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Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard application compatibility list

Thursday, August 27, 2009 · 9:14 am · 36 Comments

Over on Wikidot, there’s a “Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Compatibility List” of applications and their compatibility status with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Each app is assigned to one of four categories: “UNKNOWN,” for apps that are untested, “OK,” for apps that work fine, “NO,” for apps that do not work, and “WARNING,” for those with some problems.

List users are encouraged to collaborate by sharing their experiences using each application and by adding any applications not already listed.

The Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Compatibility List is here.

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Comment Feed

36 Comments

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Dallas

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 9:18 am · Reply

I understand that few programs are going to have the GC or OpenCL optimization out of the gate, but why would any program that did work with Leopard not work with Snow Leopard?
breeze

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 9:18 am · Reply

Boycott Adobe
G4Dualie

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 9:25 am · Reply

What about Maya, Toon Boom, and XPlane?
Dallas

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 9:27 am · Reply

SH*T! Office:X and Office 2004 don’t work? What type of crap is this? That’s a deal breaker for me. I can’t upgrade to SL unless one of those are good.
Uther P.

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 9:28 am · Reply

Yeah, “breeze.” Boycott ANY company bigger than Momsie and Popsie’s corner drug store. More than three employees? BOYCOTT ‘EM! Let’s get back to the good old days when service was personal and product inventories were non-existent!

Gawd, but how I do miss the times when everything I wanted to buy was backordered, obsolete, overpriced, or not available.

Yeaj, damn Adobe to Hell. And Cisco, and Wal-Mart, and Yum Brands, and GE, and Microsoft, and Apple, and RIM, and Pepsico, ad infinitum.

It’s horses and buggy whips for me!
84 Mac Guy

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 9:33 am · Reply

Great chart. Unfortunately, it will cause me to hold off on installing SL until I see green checks next to the MS Office apps. Might be time to force my staff into iWorks.
dallas

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 9:38 am · Reply

@84

I wish I could too. I use Google Docs for 70% of my office work, then Pages for the next 15-20% -mostly when page design really matters. But for the last 10%, I have to have Office as there is the occasional doc file that doesn’t open correctly in Pages -or is locked or something stupid like that. And what’s worse, I don’t use MS Office enough to justify upgrading to 2008.

I’ve got no choice but to stick it out with Leopard.
Bart

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 9:49 am · Reply

@dallas

The status is unknown… it doesn’t say it “NO”.
almux

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 9:49 am · Reply

Well, while M$ office doesn’t… OpenOffice does work! Time to use a free one, folks!
F1Mikal in NYC

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 10:04 am · Reply

Sling YEAAAAAAH!
No if only we can have it fully useable on iPhone…
since1985

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 10:05 am · Reply

Is there a way for others to add applications missing from this list?

QuicKeys 4 – not fully compatible, yet, but will be soon
QuicKeys 3 – will never be compatible

http://startly.com/products/quickeys/mac/4/snowleopard/

note: QuicKeys 4 is awesome
DLMeyer

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 10:36 am · Reply

Dallas, have you considered using VMware or the like to emulate the Windows work environment to run your MS Office software? Chances are your “need” is based on your communications with other companies. Perhaps you could merely point out that their formatting efforts are not ADDING to the communication they are attempting?
84 … yeah, about time to take a look at iWork and see if it can do the job for you. Note that there are quite a number of functions included in Word and Excel that are not found in Pages or Numbers. You may well find some of these to be things you might have used on occasion but don’t really NEED. At all. Still, there may be one or more that you can’t do without. It is possible.
bobcb

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 10:39 am · Reply

Wiretap and Sktich need updates, so I’ll be waiting a couple days, but I’ll probably wait for the holiday weekend anyway just to take my time with it.
DogGone

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 10:46 am · Reply

Interestingly there is a version 5 of the Parallels software that is compatible with SL.

Must be a new version since only 4 is available now. I wonder when it will come out?
Spark

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 11:02 am · Reply

Since MS pulled Macro capabilities out of Excel in Office 2008, I still need to keep Office 2004 in use. That it is incompatible with SL put me in a bind. I guess I will have to reinstall a Windows partition with Parallels on my laptop and use Win Office 2007.

