Alongside the release of OS X 10.7.3 earlier this week, Apple also released a new security update for Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, it appears that the update has been causing problems for users who use Rosetta to run PowerPC apps.

MacRumors reports that issues resulting from the update include frequent crashing of PowerPC apps, which appear to be affecting a variety of apps, including older versions of Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Quicken, and other apps written for PowerPC processors.

Considering that many Snow Leopard users depend significantly on Rosetta functionality, as Snow Leopard is the last version of OS X that supports the framework.

Fortunately, one visitor to Apple’s discussion forums has managed to create a patch that lessens the issue, although it does not yet work for all PowerPC apps.

This is a band-aid and is only recommended in emergency situations. Apple is currently working on a fix, but until that happens, we are stuck with reverse-engineering their update. I hope this helps those in distress from this update.

Apple has yet to formally address why the issues are occurring.