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I tried rather hard to get the new Mindstorms NXT 2.0 software to install on the iMac, but to no avail. Though the installer ran through without any hint of trouble, and even after following the suggestion to install Rosetta, no NXT application icon ever appeared in the Applications folder. I tried a number of times, had to shut down Firefox each time due to an update required to Adobe Flash and even had to sit through a number of system restarts. Nothing much helped. Removing the existing installation and then re-installing likewise had no effect. The only thing I could think of was that the trouble with the installation was somehow related to Snow Leopard. A good guess: a brief Google and I found a solution.

It’s not exactly complicated, but is something I would never have considered. The workaround involves the opening of an installer package and the removal of the preflight script.

Once that has been done and the package closed, another try at the installation yields the desired result: a working installation of the Lego Mindstorms NXT software on a Mac running Snow Leopard.

Here’s a rundown of the steps to get the software to work on Snow Leopard:1. Copy all files from the MINDSTORMS CD to a folder on your desktop. 2. Open that folder and look under “Parts”. 3. Locate MindstormsUnivEdu.pkg or MindstormsUnivRet.pkg. 4. Right-click (control-click) and choose “Show Package Contents”. 5. Navigate into the Contents » Resources directory and delete the “preflight” file. 6. Close this package and run the meta-package (LEGOMindstormsEngRet.mpkg) from the desktop to install MINDSTORMS NXT.

The rising up of the robots may commence…