Archicad 18 on 10.6.8?

[Thomas Holm]

For different reasons, we still keep a MacPro 4,1 Nehalem Eight core workstation on Max OSX 10.6.8 (it will run OSXapps that need the Rosetta PowerPC emulator). It runs AC17 fine.

Now I'm finding the AC18 installer refuses to run on 10.6.

My question: Is there any way to run AC 18 on this machine? Is it possible to transfer an installation made on a later system and make it run?

[Anonymous]

Thomas,
AC 18 now requires 64bit system, is 10.6.8 64 bit?
Scott

[Karl Ottenstein]

Hi Thomas,

See: http://www.graphisoft.com/support/system_requirements/AC18/index.html

which says that 10.6 is not compatible and AC cannot be installed.

Your only (?) option for that machine would be to use Disk Utility to create a bootable partition on an existing or external drive to install a copy of a newer OS - e.g., 10.9 (stable - vs 10.10 - still issues). If you only use it for AC 18, the partition probably only has to be 150 GB or so.

Personally, I recommend that you instead clone your 10.6.8 onto a small-ish partition that contains just the apps that require Rosetta and then do a standard upgrade of your system for 'normal' work. Curious what you need Rosetta for? I've kept a 10.6.8 bootable partition for possible old PPC apps and have never had to use it... the Intel version of AC 10 working fine to open old (but not ancient) files.

Scott - OS X has been 64 bit since 10.6 (2009).

Karl

[Thomas Holm]

Karl wrote:
Personally, I recommend that you instead clone your 10.6.8 onto a small-ish partition that contains just the apps that require Rosetta and then do a standard upgrade of your system for 'normal' work. Curious what you need Rosetta for?

Karl, that's a good idea, but I'll have to investigate what I need there. I've got all AC versions from AC7 on, installed and working on this machine. You see, we've used Archicad a long time, from version 4 something and sometimes have to do small maintenance edits on old projects. And since version-upgrading the files can be very much work, it's been easier to keep the old versions running. (This is one reason why I advocate that Archicad by default should save all placed library objects and needed macros and attributes in the .pln file, instead of always forcing a tedious upgrade process when you open an old project. A .pla archive isn't complete.)

I've also got an old CS3 installation on that machine, for the occasional moments when nothing but Photoshop or Illustrator will do what I need. Haven't bothered to do the costly Adobe upgrades either.

But I'm an old dog and will soon have to retire into the doghouse, so I don't expect to be heard by too many anymore. (Btw, we also keep a 10.4 machine running, for the occasional Classic MacOS dive - among those our in-house invoicing app.)

[David Maudlin]

Thomas wrote:
For different reasons, we still keep a MacPro 4,1 Nehalem Eight core workstation on Max OSX 10.6.8 (it will run OSXapps that need the Rosetta PowerPC emulator). It runs AC17 fine.

Now I'm finding the AC18 installer refuses to run on 10.6.

My question: Is there any way to run AC 18 on this machine? Is it possible to transfer an installation made on a later system and make it run?

If there is a free hard drive bay, I would just get a new small hard drive and install OSX10.9 (free) on it, leaving the OSX10.6 drive as is. You can then choose which OS to boot up. I have done this on my MacPro so I still have access to old applications and old scanner driver.

David

[Thomas Holm]

David wrote:
If there is a free hard drive bay, I would just get a new small hard drive and install OSX10.9 (free) on it, leaving the OSX10.6 drive as is. You can then choose which OS to boot up.

David, thanks, that's a good idea too, especially since there is ample space for extra hard drives in the old MacPros. And as they're so upgradeable, I guess we'll get more bang for the buck using Archicad with new SSD drives in our old 8- and 16-core Pros than by buying a new Macpro or iMac. (Assuming more cores are worth more than more MHz)

But there's a catch:
I've found no way whatsoever to get the "free" Macosx 10.9 anymore (as of 14/12/01). All Apple links point to 10.10 Yosemite which I'm still reluctant to install (see other threads in this forum). It's still possible to buy 10.8 though, guess that'll be the way to get AC18 on this machine for now.

[Thomas Holm]

sboydturner wrote:
is 10.6.8 64 bit?

Yes. But that's not enough, apparently.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Thomas wrote:
But there's a catch:
I've found no way whatsoever to get the "free" Macosx 10.9 anymore (as of 14/12/01). All Apple links point to 10.10 Yosemite which I'm still reluctant to install (see other threads in this forum). It's still possible to buy 10.8 though, guess that'll be the way to get AC18 on this machine for now.

This won't help you - but perhaps someone else reading. While Mavericks, Mountain Lion and Lion do not show up in the Mac App Store... if you have ever downloaded them - they show up with a 'download' link under the 'Purchases' tab.

So - best advice for anyone moving forward is to download each OS release even if you do not plan on installing it. If you don't install, just delete the installer. Download the most current patched version in the future from the 'Purchases' tab if you ever need it.

A shame that Apple removes the links the way they do. Some people have hardware that cannot run the most current OS / etc.

Maybe someone you know nearby can download the 10.9.5 installer onto a thumb drive for you?

Best,
Karl

[Thomas Holm]

Karl wrote:
So - best advice for anyone moving forward is to download each OS release even if you do not plan on installing it. If you don't install, just delete the installer. Download the most current patched version in the future from the 'Purchases' tab if you ever need it.

Good advice!

A shame that Apple removes the links the way they do. Some people have hardware that cannot run the most current OS / etc.

But it wasn't easy to anticipate this. This is the first time Apple has done it like this, I think. Guess there's a reason (see below).

Maybe someone you know nearby can download the 10.9.5 installer onto a thumb drive for you?

Thanks for your concern, Karl, but I don't regard this as a major issue for me.
In general, I think just as 10.6 mostly was a "bugfix" release for 10.5, so was 10.8 for 10.7 and 10.10 for 10.9 (at least aside from the looks).

So I'm not overly keen on 10.9 either. And I've already bought 10.8, it was cheap.

Edited: And for hardware compatiblity, there is no problem. For what I know, 10.10 (Yosemite) will run on all machines that accept 10.9 (Mavericks). I recently learned that it even runs on our oldest MacPro3,1 from 2008. That's why I'm planning an upgrade instead of buying new, there's less than 1 MHz speed advantage of buying new, and I get 8 cores through hyperthreading on that old machine. A SSD and a memory upgrade will give lots of speed for Archicad, and since both the newer OS and Archicad utilizes the cores much better than before, I think I can postpone a ten times more expensive machine swap a year or two this way.