivers it needs. But after a bit of searching, there's a FAQ for that. The procedure was not self-obvious to me, but after following Apple's instructions for approving new kernel extensions, it started working again.

What needed to be upgraded

As expected, some stuff simply would not work without upgrading to newer versions. Some of these were free upgrades but most involved spending some money. Sometimes a lot of money.

• Photoshop Elements. I was previously running version 10 (from 2011), but as a 32-bit app, it would not run on macOS 10.15. So I spent $100 to buy the latest version (2021), which works. Adobe changed the user interface in a few ways that I don't like and it was a little tricky getting the SilverFast plugin installed (so I can scan directly into Photoshop), but it's all working.
• FileMaker Pro. This one was the most painful. I had been running version 11, which was 32-bit and therefore incompatible with macOS 10.15. Unfortunately, Claris no longer sells "normal" FileMaker Pro. They only sell the "Advanced" version, which costs quite a bit more and includes many features I'm not likely to ever need. So I had to pay $540 for that upgrade. Plus (adding insult to injury) an extra $20 for an install DVD, which I like to have as a last-resort backup.
• iGlasses. This is a really useful utility. It installs a virtual camera to come between you and your webcam, allowing you to apply effects to the video. You can adjust gain, color, brightness, focus, etc. You can also apply special effects, including the full set of Apple PhotoBooth effects. I bought it many years ago, but I needed to upgrade to the latest version (a free upgrade) in order to have a version compatible with macOS 10.15. Unfortunately, the auto-upgrade works from within the app, which I couldn't do without it being able to connect to my camera, which it couldn't do because of the compatibility bug. I also couldn't just download a fresh copy from the web site, because that only installs a trial version. Fortunately, I kept my original e-mail receipt and the old download link still worked to get a copy of the full package.

  Unfortunately, Apple has made some changes in macOS over the years so certain applications (including Safari, PhotoBooth and Skype) don't support virtual cameras. Which means I can only use iGlasses in other apps (like Zoom) which do.

What needed to be replaced

A few apps did not work and could not be upgraded, forcing me to choose an alternative.

• Compost. Definitely the best trash-management utility out there. But it hasn't been updated for a long time and is 32-bit. Rather than search for a replacement in the App Store, I'm currently just using Apple's built-in feature to remove items from the Trash after 30 days. Not nearly as nice as Compost, but it (mostly) does what I need.
• Cadence BPM Tapper. A really simple and free utility to let me tap out beats and apply the results to the currently playing song in iTunes. The company went out of business a long time ago so they never released a 64-bit version of the app. I ended up replacing it with Turnover. Turnover is a really good app, but you need to pay $8 to use all its features (including the ability to paste BPM values into iTunes/Music) after the free trial period expires. I paid for it because all of the free alternatives I could find were really bad.

What has been abandoned

Sadly some titles no longer work and have no modern equivalent. Mostly games. So these join the ranks of many more games sitting on my hard drive until I can get around to installing a magic emulator or virtual machine capable of running them.

• Snood Deluxe. A really fun game. According to the publisher, the latest version, Snood Plus should use the same license key, but when I tried using the registration number from my installation CD, it didn't work. After contacting their product support, it appears that the CD publisher was a different company so the license keys are just incompatible. So I'll have to pay for a new license if I decide I want to keep on playing this game.
• Wingnuts 2. A really fun game, from the now-defunct Freeverse Software company. No way I'm getting an upgrade for this one. Which is the last of my Freeverse games to become unusable. (I had bought several others, but they were all PowerPC games so they stopped working when macOS 10.7 came out.)
• The Fool And His Money. Yet another incredible puzzle game by Cliff Johnson. It now joins the ranks of his older games which can only be played on emulators or virtual machines.

So that about wraps up the apps

In part 4, when I find the time to write about it, I'll talk about my various hardware peripherals that needed to be migrated and replaced.