I haven’t taken the time to investigate thoroughly, but does Numbers have the capability to develop macros equivalent to those in older versions of Excel?
jesus

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 11:11 am · Reply

Anyone know if Handbrake works?
Predrag

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 11:19 am · Reply

While it is possible to install Rosetta on SL and run PPC binaries on it, this is something that everyone should avoid if at all possible. This includes Office 2004 and earlier (after all, these are at least 5 years old products!) CS2 and older, as well as many other PPC-only apps.

PPC has been abandoned by Apple years ago, and developers have largely abandoned it as well. We all knew this was coming (although we didn’t know that there was going to be a recession). Those of us who use 5-year old (and older) apps will have to postpone their SL upgrade until they can fork over enough cash for app upgrades as well.

Apple has done this several times in the past 15 years (68k to PPC, OS9 to OS X, PPC to Intel) and if you are a Mac user, you should expect this from them. These types of transitions allowed Mac to become as reliable, secure and fast as it is today (compared to its big competitor). If you need a consistent ability to run a 9-year old application on a most recent OS (something like Office X or Adobe CS), you would be able to count on continuing support of legacy apps from Microsoft, even on the most recent OS (ex. running DOS apps in Vista, or Win7). One of the primary reasons Vista is the spaghetti code mess is the requirement that it be able to run 20-year old DOS apps. We just can’t have it both ways (modern, lean OS and legacy support).
YoYo

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 11:52 am · Reply

Walt says “Apple this week is doing something unusual: It is introducing a key product with very few new features that are visible to its users.”

I would add:”It’s the first product from Apple that the user will not see any improvements but half of the installed apps will stop working”.
ericdano

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 12:02 pm · Reply

Ok……lets see all the apps I use are NOT there.

Pro Tools, Digital Performer, Finale, Sibelius. I know that Pro Tools and Sibelius don’t work (the company has said as much)…..
Original Jake

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 12:02 pm · Reply

SOMEONE please resolve whether M$ Office 2004 for Mac runs well on Snow Leopard!?!? Our company wants to move from it to iWork our staff MUST have a version of Office for the occasional M$ document that iWork mangles. And I certainly DON’T want to pay for Office 2008 if we’re going to do most of our work in iWork.
Thanks!!
Original Jake

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 12:10 pm · Reply

P.S. Operating Office 2004 in Rosetta on 10.6 would be fine, since it would just be for the occasional document.
@YoYo

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 12:39 pm · Reply

Bullfeathers. You are drinking the Microsoft PR FUD talking points Kool-Aid. There are significant changes in Snow Leopard that are the foundation of great advances. Snow Leopard might not appear to be much to you, but you are looking at the visible part of the iceberg. Below the water line, it’s an entirely different story.

Revisit your ignorant comment a year from now. Over time, app developers will rewrite parts of their products to take advantage of enabling features such as Grand Central and 64-bit computing. As they do, you will see significant speed boosts and greater capabilities.

I realize that might be difficult for you to comprehend. But over time, you will come to understand my words.
Thanks MDN!

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 12:43 pm · Reply

I really appreciate this article. It was exactly what I was looking for in helping me prepare for Snow Leopard. I am anxious to take advantage of its underlying power and increased speed, and hopefully, I will never have to run Microsoft Outlook (via VMWare Fusion) ever again. Don’t get me wrong – I think VMWare Fusions is great. But the PC version of Outlook is a freakin’ RAM whore.

Which brings me to another subject: did anyone else notice that Microsoft (surprise!) is lagging behind in updating Office for Snow Leopard? Could this be a deliberate strategy? Some years ago, it might have worked. But I am using iWork more and more, and loving it. Let’s hope Steve Ballmer’s mean-spirited gambit blows up in his fat face.
Gosh

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 12:44 pm · Reply

and Yojimbo?
J.Scott

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - 12:56 pm · Reply

With over a year of development time available and Adobe STILL DOES NOT HAVE PhotoShop Elements fully Snow Leopard compatible! How many millions of Mac customers are they trying to thoroughly piss off?

It just boggles my mind. Heads need to roll at some level over at Adobe. I pray Apple comes out with a good competitive product. Adobe’s arrogance is just appalling.