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Install Snow Leopard on 2011 MBA, STILL no way?
- Thread starter ddong
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Second this…
If it were possible, I would like to downgrade back to Snow Leopard… especially for 2011 MBA. Lion consumes almost 2x battery (20%/hr) under the same tasks compared to 2010 MBA w/ Snow Leopard (10%/hr).
And you know this how? What I mean, is if you can't run Snow Leopard on THIS EXACT hardware, then you can't make a direct comparison stating that Lion is the culprit.
Frankly, I love Lion. It took me awhile to get the hang of it, but the swipe features/full screen apps is amazing. It actually convinced my wife to switch to Mac. I think the real problem is that everyone got used to the Leopard and Snow Leopard interface since we all had the exact same interface for 4 years. It's like those who were slow to migrate from XP to Windows 7, you just got used to it one way and now you have to learn some new "stuff"...
I agree. I think Lion is more efficient than SL, and as for battery life; its very difficult to compare, considering the new MBAs have different components.
I use a 2010 MBA that had SL (which I upgraded to Lion) and it gets the exact same, if not more battery life; general browsing takes my up to about 8 hours, and if I'm just reading things, the battery life estimate is up to 10-13 hours at times.
No offensive here.
I've been using OS X since 2008 Leopard and barely using Windows. But I do prefer Snow Leopard rather than 10.5/10.7 so far.
Lion does consume more power at the same meantime. If you went to Apple Support forum, you should find a thread relating battery issue. It is not only my case. The most advanced OS 10.7 should at least compete with 10.6.x at its first release version. It is Apple's duty for this.
I am not satisfied with spending thousands money… and end up w/ a machine that you should turn off bluetooth, turn off flash, degrade screen brightness… and so on in order to get better battery life. It happened before on iPhone and I've seen this almost every generation of iOS.
So anyone who works for Apple, please fix the issue as soon as possible. Thanks. Since I've written feedback to them and never got any response ever. And I stuck with Lion because I couldn't install previous OS on my machine. WHY?
I've been using OS X since 2008 Leopard and barely using Windows. But I do prefer Snow Leopard rather than 10.5/10.7 so far.
Lion does consume more power at the same meantime. If you went to Apple Support forum, you should find a thread relating battery issue. It is not only my case. The most advanced OS 10.7 should at least compete with 10.6.x at its first release version. It is Apple's duty for this.
I am not satisfied with spending thousands money… and end up w/ a machine that you should turn off bluetooth, turn off flash, degrade screen brightness… and so on in order to get better battery life. It happened before on iPhone and I've seen this almost every generation of iOS.
So anyone who works for Apple, please fix the issue as soon as possible. Thanks. Since I've written feedback to them and never got any response ever. And I stuck with Lion because I couldn't install previous OS on my machine. WHY?
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Well, I am not going to argue anymore. It's not always the case that Apple is perfect. If so, there is no more "Antenna gate" would happen. And IT gets FIXED later.
Lion has battery problem. But don't refer my words to "Lion is bad" or not.
Please let's back to OP's question. Can we install Snow Leopard on 2011 MBA? If not, why not?
Is Snow Leopard bad?
Lion has battery problem. But don't refer my words to "Lion is bad" or not.
Please let's back to OP's question. Can we install Snow Leopard on 2011 MBA? If not, why not?
Is Snow Leopard bad?
The OP asked about the feasibility of putting SL on 2011 MBA hardware, and everything decided to instead give their opinion of the OS. Gotta love the internet.
To answer the OPs question:
- I am sure it is technically possible to have SL running on 2011 MBA hardware perfectly. Remember those rumors that the 2011 MBA was delayed until after the launch of Lion so that they could launch it with Lion preinstalled? This implies that they had a version of SL ready to go before Lion.
- Practically speaking, unless Apple voluntarily chooses to release (or someone else internal to apple leaks) the SL drivers for 2011 MBA hardware, it is not possible to have SL running perfectly.
