Program not supported on this type of mac computer

Question

I have a piece of software that just entered beta. A Japanese version of Mac OS X runs it fine, but a German beta tester gets a message that loosely translates to "Cannot run program because it is not supported on this type of Mac computer."

It is Intel and 10.6 only, but that is what the beta tester has. He tells me that the error should not be related to localization (the .nib is English only, but really there is no text to speak of in the program, and he speaks English), but the Mac does not give me any more information as far as I can tell.

I know that this is not much information, but it's all that I know how to obtain.

What can cause this type of problem? What more information can I have my beta tester obtain?

Answer 1

On intel the program can be compiled to 32 bit (i386) and 64 bit (X86_64) versions. It could be that your beta tester has an old intel box that only runs the 32 bit version of the OS while you only have compiled it for 64 bit. (the other way around is supported by the OS)

You can check the available architectures compiled into the binary by using the file command. ie

% file Program.app/Contents/MacOS/Program

If you check this on the Dashboard.app you get the following output

% file /Applications/Dashboard.app/Contents/MacOS/Dashboard 
/Applications/Dashboar…: Mach-O universal binary with 3 architectures
/Applications/Dashboar… (for architecture x86_64):Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
/Applications/Dashboar… (for architecture i386):    Mach-O executable i386
/Applications/Dashboar… (for architecture ppc7400)Mach-O executable ppc