Will an i7 MBA run snow leopard

I do not believe you will be able to run Snow Leopard on a current system. It wont have the drivers necessary to work the onboard equipment appropriate. Even if you do find a way to load it on or clone it onto the drive, there could be problems down the line for you....

jesso said:

Howdy.
Looking at an i7 MBA to replace i5 2010 MBP.
I need to run snow leopard from time to time, which I currently have installed on a partition on my main drive.
If I got a MBP, the plan would be to have the Snow Leopard drive on a USB 3 external drive.
Will the MBA happily boot into snow leopard from a bootable carbon copy cloner drive over usb 3?
How would it run?
I will probably take a drive into the mac store to give it a try myself, but I thought someone here could save me some time!
Thanks.

Click to expand...

No. It will kernel panic upon booting the system, if you even get it installed.

jesso said:

But I do already have it installed on an external USB drive. I used Carbon Copy cloner. I've used it on a couple of 2010 / 2011 i5 machines.
Aren't all the necessary boot files etc contained on the Carbon Copy drive?

I have a friend who has a 2012 i7 27 inch iMac, and he has snow leopard running perfectly on a Carbon Copy drive, but I'm wondering if anyones tried it on an i7 macbook air.

Click to expand...

Snow Leopard does not boot on 2012 iMacs. I've tried. It kernel panics within a few seconds of booting with an error about missing CPU and Thunderbolt extensions. Snow Leopard doesn't even work very well or at all on the 2011 Macbook Air. It runs very slowly and is extremely unstable.

jesso said:

Thanks for that.
Wonder how my friend has his working so well... I've seen it first hand. It's a first gen 27 inch i7.... and he does most of his audio work in snow leopard. Maybe he added the missing extensions somehow?

Click to expand...

Unless he recompiled the kernel to work with it and made his own kexts for the Thunderbolt, video card, and chipset, it isn't Snow Leopard or a 2012 iMac.

jesso said:

Sounds complicated...
When was the 27 inch introduced? I could've sworn he got it about a year ago, but I could be wrong.
I shall ask him.
Thanks for the input!

Click to expand...

the 2012 iMac is the newly designed thin one that lacks an optical drive. They came out in October.

jesso said:

Sounds complicated...
When was the 27 inch introduced? I could've sworn he got it about a year ago, but I could be wrong.
I shall ask him.
Thanks for the input!

Click to expand...

If he got it about a year ago, it's a 2011. The 2012 iMacss were released at the end of 2012.

jesso said:

Sounds complicated...
When was the 27 inch introduced? I could've sworn he got it about a year ago, but I could be wrong.
I shall ask him.
Thanks for the input!

Click to expand...

I would be very surprised if he got snow leopard on a new 2012 iMac- if he got it a year ago it would be a 2011 based mac since they did not come out with new hardware until october 2012.

Couldn't you just use VMware Fusion or Parallels to run SL in a VM?

MrGimper said:

Couldn't you just use VMware Fusion or Parallels to run SL in a VM?

Click to expand...

Yes, but only Snow Leopard Server.

Intell said:

Yes, but only Snow Leopard Server.

Click to expand...

Legitimately, yes......

[MOD NOTE]
Please stay on topic, this is not the thread to start discussing Snow Leopard's EULA.

MrGimper said:

Couldn't you just use VMware Fusion or Parallels to run SL in a VM?

Click to expand...

Yes: You can install Snow Leopard Server into either. Apple is now selling Snow Leopard Server for $19.99 + sales tax & shipping costs at 1.800.MYAPPLE (1.800.692.7753) - Apple Part Number: MC588Z/A (telephone orders only).

If you are outside of the USA or Canada, get someone to purchase SLS for you and ship it to you as with this 95% discount in price, it may not be on sale forever!

If you cannot obtain SLS you can install Snow Leopard client into Parallels 8 by following the instructions on this thread.

[click on images to enlarge]

MichaelLAX said:

Yes: You can install Snow Leopard Server into either. Apple is now selling Snow Leopard Server for $19.99 + sales tax & shipping costs at 1.800.MYAPPLE (1.800.692.7753) - Apple Part Number: MC588Z/A (telephone orders only).

If you are outside of the USA or Canada, get someone to purchase SLS for you and ship it to you as with this 95% discount in price, it may not be on sale forever!

If you cannot obtain SLS you can install Snow Leopard client into Parallels 8 by following the instructions on this thread.

[click on images to enlarge]

Click to expand...

You can also install SL client on Fusion. I won't say how, but I'd bet if you google the words "Donk" and "Unlocker" you may find something....

I am not familiar with these products for use in VMWare Fusion, but there is no reason to be "cagey" about it.

It is a common Urban Myth that Apple prohibits Snow Leopard client to be virtualized in Lion or Mountain Lion on a Mac. That myth has been largely debunked over the last 18 months.

Apple rendered the issue largely moot with it rerelease of Snow Leopard Server at a 95% discount; so the debate (for those few left to debate it) is over!

My thread, linked earlier by me, to installing Snow Leopard client into Parallels has been open and notorious, so to speak, for quite a long period of time here and on the Apple Communities Support Forum.