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For some odd reason, many apps downloaded from their source (well known websites) are not opening for me in Lion. They just try to open, stays in the Dock, does the blinking dot and they goes back without opening.

I've noticed this with few apps so far. But does not happen to any of the apps from the App Store so far.

I've done Disk Repair, Permission Repair etc. without success.

What might be the problem?

EDITS:

"The Hit List" was one app with the issue. It's universal, 64Bit. However, I went and deleted everything related to it and it's opening now. So, I guess the problem was with corrupted preference or support files.

Thanks everyone for their answers.

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For example, which apps? – revolver May 7 '12 at 3:43
Have you had a look at your logs (found in Console.app)? First place to look for clues in this kind of situation :): – kopischke May 7 '12 at 10:24
PowerPC apps no longer work in OS X ... Rosetta is gone. – GEdgar May 7 '12 at 13:35
It's hard to guess the root cause based on the limited information given. Can you be more specific? You will want to start with a known good app that actually works on Lion like Mars Edit to test that your mac is not averse to any downloaded app and then start to edit this to list one app that is failing for us to have a chance to help you. – bmike♦ May 7 '12 at 19:21
Once this is edited to have more details, please flag or comment for another moderator view so we can assist in reopening it if needed. – bmike♦ May 7 '12 at 19:22

closed as not a real question by bmike♦ May 7 '12 at 19:21

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

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TO summarize what others are saying in the comments, most likely you are trying to tun a PowerPC app on your Lion machine, which won't work because Rosetta has been discontinued in OS X Lion.
To verify this, go to the application in the Finder and either Get Info (Command + I) or (if you're in column view) look in the preview pane. Take a look at the type. It will only run on your Mac if it says "Universal application" or "Intel application".

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This might be a good answer - let's see if the OP can provide enough details to prevent this from being a game of 20 questions. – bmike♦ May 7 '12 at 19:22
@bmike Okay. We shall see… – daviesgeek May 7 '12 at 19:23

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