Fix Rosetta in Mac OS X Snow Leopard After Security Update 2012-001

The problems updating to Mac OS X 10.7.3 aren’t the only issues with Apple’s recently released Mac OS X updates, as MacRumors reports that SecurityUpdate 2012-001 aimed at Mac OS X 10.6.8 has caused significant problems with Rosetta apps in Snow Leopard.

Applications effected seem to be anything that relies on Rosetta PowerPC support to run on Intel Macs, including Microsoft Office 2004 and X, Adobe Photoshop, Quicken, FileMaker Pro, AppleWorks, and others.

If you use Mac OS X 10.6 and you have not yet installed Security Update 2012-001, you may wish to avoid doing so until the problems have been resolved. If you already updated and you now have apps crashing left and right, read on…

Fixing the Rosetta Problems in Snow Leopard
Restoring to a pre-Security Update 2012-001 Time Machine backup is ideal, but if you can’t do that the next best thing is to use a bandaid patch created by an Apple Discussion Board user that restores Rosetta app functionality:

Download the RosettaFix Patch Here

Use the patch at your own discretion, and be sure to follow the instructions:

This fix MAY NOT resolve your issue… This is the installer that we are most confident in. It replaces all of the files that were replaced by the Security Update 2012-001 and should be similar to a “reversioner”. Once you have installed the Package, please make sure to repair permissions and restart your computer in order for the changes to take effect.

Presumably Apple will release an update in the near future to resolve these issues, although there is no time frame on when that could happen.

Update: Apple has apparently released Security Update 2012-001 version 1.1 to address the Rosetta issues. It’s available through Software Update.

Update 2: Security Update 2012-001 version 1.1 is now available to download directly from Apple support here. You can install this over existing Snow Leopard installations.