TUAW Tip: How to tell if an a lication is a Universal Binary

You want to figure out if an a lication is Universal, but you're not sure how to do it? There is a very simple easy way to find out. Simply select the icon of the a lication you're curious about and either right click and select 'Get Info' or hit Command + i. Either one will get you to the info window about the a lication you selected.

Look under 'General' and you'll see 'Kind: A lication.' Next to that (a uming you're ru ing OS X 10.4) you'll see either 'Universal,' 'Intel,' or 'PowerPC.' This lets you know on what Macs this a lication will run natively on:

• Universal ru on either PowerPC or Intel Macs.
• Intel only ru on Intel Macs (no matter what).
• PowerPC ru natively on PowerPC Macs (odd, huh?) but the a lication will, most likely, run on Intel Macs in Rosetta, Tiger's emulation layer. Some a licatio , such as Microsoft's Virtual PC, will not run on Intel Macs at all.
  

Finally, another tip for all you folks out there that are using Universal a on Intel Macs that use plugi which aren't Universal. A uming you still have the Info window open you should see this 'Open using Rosetta' check box (pictured to the left). This forces a Universal a to use its PowerPC native codebase (in Rosetta) thereby letting you use your older plugi . Note that this option is only available for Universal a licatio .