OS X Mountain Lion dropping support for older Intel-based Macs

Naturally as operating systems advance, older computer models will slowly stop being able to support them due to their hardware not being sufficient enough. Such was the case with OS X Leopard back in 2007 where Macs with processors slower than 867MHz were not supported, and it was repeated again with Snow Leopard where support for all PowerPC Macs were dropped. Well if you liked what you saw with Apple’s upcoming OS X Mountain Lion, and if you have not changed your Mac computer in the past 4-5 years, you could be out of luck if you were hoping to upgrade.

According to TUAW, these are the Macs that OS X Mountain Lion will run on:

• iMac (mid 2007 or later)
• MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, 2.4/2.2 GHz), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
• Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
• Xserve (Early 2009)

The models listed below are supported under OS X Lion, but unfortunately will not be able to run OS X Mountain Lion. The model identifiers are listed in parentheses, which you can check by going to About this Mac > More Info > System Report:

• Late 2006 iMacs (iMac5,1, iMac5,2, iMac6,1)
• All plastic MacBooks that pre-date the aluminum unibody redesign (MacBook2,1, MacBook3,1, MacBook4,1)
• MacBook Pros released prior to June 2007 (MacBookPro2,1, MacBookPro2,2)
• The original MacBook Air (MacBookAir1,1)
• The Mid-2007 Mac mini (Macmini2,1)
• The original Mac Pro and its 8-core 2007 refresh (MacPro1,1, MacPro2,1)
• Late 2006 and Early 2008 Xserves (Xserve1,1, Xserve2,1)

So is your Mac one of the lucky ones that will be able to run OS X Mountain Lion, or is OS X Lion good enough for you to last you the next couple of years?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Computers
Tags: os x mountain lion