See here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1194127/
To answer the OPs question:
- I am sure it is technically possible to have SL running on 2011 MBA hardware perfectly. Remember those rumors that the 2011 MBA was delayed until after the launch of Lion so that they could launch it with Lion preinstalled? This implies that they had a version of SL ready to go before Lion.
- Practically speaking, unless Apple voluntarily chooses to release (or someone else internal to apple leaks) the SL drivers for 2011 MBA hardware, it is not possible to have SL running perfectly.
See here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1194127/
I don't think it implies that at all. If anything, the opposite. I haven't seen any evidence that the needed SL drivers exist... (Maybe they do, but until they show up someplace it's just guessing.)
I was being completely speculative, but I think it makes sense. The 2011 MBA was released in July with the launch of Lion. According to the rumors, Apple began hardware production in China of the 2011 MBA in May, and then decided to delay the launch so that they could reflash OS (update to Lion) into already-made MBAs and launch them with Lion preinstalled.
From this, I gather that the original plan was to launch the 2011 MBA with SL, and MBAs with SL were made between May and June. Therefore, somewhere there exists a build of SL with all the correct drivers for the 2011 MBA.
Of course, I stress the fact that is all based on rumors, speculation, and bullsiht.
In the meantime, I plan to try the method 2011 Mac Mini users are using for installing SL sometime after my finals are done... Because I really want to downgrade to SL. If apple were to sell their version of SL with the 2011 MBA drivers, I would buy it.
While true, why else would someone want to move from Lion to Snow Leopard if they didn't like it? You certainly wouldn't do it "just because". Often times, people need a little reassurance that new isn't bad. I know many times I've resisted change only to have others state "you just gotta give it some time and give it a try"... I tell that to my wife almost every day as she makes the switch from PC to Mac. Frankly, the OP hasn't given us any reason that he wants to put Snow Leopard on his MBA, so we are left with trying to figure out why and help him get past the hang ups we THINK he has with it.....
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I've not had any battery problems on my Early 2011 MBP. Battery life is on par with what it was before. But then again, I don't stress out about whether my systems last 4.5 or 5 hours on a single charge.
you know what?
I truly don't care about if these are EXACTLY SAME machines. Even the same generation of Macbook series, they have several revised versions or components out of factory. Typically, they are different.
What I care about is the consistence. Since I perform the same tasks on new machine but get better user experience on old machine, why I couldn't complain about the new OS X?
Take a look at the remote recovery… just like the iOS. Once the newer 10.7.x released, you are not able to back to previous version. And I have to say that not every released update brings up the same quality. Apple doesn't allow us downgrading OS, then, please make it perfect.
I truly don't care about if these are EXACTLY SAME machines. Even the same generation of Macbook series, they have several revised versions or components out of factory. Typically, they are different.
What I care about is the consistence. Since I perform the same tasks on new machine but get better user experience on old machine, why I couldn't complain about the new OS X?
Take a look at the remote recovery… just like the iOS. Once the newer 10.7.x released, you are not able to back to previous version. And I have to say that not every released update brings up the same quality. Apple doesn't allow us downgrading OS, then, please make it perfect.
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Your points make no sense. Case in point:
While I agree Apple does get parts from many different component vendors, you certainly can't compare a completely different generation of machine (i.e. the 2010 MBA vs the 2011 MBA) in order to say that the battery life of one OS vs another is better or worse for that matter. However, I can tell you that the battery life of my MBP running Snow Leopard vs Lion is virtually indistinguishable and guess what? That IS exactly the same hard ware.
Further, I don't get this point. So your old machine does exactly what you want it to do running Snow Leopard? Why are you commenting in a thread that the OP is asking about downgrading on a brand new MBA? If you were happy with your old setup, then what the new 2011 MBA does or doesn't do (i.e. which OS it can run) shouldn't matter to you. Get rid of it and go back....
Points invalidated....
While I agree Apple does get parts from many different component vendors, you certainly can't compare a completely different generation of machine (i.e. the 2010 MBA vs the 2011 MBA) in order to say that the battery life of one OS vs another is better or worse for that matter. However, I can tell you that the battery life of my MBP running Snow Leopard vs Lion is virtually indistinguishable and guess what? That IS exactly the same hard ware.
Further, I don't get this point. So your old machine does exactly what you want it to do running Snow Leopard? Why are you commenting in a thread that the OP is asking about downgrading on a brand new MBA? If you were happy with your old setup, then what the new 2011 MBA does or doesn't do (i.e. which OS it can run) shouldn't matter to you. Get rid of it and go back....
Points invalidated....
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I don't know what other laptop brands you've used, but from my personal experience (hp-toshiba-acer), even a 1300$ machine has a 30min battery life, while my 1000$ MBA lasts 5 hours, so no complaints here.
Don't be so spoiled people.
Oh and also, why the hell do you want to downgrade (not you[/you] personally), Lion has SO many new amazing features (fullscreen-app switching without the keyboard-mission control-swipe back-forward in safari etc) that it seems incredibly strange to me that some people like snow leopard better...
Because I've upgraded to the new machine for a while. The reason for upgrading is for its backlight keyboard. But so far, I only hope it has the same battery life performance like 2010's one.
For the OS part, I like SL's Quicklook more because it could zoom in PDFs under full screen mode. I often read lots of documents. It made previewing PDF on a 13" screen more efficiently than Lion. And the dictionary gets higher priority in SL's Spotlight result. Four-finger-swipe on SL brings up app-switch window. They are great features for me.
As for Lion, its full-screen, auto-save mode, and the three-tap gesture for look-up dictionary do attract me. But I like Spaces more than the new Mission Control. Because fixed space position is more clear for me at most of time.
I do not think I am spoiled. Just hope Lion get better.
For the OS part, I like SL's Quicklook more because it could zoom in PDFs under full screen mode. I often read lots of documents. It made previewing PDF on a 13" screen more efficiently than Lion. And the dictionary gets higher priority in SL's Spotlight result. Four-finger-swipe on SL brings up app-switch window. They are great features for me.
As for Lion, its full-screen, auto-save mode, and the three-tap gesture for look-up dictionary do attract me. But I like Spaces more than the new Mission Control. Because fixed space position is more clear for me at most of time.
I do not think I am spoiled. Just hope Lion get better.
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I agree with eeptman.
I also don't like mission control. I miss the old way expose was done.
I don't like the UI tweaks in Lion, I miss having color in the sidebar and bigger traffic light buttons.
I also prefer the old quickview.
Regardless of hardware, I have read almost no one saying that Lion provides better battery life, and better speed, than SL. So far, everyone either get's the same or worse with Lion. So at best, Lion is the same. Probably, it is actually slightly worse battery-wise and performance-wise.
Why discourage someone from getting what they want?
Naysayers step aside. I want to drum up more support for the "get Snow Leopard to work on our 2011 MBAs" movement! Occupy Infinite Loop!!
I also don't like mission control. I miss the old way expose was done.
I don't like the UI tweaks in Lion, I miss having color in the sidebar and bigger traffic light buttons.
I also prefer the old quickview.
Regardless of hardware, I have read almost no one saying that Lion provides better battery life, and better speed, than SL. So far, everyone either get's the same or worse with Lion. So at best, Lion is the same. Probably, it is actually slightly worse battery-wise and performance-wise.
Why discourage someone from getting what they want?
Naysayers step aside. I want to drum up more support for the "get Snow Leopard to work on our 2011 MBAs" movement! Occupy Infinite Loop!!
http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/homerowbumps.jpg
See those little indents on the J and F keys? That is more than enough for anybody who can touch type, back light keyboards are a novelty if you ask me.
Yep, they're helpful for the blind as well.
I think backlit keyboards are functional and nice to have. I think if you can't touch type, they're also pretty nifty.